Federal Judge in Arkansas Blasts 8th Circuit

In a virtually unprecedented slap at a higher court, a federal district judge in Little Rock, Ark., has accused the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals of basing a decision in a pending Whitewater criminal case on “hearsay, hearsay on hearsay and triple hearsay contained in media reports.”

Judge Bill Wilson said that the appellate court had acted unfairly in removing another district judge, Henry Woods, from a still-pending case against former Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, who resigned from office after being convicted with two co-defendants in a loan case. The court removed Woods on grounds that he is a friend of President Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, both subjects of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr’s Whitewater and other investigations.

Wilson, a Clinton appointee, acknowledged in a recent telephone interview that he first complained about Woods’ disqualification in a May 13 letter to the appellate judges and other district judges. He said that he stands behind the complaint. Wilson declined to comment further on the letter, a copy of which The Times obtained from another source.

Wilson’s letter, a hot topic of discussion in judicial and legal circles, underscores the intensely political climate that surrounds the ongoing Whitewater investigations. Woods also is a Democrat. He was appointed to the federal bench by President Carter.

The appellate court’s decision was handed down by three Republican-appointed judges: Pasco M. Bowman II of Kansas City, Mo., who wrote the ruling; James B. Loken of St. Paul, Minn.; and C. Arlen Beam of Lincoln, Neb.

*

Starr, also a Republican, served as a U.S. appellate judge in Washington and later as solicitor general during the Bush administration.

In Little Rock, Arkansas Times columnist Ernest Dumas recently described Judges Bowman, Loken and Beam as “aligned with foes of the Clintons” and called their decision disqualifying Woods as “politics at its most unseemly.”

Wilson addressed his letter to Chief Judge Richard S. Arnold of Little Rock and sent copies to all appellate and federal district judges of the seven states of the 8th Circuit. The letter was mailed two weeks before a federal jury in Little Rock convicted Tucker and the Clintons’ former Whitewater real estate partners, James B. and Susan McDougal, in another criminal case brought by Starr.

Last September, Woods, who has said that he is proud to be a longtime friend of the Clintons, threw out another indictment on different charges against Tucker, Little Rock lawyer John H. Haly and San Francisco businessman William J. Marks Sr. on grounds that Whitewater prosecutors had exceeded their authority.

The indictment that Woods quashed accused Tucker, Haly and Marks of scheming to use a sham bankruptcy to avoid taxes on the sale of a cable television system and accused Tucker and Marks of lying to obtain a $300,000 Small Business Administration loan.

Whitewater prosecutors had not asked Woods to recuse himself from that case, but once he threw out the indictment the prosecutors asked the appellate court to remove him.

The court subsequently reinstated the charges and removed Woods from the case, saying that while it believed he would handle the case in a fair and impartial manner, “this step is necessary . . . to preserve the appearance as well as the reality of impartial justice.”

*

In his letter to Chief Judge Arnold, Wilson urged that the 8th Circuit adopt a rule requiring that a trial judge be afforded an opportunity to answer any questions about possible bias or conflicts of interest before being removed from a case.

In its decision, made without hearing from Woods, the court cited several news articles reporting on his close relationship with the Clintons and noted that the Clintons had attended a fund-raising luncheon where Tucker, then under indictment, was greeted with applause.

Wilson, urging the adoption of a new rule on disqualification, wrote: “Disqualification of an honorable trial judge is a most serious matter . . . and should never be based upon hearsay, hearsay on hearsay and triple hearsay contained in media reports.”

Wilson defended Woods as a longtime champion of civil rights and bitterly criticized one of Woods’ critics as an arch-segregationist.

Expressing outrage that Whitewater prosecutors had cited an anti-Clinton article in the conservative Washington Times by former Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Jim Johnson, Wilson wrote:

“This op-ed piece was authored by a thoroughly discredited, save-your-Confederate-money-boys, die-hard segregationist, Justice Jim Johnson. As you know--but the panel would have no way of knowing since no record was made in the trial court and they [the judges on the panel] are not Arkansans--this op-ed piece defamed you, your brother and other Arkansans--as well as Judge Woods--with scurrilous allegations made of whole cloth.”

People familiar with Arkansas history, Wilson wrote, know that when civil rights demonstrations broke out in the 1950s, Woods was one of the few Arkansans who fought Orval Faubus, the state’s segregationist governor.

“Throughout this do-or-die struggle of many years, he risked his law practice and even his personal safety to fight the forces of segregation,” Wilson declared. “At the same time, Jim Johnson was one of the many who raced to lead the pack of nullifiers.”

In a terse reply to Wilson, Arnold pointed out that he had disqualified himself from hearing the case, would take no part in any further proceedings and had no plans to suggest a new rule on disqualification.

The 8th Circuit states are Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.