In their renewed attacks on Bush appeals-court nominee Charles Pickering, Democrats have focused on Pickering's rulings in a 1994 cross-burning case. Accusing Pickering of "glaring racial insensitivity," they charge that he abused his powers as a U.S. District Court judge in Mississippi to give a light sentence to a man convicted of the crime. "Why anyone would go the whole nine yards and then some to get a lighter sentence for a convicted cross burner is beyond me," New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer said Wednesday. "Why anyone would do that — in 1994 and in a state with Mississippi's history — is simply mind-boggling." But a close look at the facts of the case suggests that Pickering's actions were not only not mind-boggling but were in fact a reasonable way of handling a difficult case. Here is what happened:

The crime took place on January 9, 1994. Three men — 20-year-old Daniel Swan, 25-year-old Mickey Herbert Thomas, and a 17-year-old whose name was not released because he was a juvenile — were drinking together when one of them came up with the idea that they should construct a cross and burn it in front of a house in which a white man and his black wife lived in rural Walthall County in southern Mississippi. While it is not clear who originally suggested the plan, it is known that the 17-year-old appeared to harbor some sort of hostility toward the couple; on an earlier occasion, he had fired a gun into the house (no one was hit). Neither Swan nor Thomas was involved in the shooting incident.

The men got into Swan's pickup truck, went to his barn, and gathered wood to build an eight-foot cross. They then drove to the couple's house, put up the cross, doused it with gasoline, and set it on fire.

-- Anonymous, January 09, 2003

Answers

Because the case involved a cross burning covered under the federal hate-crimes statute, local authorities immediately brought in investigators from the Clinton Justice Department's Office of Civil Rights. After the three suspects were arrested in late February, 1994, lawyers for the civil-rights office made the major decisions in prosecuting the case.

In a move that baffled and later angered Judge Pickering, Civil Rights Division prosecutors early on decided to make a plea bargain with two of the three suspects. The first, Mickey Thomas, had an unusually low IQ, and prosecutors decided to reduce charges against him based on that fact. The second bargain was with the 17-year-old. Civil Rights Division lawyers allowed both men to plead guilty to misdemeanors in the cross-burning case (the juvenile also pleaded guilty to felony charges in the shooting incident). The Civil Rights Division recommended no jail time for both men.

-- Anonymous, January 09, 2003

The situation was different for the third defendant, Daniel Swan, who, like the others, faced charges under the hate-crime statute. Unlike the others, however, Swan pleaded not guilty. The law requires that the government prove the accused acted out of racial animus, and Swan, whose defense consisted mainly of the contention that he was drunk on the night of the cross burning, maintained that he simply did not have the racial animus necessary to be guilty of a hate crime under federal law. more

-- Anonymous, January 09, 2003

This is very interesting. (Back when Pickering's nomination was turned down, the Washington Post had an editorial stating that it felt the nomination was alright and that the charges against him had been greatly exaggerated.)

-- Anonymous, January 09, 2003

community service and a 2000 word essay would have been better.

-- Anonymous, January 10, 2003