Impeachment Process Starts on Judge Claiborne

House Judiciary Committee leaders Tuesday started impeachment proceedings against U.S. District Judge Harry Claiborne of Las Vegas, the first federal jurist ever to go to prison while technically retaining his position on the bench.

Panel members introduced a resolution aimed at bringing about the forced ouster of Claiborne, 68, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for Nevada, who was appointed to the bench in 1978 by former President Jimmy Carter.

Claiborne was convicted in 1984 on charges of failing to report $106,000 on his federal income tax returns for 1978 and 1979. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider Claiborne’s appeal of the verdict and he entered a federal prison camp in Alabama on May 16.

He has refused to resign from the bench and continues to collect his $78,700 salary. Under the U.S. Constitution, federal judges are appointed for life and can be removed against their will only through the laborious and seldom-used impeachment process, in which the House functions as a grand jury that considers an indictment and the Senate actually tries the case.

Only 12 public officials have been removed from office by impeachment in the nation’s history, the most recent instance being the removal of a federal judge half a century ago.

Rep. Robert W. Kastenmeier (D-Wis.), chairman of the judiciary panel’s courts subcommittee, which will first take up the impeachment resolution, said that the case for removing Claiborne from office is clear-cut and that most citizens cannot understand how he can remain in office after being convicted of a federal crime.

“We must inquire how a judge, who has served his time in prison, can return to the bench and exercise the judicial power of the United States, including the sentencing of convicted criminals to imprisonment,” Kastenmeier said.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Peter W. Rodino Jr. (D-N.J.), who co-sponsored the resolution with Kastenmeier and other lawmakers from both parties, said that the impeachment action is needed “to preserve the integrity of the federal judiciary.”

No timetable was set for action on the resolution, but such proceedings in the past have taken several months to complete.