SENATOR CLINTON CONDEMNED BY CENTER FOR JUDICIAL ACCOUNTABILITY, INC. (MORE, CLICK HERE)

CENTER FOR JUDICIAL ACCOUNTABILITY, INC. (CJA) - A national, nonpartisan, nonprofit citizens’ organization, working, pro bono, to protect the public interest in the integrity of our judicial selection and judicial discipline processes. Its mission is to ensure that only the most qualified trial lawyers become, and remain judges.....MORE.....

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ON AND AFTER DECEMBER 23, 2007
MEDIA CONTACT: Zach Lorber Tel: 914-997-8105 ▪ Fax: 914-684-6554

SENATOR CLINTON CONDEMNED BY CENTER FOR JUDICIAL ACCOUNTABILITY, INC.

For Constitutional Violations In Not Protecting Her Constituent’s First Amendment Rights

When Her Own Staff Counsel Acted To Prevent Opposition Testimony At Judicial Confirmation Public Hearing

On May 22, 2003, White Plains, NY resident, Elena Ruth Sassower, Co-Founder and Coordinator of the Center for Judicial Accountability, Inc, rose, as the closing gavel came down at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Public Confirmation Hearing Richard Wesley nomination to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and respectfully asked: “Mr. Chairman, there’s citizen opposition to Judge Wesley based on his documented corruption as a New York Court of Appeals judge. May I testify?” Without answering the question, then Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) had Ms. Sassower forcibly removed from the hearing room by D.C. Capitol Police. She was handcuffed behind her back, arrested, incarcerated for 21 hours, and thereafter prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for “Disruption of Congress.”

Prior to the hearing, Ms. Sassower visited Senator Clinton’s Washington, D.C. office and requested her to withdraw her announced support for the Wesley nomination. Ms. Sassower supplied documentation substantiating his corruption of the NY Court of Appeals. Instead of probing the very serious documented charges of her constituent, a longtime judicial reform activist, Senator Clinton’s Staff Counsel called the Secret Service. In turn, D.C. Capitol Police telephoned Ms. Sassower threatening that if she came to the Public Hearing and requested to testify in opposition to the Wesley nomination, she would be arrested.

On June 28, 2004, despite recommendations of the Probation Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office that there be NO jail-time, D.C. Superior Court Judge Brian F. Holeman sentenced her to the maximum six months in jail, with a maximum fine, without bail, and denied her repeated requests for a stay pending appeal, after she declined his long list of probation conditions. These included a direction that she “stay away from and inside the United States Capitol Complex,” have no contact with Senator Clinton and her staff, and “write and send letters of apology to Senator Clinton,” among others, “…which state…your remorse for any inconvenience caused.” When Ms. Sassower said she would not write such letters because she would “not lie,” Judge Holeman ordered her taken straight to the D.C. Jail, with no opportunity to go home and settle her affairs. There she spent the July 4th weekend in solitary confinement. She was not released from prison until December 23, 2004.

By contrast, at a May 7, 2003 U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, during testimony of then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a group of eight protestors, loudly and repeatedly shouted “Fire Rumsfeld for war crimes!” and unfurled a banner that read “Fire Rumsfeld” before the protestors were escorted from the building. None of the eight were arrested or charged with “Disruption of Congress.” Ms. Sassower’s arrest on May 22, 2003, a mere 15 days later, was an unprecedented violation of her First Amendment and other constitutionally guaranteed rights.

In all that time, before, during, and since Ms. Sassower’s arrest, imprisonment, and release after her six-month incarceration, Senator Clinton did not lift one finger to help her constituent, whose arrest and imprisonment her own office had instigated – closing her eyes and ears to the appeals of other constituents and outraged members of the public from all over the country and abroad that she initiate remedial action. Ironically, following Ms. Sassower’s release from jail, she was voted 2004 “White Plains Person of the Year/Defender of the Constitution” in her hometown. Still no word on the subject from now Candidate Clinton. Yet, husband Bill says she is a “world-class genius”… with an unbroken record of making decisions that have had a positive change in other people's lives.”

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