Civil libertarians have been complaining that many liberals are ignoring that Judge Sonia Sotomayor has been viewed as hostile to core liberal values and has a fairly conservative voting record in many areas, including free speech, student rights, and criminal procedure. For a review of her cases, click here. Another case has come to light that shows little of the empathy cited by the White House. While Vice President Joe Biden has emphasized the Sotomayor “watches the back of police” in cases (which is supported in some of her more controversial rulings), she has shown little empathy for those challenging police or convictions. The case of Jeffrey Deskovic is being cited as one such case.
Sotomayor was one of the judges who dismissed Deskovic’s 2000 appeal to United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit with a cursory two-page decision. The panel based its decision on the fact that the filing was made four days late due to confusion between the lawyer and the clerk.
Deskovic was convicted at 16 of killing a high school classmate and filed a habeas corpus petition to challenge his conviction. He was later proven innocent by DNA evidence.
His lawyer insisted that he was misinformed about the due date by the clerk’s office and that his client should not suffer for the miscommunication. However, Sotomayor and another judge refused to consider the merits based on the technical filing problem.
He would spend six more years behind bars until finally proven innocent (and the real killer arrested).
The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 requires that habeas corpus petitions must be submitted no more than a year after a conviction becomes final or, as the courts later determined, no more than a year from the act’s implementation. This meant that he had until April 24, 1997 to file his habeas but his papers were filed four days late. Sotomayor and Judge Rosemary S. Pooler ruled that, even if the lawyer was told by the clerk that he had the later due date, it was still a violation and barred the appeal.
There is an interesting disconnect in the position of many liberal organizations, which have abandoned prior views to support this nominee without a hint of concern. As noted earlier, such rulings would normally cause liberals considerable concern and prompt intense review if this were a Republican nominee. Instead, there is virtually no discussion of such rulings by most liberals despite objections from civil libertarians that the left will lose ground on the Court if Sotomayor votes as she did on the Second Circuit.
For the full story, click here.
If her opinions are ignored completely by those on the left she will become our own Clarence Thomas. Perhaps our tokenism will be less ironic than that which seated Thomas, but I don’t want the Republican’s level of cynicism to be the yardstick we use to judge ourselves.
For too many years I’ve been hearing a defense of watering boarding, “well, they cut off heads, all we do is slash water on their faces/pretend to drown them”. Using the lowest possible standard as one’s fail-safe is never a good idea.
Mike S.,
I just can’t see how to describe Obama as a left wing politician, fighting with those in his own party who are more centrist and right wing. His policies are, in the main, quite right wing. He’s pro-corporatist economically. We are actually missing about 8 trillion dollars that have secretly gone through the Fed to his hand picked corporate allies. Look at all the money GS has accumulated by his hand. This is not the economic policy of a left wing politician.
As to civil liberties, again, he’s not at all left wing. This president is all for spying on our citizens, he’s cut off access to pictures of the crime of torture. His DOJ has invoked state secrets beyond the Bush administrations’ prior claims. Detainee rights are curtailed beyond Bush. These are not things that Democrats made him do. These are policy decisions he made and has actively supported.
I also don’t see his policy of three active wars as left wing. If you have time please hear out this interview on Bill Moyers with Jeremy Scahill. Our tax money is going out hand over fist to mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan. (link below).
These were all executive branch decisions. Congress shows little opposition to any of these proposals or anything else Obama puts before them. If we take the measure of Obama he just can’t be seen as left wing, fighting hard for humanitarian and civil rights against a hostile Congress. I know we won’t agree on this but, I just don’t see how to call Obama left wing.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/index-flash.html
What has President Obama done?
I realize H.S.’s Napolitano is aware of the fascist threat we face, but Obama nominee Sotomayor might not be what this nation needs most of all today: The embodiment of the living lyric of the Constitution.
Any backsliding through tortured reasoning, as shown at regular intervals by the Smelly Four, should not be embellished, even at lowest titer. Even at the threat level of a single wayward neuron. Haven’t we learned yet? The Constitution is not served diluted, but at full strength.
Interrupting, possibly permanently, the complete return of the Founder’s lyric is not a risk worth taking.
http://www.light-to-dark.com/gonzo_or_justice.html
http://open.salon.com/blog/brinna_nanda/2009/05/14/pomona_pd_raids_collective_gestapo-style_is_this_america
There are some very troubling “trends” in this country of ours, as we know…
I’m in agreement with “FF LEO” and I quote: He needs only to regroup and then rely on 3 time-honored guides to reverse his current meandering course and set the stage for his legacy as a good president:
1) The U.S. Constitution
2) The Bill of Rights et al
3) The Rule of Law (end quote)
Questions for anyone: There is a group known as the LEIU (Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit), I believe. As I understand it, the organization receives public funding, but does not respond to FOIA requests related to some kind of exemption. Is this true? Other thoughts?
GWLSM, Mike Spindell et al.
I voted for Mr. Obama because the policies of my Republican Party were thoroughly discredited, the U.S.A. needed new leadership, and I was willing to take a chance on a liberal Democrat to effect that change. However, Mr. Obama has not only disappointed people like me, he has forsaken a vast number of his most ardent supporters, especially the civil libertarians of the Democratic Party.
Obama is a man who currently does not have the moral compass to be the leader we need in these tough and extremely divisive times when all political persuasions are perilously opposed and growling threatening insults at one another. He needs only to regroup and then rely on 3 time-honored guides to reverse his current meandering course and set the stage for his legacy as a good president:
1) The U.S. Constitution
2) The Bill of Rights et al
3) The Rule of Law
Most certainly, he has some very poor and unethical Democrats with which to deal, although history will judge him by how well he applied the aforementioned canons and not that over which he had no control.
Jill:
I had to borrow some of your post:
“When Jonathan said she didn’t seem to have a deep relationship with the law”or for that matter “EMPATHY”
“I’ve been wondering alot about President Obama’s decisions on behalf of the people who elected him and expected a liberal, a democrat, and instead have someone who seem to be running to the right.”
GWLSM,
I worry about that too, but I never though that the President was nearly as left wing as I’d prefer. What we forget though is that even with a Democratic Congress, many elected Democrats are fairly centrist or Right Wing (hate these terms because they’re not truly descriptive, but needed to shorten the writing). Now elected President Obama has to govern and it isn’t easy with some of the so-called Democrats he has to deal with.
Jill wrote: “We are in crisis with the rule of law in this nation. We deserve someone who does have a deep understanding that the law is there to serve justice, not simpleminded, crushing bureaucracies.”
Well said. And I have to agree that she should not be confirmed.
Mike S, Mike A, everyone
I’ve been wondering alot about President Obama’s decisions on behalf of the people who elected him and expected a liberal, a democrat, and instead have someone who seem to be running to the right. What the GOP doesn’t get is that Sotomayor is their gal. She always was. There is little about her that is left-leaning and maybe they are doing us a favor by trying to stall her confirmation thinking that maybe she will simply tire of this and go away or that Obama will have to withdraw her nomination.
I’m no legal authority. I like to watch this stuff on TV. I’ve been watching hearings and confirmations since Watergate. My only gifts come from curiosity and the ability to turn a nice phrase once in a while.
No confidence in usurper Obama’s hypocrite / traitors.
Rachel Maddow – FYI – The document Obama presents as his ‘birth certificate’ is not acceptable as proof in Hawaii where he claims to have been born. “Hawaii Home Lands won’t take it, but Obama insists it certifies him to be Commander-in-Chief.” The evidence mounts that Obama is not even an American citizen.
Rush Limbaugh: “What do Obama and God have in common? Neither has a birth certificate.”
Obama – Where’s the Birth Certificate?
http://www.therightsideoflife.com/?p=6287
I just read Mike A., it wasn’t even an issue of finding something arcane to let a man prove his innocence, it was a routine matter. That shows a callus disreagard for another human being’s life. She should not be confirmed.
I really worry about this also. Another person’s life in prison for a four day mix-up? I remeber reading about this case and being appalled. I didn’t realize it was Sotomayor involved in it. What kind of person would let someone rot in prison on a technicality? This shows a bureaucratic approach to the law, not one based on a deep understanding of justice.
foo,
I appreciated your analysis of the affirmative action claim and your point above. In my experience, if a person is committed to justice they find, or at least they try to find, every pathway to justice. She didn’t even make the effort. Sometimes, there is some arcane, bizarre, rule that one can evoke on behalf of law as justice, (in this case, never imprison the innocent), as opposed to the lock step following of the letter of the law. I know that sucess may be slim but I’ve seen a lot of people try very hard to do this very thing.
When Jonathan said she didn’t seem to have a deep relationship with the law I think this is one example of what he meant. We are in crisis with the rule of law in this nation. We deserve someone who does have a deep understanding that the law is there to serve justice, not simpleminded, crushing bureaucracies.
Excuse the brain dead moment. There is no jurisdictional issue. The opinion was wrong because the court abused its discretion given the attorney’s explanation. The attorney was indeed negligent in relying on the clerk, but that is the type of excusable negligence that is routinely found sufficient to avoid dismissal.
foo 1, June 11, 2009 at 9:04 am
Hate to sound mean, but isn’t this a legally correct result? Certainly it’s unjust. If you let lawyers claim mis-communication whenever an appeal is filed late, what’s the point of having a rule or statute that includes a time limit for appeals?
Could Deskovic have made an appeal asserting his lawyer was incompetent?
*************************
Maybe it was the “Legally Correct” result. Would you want your ass in prison for a crime you did not commit? If a clerk tells me a date is so and so, generally you can rely upon that word. But for the DNA he would still be MIS-Imprisoned. How would you feel if it was you, your child, your relative. Would you still agree that its a technicality?
Life is full of technicalities, go to the bank for instance.
Generally a client is stuck with the counsel’s decision, especially a procedural one such as this.
This is a troubling issue. I am not familiar with the statute, but my first inquiry would be whether the statutory deadline was jurisdictional. If it was, then the court had no choice but to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction. If not, then the inquiry would be whether the attorney’s explanation was sufficient to excuse the failure to meet the deadline. It is much less complicated in a civil action because the client always has the available remedy of a malpractice claim against counsel.
This is the most disturbing thing that I’ve read about her. It causes me to re-think her nomination.
Hate to sound mean, but isn’t this a legally correct result? Certainly it’s unjust. If you let lawyers claim mis-communication whenever an appeal is filed late, what’s the point of having a rule or statute that includes a time limit for appeals?
Could Deskovic have made an appeal asserting his lawyer was incompetent?
Thank you, Professor Turley, for presenting the important contrary ‘evidence’ and opinions to help ensure a fair-minded and open vetting process for the selection of the next Supreme Court justice.
ANY JUDGE WHICH JUDGES A RULE OF LAW AS STRICTLY AS INTERPRETED IN A CASE SUCH AS THIS DOES NOT DESERVE TO BE CALLED JUDGE. I BET IF SOMEONE OVER CHARGED THESE SAME PEOPLE ON A FOOD BILL AND THEY DISCOVERED LATER THAT THEY WERE INFACT OVER CHARGED, THEY WOULD WANT THEIR MONEY BACK.
Technicality? Come on, do the right thing.
Sounds like she likes the power to me! An extra six years behind bars because she didn’t like someone filing their paperwork late — even after the court was made aware of the communication problem between the defendant and the clerk. I hope she sleeps well at night.
In the world of rendition, indefinite detainees, and torture, I am more than a little concerned about this law-and-order judge. The problem is, the law no longer wants to follow the rules, leaving the rest of us out there to be used and abused at the hands of a hypocritical judicial system that is losing credibility by the day.
Where’s another Ginsburg when you need her/him?