Group writes letter to House ethics panel
By Maurice Possley
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 29, 2005
An advocacy group has asked the House ethics committee to open an investigation of Rep. James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, alleging that the Wisconsin Republican violated ethics rules by attempting to influence a decision in an appeals court case in Chicago.
In a letter dated Wednesday, Nan Aron, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Alliance for Justice, requested the investigation.
The Tribune reported July 10 that Sensenbrenner sent a letter in June to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago demanding that a prison sentence for a drug courier be increased.
House rules prohibit representatives from communicating privately with judges on legal matters, and general rules of litigation bar them from contacting judges on a case without notifying all parties. The letter was not sent to the lawyer for the drug courier.
Jay Apperson, chief counsel of a judiciary subcommittee, the staffer who brought the case to Sensenbrenner's attention, was dismissed last week. Apperson had defended the letter as a proper exercise of power, but he had conceded that it was "a mistake" not to have sent it to the attorney for the defendant.
"Mr. Sensenbrenner . . . abused his power as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and in all likelihood he violated written ethics guidelines in the process," Aron said Thursday. "[The] ethics committee needs to look into it and take appropriate action."
Committee rules provide that the panel must respond to a request for an investigation brought by a member of Congress, but there is no requirement that it act on a complaint brought by an outside group or individual. The committee is empowered to initiate an investigation on its own.
A spokesman for the committee--officially the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct--declined to comment on the letter, which was addressed to its chairman, Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), and ranking Democrat, Rep. Alan Mollohan (W.Va.).
Thomas Schreibel, Sensenbrenner's chief of staff, defended the letter Thursday and said there were no ethics rule violations.
The prohibitions against becoming involved in cases apply to cases involving "constituents, not committee oversight," Schreibel said.
The House Judiciary Committee is responsible for sentencing legislation and "part of the committee process is to make sure these [statutes] are adhered to," Schreibel said. "Mr. Sensenbrenner has questioned on numerous occasions sentencing and how it's adhered to. This is clearly an oversight letter."
The letter noted that a three-judge appellate panel had upheld a 97-month sentence for Lissett Rivera, even though she had been convicted under a statute that carried a mandatory minimum sentence of 120 months. Sensenbrenner demanded a "prompt response" from Chief Appeals Judge Joel Flaum as to what Flaum would do to "rectify" the panel's decision.
Schreibel said he disagreed that the letter was an attempt to intimidate the court to change its decision.
"In this case, Mr. Sensenbrenner was looking for the rationale on why the mandatory minimum was not applied," he said.
"Judge Flaum has the responsibility to ride herd over the other judges to make sure they aren't breaking the law," Schreibel said. "That's part of the responsibility of being the chief judge. The chief judge has the day-to-day oversight to make sure the judges under him are applying the law in a fair manner."
The Rivera decision, issued by a three-judge appeals panel, noted that the sentence of 97 months was illegal but could not be changed because federal prosecutors had not appealed it.
After Sensenbrenner's letter was sent to Flaum, the panel revised the final paragraph of the decision to include a citation to a Supreme Court case that showed Sensenbrenner was wrong.
Under the law, a chief judge has no authority to interfere with a decision of a three-judge panel.
On Thursday, Alex Reinert, a member of the American Judicature Society's Task Force on Judicial Independence and Accountability, said, "We believe that all appropriate steps should be taken to ensure that the independence of the judiciary is respected."