Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Sixteen years ago this month, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee heard some lofty praise of Ronnie L. White, a St. Louisan who was then serving as the first-ever African-American judge on the Missouri Supreme Court.
President Bill Clinton had nominated White to a seat on the U.S. District Court. There to endorse that nomination were a Republican, Sen. Kit Bond, and a Democrat, Rep. William Clay.
“My close friends and colleagues in the practice of law who have had the pleasure of working with Judge White over several years have assured me that he is a man of the highest integrity and honor,” Bond told the committee. “Judge White understands that the role of a federal district judge is to interpret the law, not make the law.”
Clay spoke of White as a “shining star.” He praised his “sterling and historic career,” describing him as a man of “towering” intellect and judicial temperament. Clay added that after recommending White to Clinton, he had sought the opinion of Missouri’s other U.S. senator, Republican John Ashcroft.
“[Ashcroft] told me that he had appointed six of the seven members to the Missouri Supreme Court,” he said. “Ronnie White was the only one he had not appointed. He said he had canvassed the other six, the ones that he appointed, and they all spoke very highly of Ronnie White and suggested that he would make an outstanding federal judge.”
Ashcroft was in the room that day as a member of the judiciary committee. He briefly took over as chairman in place of Sen. Orrin Hatch, who had left to cast a vote. Ashcroft noted that White had served with his six Supreme Court nominees, and he did not dispute Clay’s assertion that he himself had passed along those judges’ high regard for White. Ashcroft asked White about only one opinion he had issued as a judge, a dissent in a case involving a drug checkpoint.
What happened after that hearing is history—despicable history. Ashcroft would go on to torpedo White’s nomination, first blocking it from consideration, then successfully mustering the support of all of his fellow Republicans—including Bond—to kill White’s nomination in a historic 54–45 floor vote nearly 18 months later, on October 5, 1999.
Strangely, Ashcroft had come to stumble upon a scandalous “fact” that had somehow eluded his own Supreme Court nominees: that White was actually a liberal who had “a serious bias against a willingness to impose the death penalty.” Ashcroft maligned White as “pro-criminal and activist, with a slant toward criminals and defendants and against prosecutors.” The strategy worked, at least with members of Ashcroft’s own party (who controlled the Senate at the time), despite the fact that White had voted to uphold the death penalty in 41 of the 59 cases that had come before him at the time.
The late Sen. Edward Kennedy described White’s rejection as “the ugliest thing that has happened to any nominee in all my years in the U.S. Senate.”
Flash forward to 2014, and the stage is set for a dramatic sequel: President Barack Obama renominated White for a federal judgeship in January. Given the average wait time for such nominees during Obama’s tenure—about seven months—White’s nomination may become a national news item in the not-too-distant future.
This time, however, the political landscape is a bit different. The Democrats control the Senate and have exercised the “nuclear option” regarding filibusters, meaning only 51 votes are needed to confirm White. The state has two different senators, one of whom is Democrat Claire McCaskill, a firm supporter of White and a close ally of the president. The other, Republican Sen. Roy Blunt, has indicated he would vote against White, but he does not appear disposed to use his position as a home-state senator to block the nomination from consideration.
In a recent piece on St. Louis Public Radio’s website, McCaskill described the previous rejection of White’s nomination as “terribly unfair.” Blunt tellingly said he
would oppose White “because of law enforcement’s strong feelings about this and the family members that are friends of mine that have even stronger feelings about the case that came up before. But I would expect him to be confirmed.”
McCaskill also appeared optimistic about White’s prospects this time, saying she didn’t “think there’s any issue other than just timing of trying to get him through the process.” But she did acknowledge that White would have some opposition. That would seem to be confirmed by a recent blog post on the conservative National Review Online, which restated some of the bogus charges and predicted White’s nomination would be difficult to support for vulnerable Democratic senators.
So White’s nomination is not a done deal by any stretch. And that’s really a shame, because he’s a man of moderate temperament whose heroic resume and personal story should be celebrated across party lines. He’s done nothing in his career to deserve the attacks that he endured in 1999—some of which may well be reprised this year—nothing, that is, except to cross paths with Ashcroft.
Ashcroft and White had bad blood dating back to the early 1990s, when Ashcroft was governor and White was serving three terms as a state representative. Beyond their obvious political differences, White had used a committee chairmanship to block some anti-abortion legislation that was dear to Ashcroft’s heart.
Indeed, the conventional wisdom in 1999 was that Ashcroft’s opposition to White was mostly political payback. But none of that involved the death-penalty issue that surfaced in 1999 to document White’s “pro-criminal” bent.
Moniteau County Sheriff Kenny Jones reportedly had approached Ashcroft. His wife, Pam, was among four people—the other three law-enforcement officers—who had been murdered in a spree by deranged Vietnam vet James R. Johnson. White had issued a lone dissent in that case, arguing for a retrial on the grounds that Johnson’s lawyers had been incompetent (White described them as “remarkably cavalier”) in investigating Johnson’s mental status. In his dissent, White said he shared “the majority’s horror at this carnage,” and he stated that “if Mr. Johnson was in control of his faculties when he went on this murderous rampage, then he assuredly deserves the death sentence he was given.”
But White’s willingness to consider the defendant’s constitutional rights in this one case morphed into Ashcroft’s attack on him as “pro-criminal.” And what a pleasant political coincidence that must have seemed for Ashcroft. At the time, he was locked in a heated re-election battle with Gov. Mel Carnahan, and Carnahan had taken a terrible political hit for granting clemency to a death-row inmate after a personal appeal from Pope John Paul II.
Jones had organized some fellow sheriffs in opposition to White, giving the appearance that law-enforcement officials despised the judge. But White had the full support of St. Louis law-enforcement officials, and Ashcroft’s staff clumsily failed to garner other police organizations to oppose White.
Still, Ashcroft saw a two-for-one opportunity in blowing up White’s nomination: He could settle an old political score and use it to hammer Carnahan on the death penalty. But the strategy backfired, as the abusive treatment of White galvanized the African-American community. Ashcroft lost the election by 49,000 votes in a state where the president on his ticket, George W. Bush, carried it by 79,000.
“‘It’s perplexing,’” Saint Louis University political-science professor Ken Warren told Salon in 2001. “Republicans and Democrats alike cannot understand Ashcroft’s opposition to Ronnie White.” Politically, for Ashcroft, “it was like injecting cyanide into his veins.”
Indeed, the White case was the centerpiece of Democratic opposition to Ashcroft’s nomination for attorney general by Bush in 2001. And while Ashcroft prevailed, he undoubtedly paid a deserved political price for his actions.
But that does not mean White will not face a reprise of some of the attacks. Blunt is still alluding to “law enforcement’s strong feelings about this.” And while he did not specify which of his friends still oppose White, there’s this footnote to the story: At the time Pam Jones was tragically slain by Johnson, among her four children was her 11-year-old son, Caleb.
Today, Caleb Jones is a state rep (R–California), in a seat his father held after leaving as sheriff. His first cousin is Speaker of the House Tim Jones (R–Eureka). If there remains animus toward White for his dissent in the Johnson case, it might manifest itself to an unusual degree politically.
On a personal level, that might be understandable, but that doesn’t make it right. White’s judicial career has been exemplary. Even if one makes the preposterous assumption that it should only be viewed through the prism of his willingness to impose the death penalty, White has a clear record of voting to impose that penalty in something like 70 percent of the cases that have come before him.
White didn’t argue for leniency toward Johnson. He didn’t suggest the death penalty was wrong or unconstitutional. He didn’t have a kind word for Johnson or a bad word for the prosecution. He believed Johnson’s defense team messed up the case so badly that Johnson was entitled to a retrial regarding his mental competency. To issue that dissent in such an awful case of carnage took courage on White’s part—it was a hardly a “pro-criminal” act.
Johnson—a white man, by the way—was executed in 2002, during the tenure of Gov. Bob Holden, a Democrat. He is long since dead and gone.
It would be nice to say the same thing about the slanders aimed at Ronnie White.
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
Commentary by Ray Hartmann
