Senate to Fight Reversal of Hastings’ Impeachment

The Senate will fight a federal court’s reversal of former Judge Alcee L. Hastings’ impeachment, the chamber’s lawyer said Friday, as senators insisted that they gave him a fair trial.

“I think that was an outrageous decision,” Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) said of U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin’s opinion Thursday that overturned Hastings’ 1989 impeachment. “It was an unconstitutional intrusion by that judge into procedures of the Senate.”

Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) disagreed with many of his colleagues, saying: “I’m very comfortable with that decision. I think the question is whether it’s fair to the individual up for impeachment. I would agree with the conclusion reached by Sporkin.”

Metzenbaum voted against impeachment, saying it would have been double jeopardy to convict Hastings on the same charges that led to his acquittal.

Sporkin ruled that Hastings did not receive a fair Senate trial under a procedure that appointed a 12-member committee to hear evidence, before the full Senate voted for conviction. This was the third time the Senate used the system as a substitute for a trial before the full chamber.

Michael Davidson, the Senate’s legal counsel, said: “We will file an appeal--promptly” with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington.

“I’m absolutely confident” that a case similar to Sporkin’s ruling “will be overturned by the Supreme Court,” Gorton said.

Hastings, Florida’s first black U.S. district judge, was convicted on Oct. 20, 1989, of eight impeachment articles charging him with perjury and conspiracy to obtain a $150,000 payoff. He had been acquitted of those charges by a federal court jury in a criminal trial six years earlier.

In Miami on Friday, Hastings said he doubted the Senate would go through another trial, but that he would not return to the bench even if he were reinstated.

“I’ll be in the U.S. Congress,” he said. “I have no desire to be a U.S. judge under any aegis, even if I’m completely vindicated.”

Hastings ran second in a five-candidate Democratic primary on Sept. 8. He faces Washington state Rep. Lois Frankel in a runoff Oct. 1 for a newly formed congressional seat.

Sporkin cited Hastings’ acquittal as a factor in ruling that he deserved to present evidence before the full Senate. But senators said the chamber had too much business to shut down for up to two months to conduct a trial.

“It’s not feasible to convert the U.S. Senate into a full-scale jury for the weeks involved,” said Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who voted against convicting his constituent because “I didn’t feel the evidence was sufficiently persuasive.”