Judge Assails Conviction on Perjury Charges

U.S. District Judge Walter Nixon told the Senate on Tuesday the trial that led to his imprisonment on perjury charges was a “miscarriage of justice” and that he wants to return as an active federal judge.

Nixon, 60, has been in prison serving a five-year sentence since March, 1988, but will continue to collect his $89,500 annual judge’s salary until he resigns, dies or is convicted by the Senate on impeachment charges.

“I was wrongly convicted,” Nixon told a 12-member Senate panel that will summarize the evidence against him for the full Senate, which is trying the judge following his impeachment by the House last year.

The case revolves around Nixon’s knowledge of a marijuana smuggling case and whether he tried to influence its outcome. It involved the son of a wealthy businessman in Hattiesburg, Miss., who had sold Nixon lucrative oil properties.

Nixon denied to federal investigators and a grand jury that he ever discussed the case with anyone. That denial was the basis for his later conviction on perjury charges.

Nixon, who remains chief U.S. district judge for the southern district of Mississippi, was appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson and is the last remaining Democrat on the federal bench in that state.

He told the Senate committee Tuesday the conversations that were the central points of his impeachment were not “discussions” about the narcotics case and were so minor that he never thought to mention them to federal investigators or the grand jury.