Alito: The Career Prosecutor
From Legal Intelligencer:
After a clerkship with 3rd Circuit Judge Leonard I. Garth, Alito worked as a front-line federal prosecutor in New Jersey for four years. But soon after President Ronald Reagan was elected, Alito joined the Office of the Solicitor General, staying for four years and helping to decide what position the administration would take in cases up for review by the Supreme Court.
That was followed by a three-year stint at Main Justice as a deputy assistant attorney general. In 1987, at the age of 37, Alito was appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, a post he held until he was tapped in 1990 by the first President Bush to join the 3rd Circuit.
Before becoming a judge, after a short stint as a law clerk for a federal judge, Alito's entire career --from 1977 to 1990 -- was as a prosecutor or attorney for the Government.
Again, my prediction: A disaster appointment for those who care about the constitutional rights of the accused. I don't want a career prosecutor like Alito on the Supreme Court. I fear he will be a major proponent of the war on drugs, the death penalty and the war against immigrants, while he will rule to restrict habeas rights and Miranda.
Here's more from Alliance for Justice (pdf):
[Alito has shown]limited appreciation for the rights of the accused. In one noteworthy dissent, he dismissed evidence of race discrimination by a prosecutor in jury selection. In another
opinion, he upheld a death sentence against a claim that the defendant’s counsel was constitutionally deficient. The Supreme Court reversed 5-4, with Justice O’Connor casting the deciding vote.
PFAW on a death pranlty case in which an opinion he wrote was reversed by his circuit en banc:
[Alito]Fails to consider racial discrimination in capital punishment: An African American had been convicted of felony murder by an all white jury from which black jurors had been impermissibly struck because of their race. Alito cast the deciding vote and wrote the majority opinion in a 2-1 ruling rejecting the defendant's claims. The full Third Circuit, in a split decision, reversed Alito's ruling, and the majority specifically criticized him for having compared statistical evidence about the prosecution's exclusion of blacks from juries in capital cases to an explanation of why a disproportionate number of recent U.S. Presidents have been left-handed. According to the majority, "[t]o suggest any comparability to the striking of jurors based on their race is to minimize the history of discrimination against prospective black jurors and black defendants . . ."
White Collar Crime Blog reports:
In another case familiar to those who follow white collar crime cases, he wrote the opinion in United States v. McDade, 28 F.3d 283 (3d Cir. 1994), that rejected then-Representative Joseph McDade's challenge to the government's RICO and corruption charges on the grounds that it violated the Speech or Debate Clause, holding that the government was not questioning the Congressman about his statements. The government's prosecution of McDade, and his subsequent acquittal, led to the adoption by Congress of the McDade Act, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 530B, which requires federal prosecutors to adhere to the professional responsibility rules of the state in which the attorney practices, and the Hyde Amendment, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 3006A Note, which permits an award of attorney's fees to a defendant who is a "prevailing party" in a prosecution.
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