Senate Votes Impeachment of Claiborne

The Senate, exercising its impeachment powers for only the fifth time in history, found U.S. District Judge Harry E. Claiborne guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors” Thursday and removed him from his $78,700-a-year lifetime post.

By a margin that far exceeded the two-thirds majority necessary for conviction, senators adopted three of the four articles of impeachment to oust the Las Vegas judge, who is serving a prison term for federal income tax evasion.

The only article rejected was one based solely on Claiborne’s federal court tax conviction two years ago. A bloc of 35 senators voted “present” rather than in favor of it, apparently to avoid setting a precedent that a felony conviction alone is sufficient grounds for impeachment.

The House had voted unanimously last July to refer the four articles to the Senate.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the Senate’s adoption of a single article is enough to remove an official from high office. Thus, after the Senate voted 87 to 10, with one abstention, to convict Claiborne on Article I for misconduct in evading his 1979 taxes, the votes on the remaining articles were largely academic.

As Claiborne sat in the Senate chamber, each senator was required to rise as his name was called and declare “guilty” or “not guilty.”

Claiborne, 69, who had contended that he was the victim of a government vendetta, pursed his lips as the “guilty” votes rolled in but otherwise showed no emotion. Afterward, his attorney, Oscar Goodman of Las Vegas, furnished reporters with a statement Claiborne had scribbled in red ink after his conviction.

‘Part of Me Died’

“A part of me died here today,” the statement said, “not because of defeat but because everything I believe in was assaulted beyond repair.”

Claiborne, appointed to the bench by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, now will return to the federal correctional institution at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., where he began serving a two-year sentence last May.

Claiborne had fought unsuccessfully for a full-blown Senate trial with as many as 58 witnesses. But the Senate adopted a procedure in which a special 12-member committee heard 18 witnesses over a seven-day period last month and summarized the evidence in a booklet presented to other senators.

Members of the House who acted as prosecutors presented the evidence to the full Senate Tuesday, and Goodman was given equal time. The Senate also heard an emotional plea from Claiborne but called no other witnesses.

First Trial in 50 Years

Claiborne tried to get a federal district judge, a panel of appellate judges and even the Supreme Court to overrule the streamlined procedure but the courts refused to intervene.

Claiborne’s impeachment trial was the first such proceeding in 50 years. Only four federal officials--all of them judges--had been convicted by the Senate previously. Claiborne was the only sitting judge to be serving a prison term at the time of his Senate trial.

Impeachment proceedings against him were necessary only because he had refused to resign from his lifetime judgeship and was getting paid while in prison.

After 87 senators from both parties voted for conviction on Article I, 90 senators voted for Article II, relating to underreporting of his 1980 income. In all, Claiborne was convicted of evading more than $96,000 in income taxes over the two-year period, mainly by failing to report substantial receipts of deferred legal fees earned in previous years as a private attorney.

Claiborne Blames Errors

He argued that his tax deficiencies resulted from errors made by tax accountants he had hired.

The last article of impeachment adopted by the Senate with 89 favorable votes found that Claiborne, by his conduct, had “betrayed the trust of the people” and “brought disrepute on the federal courts and the administration of justice.”

Sens. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) and Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) consistently voted “guilty” on the articles, with the exception that Cranston voted “present” on the article that was based solely on the judge’s federal court conviction.