Hiring Process Was Bypassed for Prosecutor (Apperson)

[maddezmom]

Source: Washington Post

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 8, 2007; Page A04

When he was counsel to a House subcommittee in 2005, Jay Apperson resigned after writing a letter to a federal judge in his boss's name, demanding a tougher sentence for a drug courier. As an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia in the 1990s, he infuriated fellow prosecutors when he facetiously suggested a White History Month to complement Black History Month.

Yet when Apperson was looking for a job recently, four senior Justice Department officials urged Jeffrey A. Taylor, the top federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia, to hire him. Taylor did, and allowed him to skip the rigorous vetting process that the vast majority of career federal prosecutors face.

As Congress and the administration spar over whether Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales allowed politics to unduly influence the work of the Justice Department, Apperson's hiring has been cited by government lawyers and others as an example of how a system that relies on apolitical prosecutors should not function.

It is not clear whether Apperson's hiring is part of the internal Justice Department investigation of Monica M. Goodling, until recently the agency's senior counselor and White House liaison, for allegedly considering applicants' political affiliation in hiring decisions. That probe began when Goodling allegedly tried to hold up the hiring of another prosecutor whom Taylor was recruiting, according to two law enforcement sources familiar with the inquiry.

~snip~

Taylor, who formerly worked as Gonzales's counsel, said the decision to hire Apperson was his. But he said that Michael Elston, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, and Acting Associate Attorney General William W. Mercer urged him to consider Apperson. Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General William E. Moschella and Michael A. Battle, who at the time headed the office that oversees U.S. attorneys, also suggested that Apperson would be a good hire.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/07/AR2007050701825.html

---

read on....involved with Kenneth Starr, worked for Chambliss, wrote the Feeney ammendment, Sensenbrenner :puke:

Apperson's disappearing act
By Jordan Smith
It appears at least one hard-line drug warrior – Jay Apperson, a former U.S. attorney turned counsel for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee's Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security subcommittee – has been canned as a result of U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner's memogate dustup last month. On July 10, the Chicago Tribune reported that Sensenbrenner's office sent a letter to the Department of Justice and to 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Joel Flaum, demanding that the court resentence a convicted drug defendant to a harsher term in prison. According to Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., the court incorrectly sentenced a defendant to 97 months in the federal pen as opposed to the 120 months that Sensenbrenner says would've been the appropriate mandatory term for the convicted drug courier. "I ask that all necessary and appropriate measures be taken … to ensure that the precedent … is followed," Sensenbrenner wrote on June 23.

Unfortunately, Sensenbrenner's communication with the judge and the prosecutors, and lack thereof with defense lawyers, violated not only court rules, but also House ethics rules that prohibit private communications with judges on pending legal matters (not to mention possibly breaching the federal separation of powers). Sensenbrenner was also deadass wrong about the law. After receiving the nasty letter, the court amended its opinion in the matter to include the relevant legal precedent that guides sentencing decisions. (As it turns out, federal prosecutors didn't seem to mind the 97-month sentence, since they never appealed the case after the original sentencing.) "That Sensenbrenner sent that letter was truly jaw-dropping," Harvard Law professor Carol Steiker told the Drug Reform Coordination Network. "It was completely out of line. It violated House rules and it violated legal rules."

At the time the memo was made public, Apperson, who initially alerted Sensenbrenner to the "lenient" sentence and who actually wrote the letter to which Sensenbrenner signed his name, told the Tribune that the letter was perfectly fine: "We can't have judges violating the law," he said. Sensenbrenner spokesman Jeff Lundgren backed up his colleague, explaining that the failure to send the letter to defense counsel was merely an "oversight," reports the DRCNet. Nonetheless, the DRCNet reports that Apperson has now left the building – a circumstance that no one in Sensenbrenner's office apparently feels compelled to comment upon. (As of July 29, the office had yet to respond to DRCNet's numerous requests for comment – including whether Sensenbrenner still thinks the letter was a great idea.) Apperson's departure is good news for drug reformers; among his notable moments in drug war history was his attack on a federal judge who dared to question the lack of judicial discretion in federal sentencing. Through the House Judiciary Committee, of which Sensenbrenner is chair, Apperson subpoenaed the Reagan-appointed judge, threatening legal action if he failed to answer for his apparent thought crime. But though Apperson may be out of the picture, Sensenbrenner is still around – tossing his weight in favor of über-draconian drug war legislation such as the spring's HR 1528, the niftily titled Defending America's Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act. HR 1528 would create a whole host of stricter mandatory minimums for drug crimes – including a man-min sentence of 10 years for any adult, 21 and up, who sells more than 5 grams of marijuana to anyone under 18, and a three-year man-min sentence for parents who are aware of drug trafficking activities near their children but do not report the alleged activity to police within 24 hours. (Fortunately, the hideous measure has been stalled in the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health since late
http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/print?oid=284239

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2005/07/10/885/59384

How a few prosecutors passed a sweeping law that reduced the power of judges across the country.


By Michael S. Gerber

TOM FEENEY IS A FRESHMAN CONGRESSMAN from Florida. During his first six months in the House, the Republican was the lead sponsor on one bill, a resolution honoring the varsity cheerleaders at the University of Central Florida on the occasion of their national championship. Then, last spring, he championed a sweeping change in national sentencing policy.

The Feeney Amendment was kept under wraps until just before it was scheduled to go to the House floor. There were no hearings held on the legislation. No Congressional committee debated it. The amendment was attached to the PROTECT Act, a popular piece of legislation aimed at preventing kidnapping and child pornography. Opponents of the amendment—the NAACP, the American Bar Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers—were left scrambling. "They slapped it on there," said Kyle O'Dowd, the legislative director for NACDL. "No provision of this breadth had been introduced or talked about." In March 2003, the amendment passed 357 to 58.

The Feeney Amendment took aim at judges' authority to give breaks to defendants at sentencing. Most crimes are tried and punished in state court, and federal sentencing usually holds the attention of just a small number of dedicated advocates and scholars. This law, by contrast, has infuriated not only liberal interest groups but also most of the nation's judiciary, including the conservative Supreme Court justices William Rehnquist and Anthony Kennedy. Over the summer, Judge John S. Martin Jr. of the U.S. District Court in New York, who was appointed during the first Bush Administration, resigned over the bill, denouncing it as "an effort to intimidate judges to follow sentencing guidelines." Its authors put things a bit differently. "'Intimidate' is a loaded word," Feeney said. "We're asking judges to explain their rationale."
http://www.legalaffairs.org/printerfriendly.msp?id=547

[CurtEastPoint]

1. Looks like this scum and my Sen. Chambliss are tight friends...no surprise there!

I googled this Apperson name and found out that he is a 'frequent flier' buddy of Chambliss. Interesting how pond scum collects together.

http://www.opensecrets.org/travel/search_results.asp?trav=Jay+Apperson

[maddezmom]

2. just googling his name turns up some real RW stuff

:eyes:

[LiberalFighter]

6. Apperson was Chambliss's Chief Counsel

[maddezmom]

9. Not to mention one of Ken Starr's underlings during

Whitewater, Filegate, etc

[formercia]

3. Feeney may regret the sentencing guidelines

he may have to face the Court himself.

[maddezmom]

4. TPM Cafe: Don Q's Blog Justice Update

Don Q's Blog
Justice Update
By Don Q | bio
A couple of stories from the de facto Bush Administration's Department of (for Republicans Only) Justice.

Some schmuck called Jay Apperson got a job with the DC federal prosecutor's office. And Apperson didn't have to go thru the usual "rigorous vetting process that the vast majority of career federal prosecutors face." Why not? Because his buddies at Justice told the DC federal prosecutor that Apperson was OK.

This despite some examples of dubious judgement: "When he was counsel to a House subcommittee in 2005, Jay Apperson resigned after writing a letter to a federal judge in his boss's name, demanding a tougher sentence for a drug courier. As an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia in the 1990s, he infuriated fellow prosecutors when he facetiously suggested a White History Month to complement Black History Month."

Another sign of the politicization of Justice? Maybe.

Meanwhile, the world's best known Regent University Law School graduate, Monica Goodling, now will get a limited immunity deal to discuss the Great US Attorney Massacre before the House Judiciary Committee. Committee Chairman John Conyers said he thinks this will help get the truth about the massacre and the "possible politicization in the department's prosecutorial function."

more: http://americaabroad.tpmcafe.com/blog/don_q/2007/may/08/justice_update

[LiberalFighter]

5. Apperson background

THE PRIMARY AUTHOR OF THE FEENEY AMENDMENT is Jay Apperson, who worked with Otis in the Virginia U.S. attorney's office for a decade before becoming one of Kenneth Starr's deputies in the independent counsel's office that investigated the Clintons. In the past, Apperson has denounced judges who he sees as liberal activists. In a letter to The Washington Post following the late Justice Thurgood Marshall's retirement, he wrote that Marshall's "political and ideological agenda to change society had no place on the court."

As an aide to F. James Sensenbrenner, the 13-term Republican congressman from Wisconsin who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, Apperson drafted a bill to reduce judicial discretion and lengthen sentences. He worked closely with Justice Department lawyers. The bill he came up with limited judges' authority to reduce a sentence based on a defendant's extenuating circumstances. The draft also scrapped the deferential standard for appellate review of downward departures from the Koon case, replacing it with review from scratch. Most controversially, it called for the Justice Department to report all sentencing breaks initiated by judges to the House and Senate judiciary committees.

Sensenbrenner and his staff had already gone after one judge for his sentencing record. James Rosenbaum, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Minnesota, testified before a subcommittee in May 2002 that the sentencing guidelines for drug offenses were too strict. The subcommittee responded by accusing Rosenbaum of misleading the panel—and by taking the unprecedented step of threatening to subpoena the judge's sentencing records, calling that action appropriate Congressional oversight. Rosenbaum and his defenders cried intimidation.

After the Feeney Amendment sailed through the House last spring, its opponents struggled to mount a fight in the Senate. They got the attention of Edward Kennedy, who wrote to Republican senator Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Kennedy asked Hatch not to unravel the guidelines they had worked together to pass. But Hatch wasn't interested in joining forces.

[PinkyisBlue]

7. In this administration, only racist, sexist, privileged, Republican white men need apply.

A certain number of women and non-whites will be allowed in, so that they can be trotted out at the conventions to show how diverse the Repub party and current administration is.

If you have "Democratic leanings", don't let the door hit your butt on the way out.

[speedingbullet]

8. Good Riddance

I'm sure some other nut-case will give him a job. Or a talk show.

[jaysunb]

10. The Klan among us....

they've traded the sheets and burning crosses for pin striped suits & law degrees :evilfrown:

[maddezmom]

11. more on Taylor...appointed interim USA due to Patriot Act Provision

Jeffrey A. Taylor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Jeffrey A. Taylor is the interim United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.


Career
Prior to his work in Washington, DC, Jeffrey Taylor served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of California from 1995–1999.<1> From 1999 to 2002, Mr. Taylor served as majority counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee where he advised Chairman Orrin Hatch and drafted provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act.<2>

Before his appointment as U.S. Attorney, Mr. Taylor served as Counselor to Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales from 2002 to 2006 where he oversaw law enforcement operations by U.S. attorneys.<1> He was appointed interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia by Alberto Gonzales on September 22, 2006 and was sworn in seven days later.<1> He took office so quickly because he bypassed Senate confirmation under a provision of the USA Patriot Act.<2>


U.S. Attorneys controversy
Mr. Taylor's position came under heightened interest in March 2007 during the dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy. On March 20, 2007, President Bush declared in a press conference that White House staff would not testify under oath on the matter if subpoenaed by Congress.<3> One who ignores a Congressional subpoena can be held in contempt of Congress, but the D.C. U.S. Attorney must convene a grand jury to start the prosecution of this crime.

Under 2 U.S.C. § 194, once either the House or the Senate issues a citation for contempt of Congress, it is referred to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, "whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action."<4> It is unclear (as of March 20, 2007) whether Mr. Taylor would fulfill this duty to convene a grand jury, or resist Congress at the direction of Bush or Gonzales.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_A._Taylor

[maddezmom]

12. oops dupe