House Prosecutors Urge Senate to Convict Judge in Bribery Case

The House urged the Senate on Wednesday to remove U.S. District Judge Alcee L. Hastings from office, arguing that Hastings betrayed his office by conspiring to take a bribe from a defendant in his court.

But Hastings, in an impassioned appeal to keep his lifetime position, continued to maintain his innocence. “I am not guilty of having committed any crime and that is my defense,” Hastings told a crowded Senate chamber to applause from the visitor’s gallery filled with his supporters.

Hastings is facing removal from office on 17 articles of impeachment passed by the House 413 to 3 in August, 1988. The articles accuse the 53-year-old judge of engaging in the bribery conspiracy and then lying about it and manufacturing evidence at his trial.

Hastings was acquitted of the charges in a 1983 criminal trial, but his alleged bagman, disbarred Washington lawyer William A. Borders Jr., was convicted of the same crimes at a separate trial. A panel of federal judges, following their own three-year investigation, concluded that Hastings was guilty of the crimes and recommended impeachment.

If convicted by the Senate and removed from office, Hastings would be only the sixth federal judge to lose his lifetime job and the only one removed from office on the same charges he was acquitted of at a jury trial.

Addressing the issue of whether impeachment proceedings following acquittal would constitute a form of double jeopardy, Rep. John Bryant (D-Tex.), the lead House prosecutor, said:

“What if a federal judge participates in a conspiracy to obtain a bribe, but by the use of false testimony and fabricated evidence is able to obtain an acquittal? What if all the facts indicate the judge’s guilt? Are we in that unusual circumstance to look away . . . and allow the judge to continue to serve? Certainly the answer for us and for you must be no.”

Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said he was “saddened to come before you today to urge the removal of one of the handful of black judges who presently occupy the federal bench.” But, he said, “We did not wage the civil rights struggle in order to substitute one form of judicial corruption for another.”

Hastings “has betrayed his office and is no longer fit to wield the power and authority that has been bestowed upon him,” Conyers said. “There have been a lot of cases in our judicial system in which race has been involved. This is not one of those or I would be the first to tell you so.”