Item: James H. Peck
On charges of abuse of the contempt power, U.S. District court judge James Peck was impeached on April 24th, 1830. This dude was impeached by the House of Representatives for improperly charging someone with contempt of court. Later, this dude was acquitted by the Senate. Why does this impeachment matter? It matters because it involves the matter of contempt. What does it mean and from whence comes this authority?
Peck had used his power of contempt to have an attorney – oh so ironically named Luke Lawless – arrested. Luke Lawless was an attorney involved in a land claim of which his client lost. Peck had presided over the case and published his own ruling in a St. Louis newspaper. Lawless responded by anonymously publishing his rebuttal in another newspaper. Once his name was linked to that rebuttal, Judge Peck had him arrested for contempt of court, as well has prohibiting Lawless from practicing law in a federal court for eighteen months.
Pecks defense at his impeachment trial was not much different from the language of his arrest order that claimed, among other things, that Lawless had the intent to “impress the public mind, and particularly many litigants in this court, that they are not to expect justice in the cases now pending therein.” Ultimately he was found guilty by twenty-one Senators and not guilty by twenty-two. Lacking the two-thirds majority it needed, Peck was acquitted. However, a bipartisan bill was passed afterward clearly defining the federal courts power of contempt.
Contempt is a common law practice that may run afoul the powers of separation in the United States Constitutional system. In United States v Barnett, Justice Hugo Black criticized the practice; “It is high time, in my judgment, to wipe out root and branch the judge-invented notion that judges can try criminal contempt cases without a jury.”
Item: Harry E. Clairborne
Harry Clairborne was a federal judge for the United States District Court for the District of Nevada between 1978 and 1986. Judge Clairborne was impeached after he was convicted of tax related charges but refused to resign his office. He had intended to return to the bench after serving his time but was instead impeached and removed from office. That’s the climax of a story that makes it somewhat anti-climatic.
The whole sordid story begins in 1977, a year before President Jimmy Carter would appoint Harry Clairborne to a federal judgeship, and involves the owner of the infamous Mustang Ranch in Nevada. Before being appointed to the judgeship, Clairborne was an attorney who had Joe Conforte (owner of the Mustang Ranch) as a client and defended him in court on ten counts of income tax violations. After losing his appeal, Conforte was going to flee the country but at the last minute he contacted a federal prosecutor and offered to become a federal witness naming officials he had bribed.
Clairborne was one of the best known on Conforte’s list.
The word impeach has quite a bit of etymology attached to it. On the one hand it has roots in the 14th century empechen (to impede, hinder or prevent), or from the Anglo-Saxon empecher, or the Old French empeechier (to hinder, stop, impede; capture, trap
Tawdriest:
Bill Clinton