Wrangling Over Judge’s Meeting With Inmate

Re “On Jurist’s Case Over His Ties to a Killer” (Feb. 16), on the attempt by the California attorney general’s office to disqualify federal appeals Judge Alex Kozinski from death penalty cases after his meeting with a death row inmate: Interesting, a controversy that casts one of the nation’s most conservative judges as a squishy, “I feel your pain” moderate, right before Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s expected departure from the U.S. Supreme Court. If I didn’t know any better, I might suspect a conspiracy.

Unfortunately, I do know better. Though Kozinski is clever enough to pull off such a stunt, the attorney general’s office is not. Instead, the attorney general has succeeded in alienating one of the federal judiciary’s best and brightest.

The already difficult task of safeguarding our death penalty convictions from the 9th Circuit’s meat grinder just got harder.

Matthew G. Monforton

Deputy District Attorney

Los Angeles

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Your article on Kozinski is ironic and sad. Judges visiting jails, prisons, shelters, public schools, mental health centers and hospitals and having conversations with real people should be the rule rather than the exception. Objectivity and impartiality are not synonymous with ignorance and intolerance. I wish more judges would continue to educate themselves not only about the law but about people.

Randolph N. Stone

Clinical Professor of Law

University of Chicago