Judge John Roberts: Staunch Law and Order Man
I've noted that Judge John Roberts is no friend of the criminally accused. The Wall Street Journal (free article) confirms this today. It's worse than I thought.
While Roberts doesn't have an extensive judicial record on criminal issues, his positions as Deputy Solicitor General are troubling, first because he helped decide what cases the office should accept and second, because of information emerging that he is a staunch law and order man.
...one issue that has gotten less public scrutiny has been his staunch law-and-order record. During Judge Roberts's time as principal deputy solicitor general in the administration of George H.W. Bush, his office chose to get involved in dozens of state cases to limit the rights of criminal defendants. The cases backed state prosecutors seeking to preserve convictions won with warrantless searches and confessions obtained without Miranda warnings about the right to remain silent; to dismiss claims by inmates of "cruel and unusual punishments"; and to validate aggressive law-enforcement techniques, such as sobriety checkpoints and "protective sweeps" of crime-infested dwellings.
According to Judge Roberts himself, promoting law and order -- a bedrock priority of Republican presidents since Richard M. Nixon -- marked his years in the solicitor general's office, at least as much as limiting abortion rights or opposing racial set-asides. That stance set apart the policies of a "conservative Republican solicitor general" from a "liberal Democratic one," he wrote in a 1993 opinion article published in The Wall Street Journal.
It gets worse:
In 1992, Judge Roberts helped prepare a brief arguing that if a defendant was convicted in a fair trial, it was constitutional to execute him regardless of new evidence suggesting his innocence. A 6-3 Supreme Court agreed, and the Texas inmate was executed four months later.
...Judge Roberts's office fought to help states speed executions by limiting appeals and to reverse a state-court ruling that such victim-impact statements violated the Eighth Amendment, which guarantees protection from "cruel and unusual punishments."
On Election Day 1992, Judge Roberts himself argued before the Supreme Court that police should be able to falsely promise prisoners leniency in exchange for confessions, and that convicts had no right to raise Miranda violations in federal habeas corpus petitions if the claim already had been made in state court. A 5-4 Supreme Court rejected the argument.
Given the cases on next term's docket, Roberts' beliefs could be a very bad sign.
Already on the court's next term, which begins Oct. 3, are cases pitting condemned prisoners against prosecutors eager to cut off their appeals and others testing the limits of landmark Warren Court rulings that created the Miranda warning and enforced the exclusionary rule, which bars admission of evidence police obtained in violation of constitutional rights, such as the Fourth Amendment protection from "unreasonable searches and seizures."
The unfortunate part about this is that Senators rarely care about offending the accused. They aren't a big voting bloc. Which means, there may not be very much questioning of Roberts on criminal justice issues and constitutional rights of the accused. The Democrats' litmus test is more likely to be abortion rights rather than due process for those accused of crime.
The Senators should care. Here's why.
Other Related Posts: Judge Roberts on the Death Penalty
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