Judge of the Day: G. Thomas Porteous Jr.
Will He Become First Impeached Federal Judge in Almost 20 Years?
Congratulations to Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr. (E.D. La.), our latest Judge of the Day. As a two-time winner (he was previously honored in here), Judge Porteous now joins the JotD Hall of Fame. Along with his fellow inductees — Chief Judge Edward Nottingham, and Judges Samuel Kent and Elizabeth Halverson — he is no longer eligible for recognition as a Judge of the Day, having transcended the award.
Here’s why Judge Porteous is a Hall of Famer. From the New Orleans Times-Picayune:
A panel of the nation’s highest judiciary found substantial evidence that U.S. District Judge Thomas Porteous committed perjury, accepted gifts from lawyers and violated other criminal and ethical standards, according to its impeachment recommendation sent to Congress.The U.S. Judicial Conference, led by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, decided unanimously Wednesday to forward the misconduct investigation to the U.S. House of Representatives. The action could set the stage for the first Senate impeachment trial of a federal judge in 19 years.
When judges discipline themselves, they tend to go easy. If the Judicial Conference has unanimously voted to turn a matter over to Congress, you know it stinks to high heaven.
More discussion, after the jump.
So what are the allegations against Judge Porteous?
The conference determined that Porteous committed perjury by signing false financial disclosures to conceal cash and things of value that he solicited from lawyers appearing before him. He repeatedly committed perjury during his personal bankruptcy case to obtain a discharge of debts “while continuing his lifestyle at the expense of his creditors,” the certificate says.He also systematically concealed from litigants and the public financial transactions by filing false financial disclosures about his income, gifts, loans and liabilities, the panel found.
“This conduct made it impossible for litigants to seek recusal or to challenge his failure to recuse himself in cases in which lawyers who appeared before him had given him cash and other things of value,” the certificate says.
The conference determined that Porteous violated several criminal statutes and ethical canons while presiding over a Kenner hospital lawsuit, specifically by denying a motion to recuse himself from the case based on his close friendship with attorneys in the case who had given him cash in the past….
Finally, Porteous made false representations to gain the extension of a bank loan with an intent to defraud the bank, the conference found.
Judge Porteous, don’t fret. If you get impeached, you can always run for Congress.
(That’s what former Judge Alcee Hastings did. He was impeached and removed from office in 1989. Now he’s a United States Congressman, representing Florida’s 23rd District.)
Porteous could face first judicial impeachment in 19 years [New Orleans Times-Picayune]
The Senate’s Impeachment Role [United States Senate]
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FIRST in 20 years, but it's Louisiana. What did you expect?
Louisiana, the same great state that brought us Congresman William Jefferson.
WHO CARES
1:28 -
Administrative, county, state or federal JUDGE!
Only a judge would look at conduct like this and be so apathetic. Go back to floundering on punishing a party for blatant discovery violations.
Jackass.
"He repeatedly committed perjury during his personal bankruptcy case to obtain a discharge of debts "while continuing his lifestyle at the expense of his creditors," the certificate says"
isnt that what the bankruptcy code is all about?
Guys in my high school used to get impeached for bribery and then successfully run for Congress all the time. It was no big deal.
FRAT STUD!
He looks faintly like Dan Akroyd
1:28 - The more sophisticated readers of ATL, that's who.
Federal judge coverage, like what Underneath Their Robes had, is the high-end merchandise on ATL.
Federal judiciary coverage = Neiman-Marcus.
Big Law coverage = Macys.
But ATL has to cater to the Macys crowd because that's what the advertisers like.
Who appointed him?
Bill Clinton (of course).
On Clinton, this Vanity Fair piece by former New York Times reporter Todd Purdum is a must-read:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/07/clinton200807
Clinton. No surprise there.
Federal judge sitting in Louisiana = Salvation Army.
1:39 = guy whose job and marriage (soon to be nullified in CA) are so terrible that he has to make up special elitist categories to place himself at the top of the food chain.
1:39 - well said! An idea like that has been in the back of my mind for a long time, but hadn't formulated it as clearly as you have. The Macy's crowd never quite gets some of these posts because they didn't follow UTR, and just came here to get gossip about bonuses and salaries.
1:39 = definitely a chick. no self-respecting male would ever make such a comparison
I know this judge.
I was a teacher in New Orleans a few years back when the school board ex parte tried to oust then superintendent Anthony Amato. Judge Porteous enjoined that action, finding it to be a denial of due process. It was a good ruling.
Shame.
Stop talking about my father! He tries hard and puts food on the table. He is a good man and has instilled much of his values in me. I hope to put these values to good use next year when I start my new two year program at NW.
Let's be serious. When I want to read about appellate judges and legal questions, I go to Volokh, not ATL.
ATL is Macy's, no matter how you spin it. When you follow the more high-brow stories here, you are still just buying the best tie that *Macy's* carries.
2:17. Why are you bothering to point out your thoughts on the gender of a particular poster? Who gives a rat's ass whether it was a male or female in a thread that has nothing to do with gender, sex, work-life balance, or anything similar?
Guys in my high school used to point out their thoughts on the gender of a particular poster all the time. It was no big deal.
FRAT STUD
2:41 = 1:39 = non-self-respecting male
2:41 = 1:39 = guy who watches sex in the city and says to himself, "SJP isn't THAT bad looking"
2:41 = 1:39 = OWNED
Actually, I'm 2:41, and female, not the same person as 1:39, and have never in my life watched sex in the city. Nor do I care about shopping, for that matter. (Although I do think SJP isn't that bad.) I just get annoyed with the perception that all the posters on here are big hairy men with big hairy testicles. Not true! I have no testicles at all!
Ironically, the last federal judge to be impeached by Congress 19 years ago (and only the 6th in history to attain that distinction)-- Alcee Hastings—is now a MEMBER of Congress, and has been since 1993.
For ALT’s younger readers, Judge Hastings was impeached in 1989, in part, for bribe taking. The impeachment trial was televised, and there was a lot of testimony around $150,000 cash delivered to Hastings’s hotel suit in a garment bag.
See here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcee_Hastings
If Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr is impeached for corruption, what better qualification could there be for a second career as a congressman?
PS: I think Porteous more closely resembles Scalia than Dan Ackroid .
I am a big hairy woman with testicles. I eat right though and work out so its ok.
Of the five or six federal judges who have been impeached in the past 50 years, all or nearly all have been appointed by Democrat presidents. It doesn't necessarily prove too much (Republicans can be corrupt, too), but I'm interested in hearing the comments of liberal ATL readers.
Liberal ATL readers have no comment on your point, but they certainly would if the numbers were reversed. If they comment at all, it will be something to the effect that Bush is evil.
How awesome would it be to clerk for a fed judge who takes bribes! Do you think his clerks got a cut? Free dinners at the Cap Grill? Sounds like a second shot at a summer associateship!!
No cut, and you have to carry those heavy suitcases crammed with $$ up the back stairs to chambers.
I take it the last one was Judge Nixon of U.S. v. Nixon (1993), where the Supreme Court decided that a challenge to Senate procedures regarding impeachment was a political question?
Just conducted a very scientific study of the last four federal officials to be impeached and convicted (assuming Porteous is), i.e. the only four to have such misfortune befall them in the past seventy years. All four are federal judges. And who, exactly? Porteous appointed by Clinton; Nixon appointed by Johnson; Hastings and Claiborne both appointed by Carter.
As the rumblings of who the next president might appoint to the bench heat up, one might do well to not totally ignore that as a statistical anomaly. Of course, many will anyway, as nothing quite compares to the deep-down satisfaction one gets in simply marginalizing or ignoring things he doesn't "agree" with. "Agree" is in quotes because there's nothing to agree or disagree with here - it's a simple recognition of fact. But whatever weight anybody puts on that (and admittedly, it shouldn't be much for that fact alone), it's still right there.
I await whoever wants to tell me how many Republican congressmen have resigned amid scandal over the past several years (many of whom should have left office much, much earlier), while ignoring that's a completely different metric - the politicos are in office because voters put them there, while federal judges are in office because Presidents put them there.
Chew on that for a while. I anxiously await being chastized by the self-righetous left (who really shouldn't take offense to that little statistic at all - it is what it is).
Defensive Republican:
"Yur' doin' a heckuva job, Brownie."
(okay, you got your asked-for attack--feel better?)
4:12,
I don't argue with your statistic, but I don't think you've proven much. The last four federal officials to be impeached and convicted were appointed by Democratic Presidents. That does not, however, mean that Republican Presidents do not appoint people who do things that are equally or perhaps more deserving of impeachment. All it means is that in the decades under consideration, only the Democratic appointees were caught and tried. Republican appointees may simply have gone undetected, or the matter may not have been pursued after detection.