Judge Admits Tale of Brother’s Death Was a Lie

A California-based federal judge withdrew his nomination to a U.S. appeals court after admitting that his oft-told tale of seeing his young brother gunned down by white racists in 1963 was a lie.

“I regret my lack of honesty,” U.S. District Judge James Ware, 51, of San Jose said in a statement.

Tapped by President Clinton this year for a seat on the San Francisco-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Ware submitted a letter to the White House seeking to withdraw his nomination.

“The whole thing is disappointing, but of course we will do as he’s requested,” White House spokesman Barry Toiv said.

Ware’s nomination was pending in the Senate, and he was expected to win confirmation easily.

His embarrassing admission ends the rise of a judicial career boosted by Gov. Pete Wilson and Presidents George Bush and Clinton. Some had predicted that Ware was destined for the Supreme Court.

In recent years, gatherings of lawyers and judges have been stunned into silence as Ware has told the story that he said changed his life.

As he related it at different times, Ware said that as a 16-year-old black youth growing up in Birmingham, Ala., he was riding an old bike with his 13-year-old brother, Virgil, on the handlebars. It was the day a black church in that racially riven community was bombed and four young girls were killed.

Two white boys on a motorcycle, “pumped up for a segregation rally,” came upon the two black youths and yelled racial slurs at them, according to Ware’s version. One then pulled a gun and began shooting.

The bullets struck Virgil, he said. “The shots knocked us off to the side of the road. He died there on the side of the road,” Ware said in one situation.

“What happened to me was a defining experience, a turning point in my life,” Ware told an interviewer. “When I went through the death of my brother, I came very close to becoming someone who could hate with a passion.”

However, a high school teacher “took me aside,” Ware continued. “I remember him saying: ‘Don’t let this undo you. Live a life that Virgil would be proud of. Don’t let this be your undoing.’ ”

Friends and colleagues were shocked to learn Thursday that the story was false. Some said that they recalled hearing it more than 25 years ago when Ware was a Stanford University law student.

“This has really shaken me,” said Santa Clara Superior Court Judge LaDoris H. Cordell, a Stanford classmate of Ware. “What is so astounding to me and so sad is that I thought I knew him. The person I knew, I just can’t imagine him doing something like that.”

The truth emerged this week when a Birmingham newspaper found a coal miner named James Ware who had witnessed the slaying of his brother Virgil in 1963.

“I couldn’t believe a judge would do something like that, being a man of the law,” the man told the Birmingham News. “I think it was wrong. He was trying to better himself off somebody else’s grief.”

When told of the newspaper’s account, the judge admitted that his claims that he was Virgil Ware’s brother “were not the truth.”

In his statement, the judge seemed to suggest that he had confused the facts in his mind.

“I did live in Birmingham at the time of the event. My father had told me he had a son about my age with another woman, whose name was James. At one time he told me she had another child named Virge. He told me that we were related to other Wares in Birmingham. I did suffer the death of a sister by shooting at about this same time. I used my tenuous connection with the Wares and my own feeling of loss as a basis for making a speech about Virgil Ware’s death,” his statement said.

Ware still holds a life-tenured post as a federal district judge.

Some friends said they worried that Ware may have told his story under oath in a previous appearance before a Senate committee several years ago. If so, he could be subject to perjury charges.

Oakland civil rights lawyer John Burris said that he has known and admired Ware for years and speculated that he may have told his tale to inspire others.

The story “probably became part of folklore for him as he was trying to inspire young lawyers, to give people some sense of history,” Burris said. “I think he would use that to show people you can overcome adversity and not become a prisoner of your own background. I think it is really more of a teaching tool.”

But other friends were not so charitable.

“It was a very moving, very graphic [story]. It can move you to tears,” Cordell said. “That’s why it is such a shock to me that it is a lie, that he never had this experience.”

Two years after the Birmingham church bombing, young Ware left Alabama and enrolled in Compton Community College. He later attended California Lutheran College in Thousands Oaks and became active in Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign for the presidency.

After meeting with then-Stanford Assistant Dean Thelton Henderson--who now is a fellow federal district judge in San Francisco--Ware applied to Stanford’s law school. He graduated in 1972 and practiced law in Palo Alto.

Ware was appointed in 1988 by then-Gov. George Deukmejian to a Superior Court post. In 1990, Wilson, then a U.S. senator, recommended him for a federal slot. Bush named him to the U.S. District Court in San Jose.

After President Clinton won the White House, Ware switched his political allegiance and became a Democrat. In June, Clinton nominated him for the appeals court post.

“People are right to think of him as a Supreme Court candidate,” Henderson said at that time.

Savage reported from Washington and Dolan from Oakland.