Panel to Review Case Assignments

A special panel is beginning an investigation of the chief federal judge in the District of Columbia because she assigned six Whitewater and campaign fund-raising prosecutions to Clinton appointees.

Appeals Judge Stephen Williams chose four jurists--three Republicans and a Clinton appointee--to help him delve into why Chief U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson bypassed the computerized system of randomly assigning cases. In 1998 and 1999, Johnson sent six cases against presidential friends and Democratic fund-raisers to judges nominated by President Clinton.

Williams, a Reagan appointee, threw out an initial complaint against Johnson filed by a private group after an Associated Press story revealed the first two of the six cases: prosecutions against Clinton fund-raiser Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie and longtime presidential friend Webster L. Hubbell.

But the court’s 13-member Judicial Council reopened the complaint, filed by the conservative group Judicial Watch, after Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.) presented additional evidence that Johnson, a Carter appointee, also directed four other fund-raising cases to Clinton appointees.

They included the case against Miami businessman Howard Glicken, a former Al Gore fund-raiser who pleaded guilty to two fund-raising misdemeanors. Presidential confidant Vernon E. Jordan Jr. wrote the sentencing judge pleading for leniency. Glicken got community service work and probation.

In a letter to a newspaper last summer, Johnson said she made the special assignments of the Hubbell and Trie cases to “move the docket as expeditiously as possible” and that politics was “never a factor.” She hasn’t spoken publicly about why she bypassed the random assignment system in the other four cases.

A full-scale judicial investigation of a judge is a serious step that court rules call a “last resort.”

The five-member panel will turn over its findings to the Judicial Council of appeals court and district judges in Washington, which can issue a censure, or reprimand, or refer the matter to the Judicial Conference of the United States.

In letters to Coble and Judicial Watch, Williams named the four Washington-based judges he appointed to help with the inquiry:

* Judith W. Rogers, a Clinton appointee on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

* A. Raymond Randolph, a Bush appointee on the appeals court.

* U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan, a Reagan appointee.

* U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, a Reagan appointee.