House Panel Votes to Impeach Federal Judge Claiborne

A House panel voted 15 to 0 Tuesday to recommend the impeachment of Las Vegas Federal Judge Harry Claiborne, who has refused to quit his $78,700 post despite being jailed last month after a federal jury found him guilty of cheating on his income taxes.

The action represents the first time lawmakers have been forced to use the impeachment process to pry a convicted jurist from the bench, according to Rep. Robert W. Kastenmeier (D-Wis.), whose House Judiciary subcommittee on courts approved four articles of impeachment.

He said the full committee may take up the impeachment question as early as Thursday and the House could act by mid-July.

Lifetime Appointments

Federal judges receive lifetime appointments and can only be involuntarily removed through impeachment, a laborious endeavor in which the House acts as a grand jury handing down an indictment and the Senate functions as a jury, weighing the evidence against the accused.

Claiborne, 68, was convicted two years ago of willfully understating his income on his 1979 and 1980 federal tax returns, thereby underpaying the government by more than $100,000. He entered a federal prison camp in Montgomery, Ala., after his appeals were exhausted but stubbornly clung to his office and continues to collect pay.

During debate, Rep. Romano L. Mazzoli (D-Ky.) decried as an “absolutely outrageous, contemptuous act” the judge’s refusal to resign while he “continues to draw (his salary) while sitting in the slammer in Alabama.”

The House has only voted impeachment articles against federal officials 13 times in the nation’s history. Ten of those involved judges, and the last was half a century ago. In 1974, the Judiciary Committee voted to impeach President Richard M. Nixon for his role in covering up the Watergate scandal, but Nixon resigned before the full House took up the matter.

Claiborne accepted an invitation by the subcommittee to attend a closed-door hearing on the matter last week, but he did not testify. Kastenmeier said Oscar Goodman, the judge’s attorney, did attempt to “rationalize” Claiborne’s behavior to the panel and explained that he had filed a motion in federal court arguing that Claiborne’s conviction should be vacated because evidence used by tax agents against him was illegally seized.

However, Kastenmeier insisted that the evidence against Claiborne was irrefutable. “He violated the oath of office that he took when he became a federal judge,” Kastenmeier said. “He additionally violated his professional responsibilities by conducting himself in a manner that reduces confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the federal courts, diminishes the independence of the federal judicial branch, and brings into disrepute the judiciary as a whole.”