Judge Pickering Speaks Out

As a part of their campaign to obstruct President Bush’s judicial nominees, Senate Democrats, led by U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), and outside special interest groups, tried to brand Judge Charles Pickering a racist. In an extraordinary interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes broadcast March 28, Judge Pickering rebutted those charges.

President Bush first nominated Judge Pickering to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit in May of 2001. Nearly three years later, after Judge Pickering’s nomination was filibustered by Senate Democrats, President Bush invoked his constitutional authority to grant him a temporary appointment during a Senate recess.

Pickering’s experience is all too typical of the problems with the confirmation process. A particularly qualified nominee, Pickering had served as a U.S. District Court Judge in Mississippi for more than 10 years. He earned the American Bar Association’s highest rating for a judicial nominee. Nevertheless, Senate Democrats and well-funded liberal interest groups worked tirelessly to distort his record and label him, of all things, a racist.

According to 60 Minutes, "Judge Pickering felt so strongly that he’d been smeared — and that he is not racially insensitive — he agreed to speak to 60 Minutes on camera, which federal judges almost never do.

"Says Pickering, ‘To accuse a white southerner of being a racist is about the worst thing you can do. And this has been my life work. I have worked for more than three decades trying to provide better relations between the races, trying to protect equal rights. That’s my core being. And they’ve attacked that.’"

In the interview, Judge Pickering describes his work in the 1960s, as a young county attorney, fighting to break the Ku Klux Klan. As a result, with himself and his family in danger, the FBI put him under protection. In the 1970s, when other white parents were removing their kids from public schools to resist integration, the Pickerings’ children attended the integrated schools. In 1981, Judge Pickering defended a young black man who was charged with robbing a young white girl at knifepoint. "It was not a popular case for me to take on," said Judge Pickering. "But I thought he was innocent and that he needed a defense. I didn’t think he would have gotten a good attorney [unless I had taken the case.] He was acquitted."

"Mississippi [has] made tremendous progress. And I feel like I’ve been a part of that progress…And I think it’s extremely unfortunate any time anyone, black or white, uses race to divide us and polarize us," Judge Pickering concluded.

To read the full transcript of the 60 Minutes story, click here.

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