By Kathleen Boehnlein
Described as “one of the best kept secrets in Washington DC” by an international civil rights activist, rumors have swirled to that effect for years; is it time to address those rumors once & for all?
RECUSAL, also referred to as judicial disqualification, is the process of a judge stepping down from presiding over a particular case in which the judge may have a conflict of interest. Title 28 of the United States Code (the “Judicial Code”) provides standards for judicial disqualification or recusal. Both federal and state law holds that judges must recuse themselves if there are grounds to do so. Some examples of conflicts of interest where a judge should likely recuse him/herself from the case include:
Personal Connection to One of the Parties to the Case: For example, if the judge is a neighbor, best friend, or has another personal connection with someone on either side of a lawsuit, their impartiality would come into question. Thus, that judge should recuse him/herself from the case.
According to Title 28 of the U.S. Judicial Code, consequences for judges who knowingly fail to recuse themselves where there is a potential conflict of interest can range all the way from — having the case reviewed by an appellate court; the result being the possible reversal of the criminal conviction, or set-aside/reversal of a monetary award – to the judge being stripped of his/her law license, effectively disbarring them. Now, imagine if the judge in question was a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
**************************************************************************************************************** The brief story I am about to recount is absolutely true & accurate & dates back to July of 1998, more than 2 years before the 2000, hotly disputed Presidential Election between George W. Bush & Al Gore took place that was ultimately decided by the US Supreme Court on December 12, 2000.
In July 1998 I was a reporter for the Westside Gazette, a well-known Black newspaper serving the Tri-County region of Miami-Dade, Broward & Palm Beach Counties. My moniker was K. Chandler. On this particular Saturday I was covering a March for Justice Rally being held in Riviera Beach, Fl.
The Black community, including church & civic leaders, educators & parents, were deeply incensed that Clifford Durden, beloved principal of John F. Kennedy Middle School in Riviera Beach, FL, had been charged in April 1998 with failing to report band instructor Maurice LeFlore, 22, to the authorities for allegedly molesting female students. Citing historic inequities in treatment, many people felt Durden was being singled out for harsher judgment than his White counterparts who’d come under similar scrutiny. So, someone who knew someone, who knew someone, arranged for comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory to come to Florida to lead the city-wide March for Justice down Blue Heron Blvd.
That Saturday morning as I approached Dick Gregory along with reporters & cameramen from various local TV stations, I couldn’t help but feel that Dick Gregory had a bit of a chip on his shoulder; his demeanor was that of someone who was proverbially ‘hunting for bear,’ with the inference being that maybe he anticipated trouble & wanted to throw off a defensive vibe of “Don’t mess with me & there’ll be no trouble.” However, I couldn’t help but feel by his body language that this was somehow being directed at me. So in confusion, I asked him, “Why are you so mad,” meaning why are you acting so hostile toward me?
WHY did I ask that? His response was, “Lady, what is your problem? What planet have you been living on all these years?”
At first, I was stunned, then I quickly realized that he thought he was being interviewed by a White female reporter – a ‘Karen’ if you will – who’d just asked him the archetypal dumb-ass question so often asked of Black people: Why are you people so angry? As a biracial woman, I have been racially misidentified many times in my life. But never before had I been embarrassed or so thoroughly humiliated by an internationally acclaimed figure in front of dozens of community residents along with fellow journalism colleagues from competing media outlets.
Before I knew it, I snapped at Dick Gregory, “I’ve been in the trenches just like you have!” Now it was his turn to look stunned. Then he wanted to talk with me. But by then there was no way I wanted to talk to him. Rally organizers, sensing a confrontation in the offing, quickly separated us. By then, all I wanted to do was go home, crawl into bed in a fetal position & pretend that this day never happened!
Being a professional journalist, however, I decided to press on never-the-less & finish the assignment despite the way I felt. Looking back in hindsight, am I glad now that I did that.
The march wound up at a storefront church on U.S. 1 Hwy. where Dick Gregory was to deliver a speech to the rally goers. By now, the local media had gotten their sound bites & photo-ops & had departed. Only 2 dozen or so die-hard supporters of the embattled former middle school principal remained to hear Dick Gregory speak. And what a speech it was!
At one point, during a long diatribe against the GOP, he stated: “And I’ll tell you something else I’ll bet you didn’t know – Clarence Thomas is married to Barbara Bush’s niece.” My journalism antennae almost shot up through the roof!
Flash forward to the disputed 2000 election settled by the U.S. Supreme Court on 12/12/2000 during which Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, an appointee of former president George H. W. Bush, cast his vote with the 5-4 Republican majority, thereby effectively reversing a Florida Supreme Court request for a selective manual recount of the state’s U.S. presidential election ballots.
Prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 12/12/2000 deciding vote, I asked Bobby Henry, Publisher of the Westside Gazette newspaper to contact Dick Gregory to see if he still stood by his earlier 1998 statement regarding Clarence Thomas being married to Barbara Bush’s niece. Unbeknownst to me, Dick Gregory was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida at that time making an appearance.
Bobby Henry talked in person with Dick Gregory. Gregory said he stood by his former statement, noting that this was one of the “best kept secrets in Washington DC,” adding that we’d be “opening a can of worms” if we decided to pursue this.
I feel that maybe the time has come to raise this question, once & for all, because if it is true that Clarence Thomas is married to the niece (full or half-blood) of Barbara Bush, then Clarence Thomas had no business casting his vote during the Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000) case, which was decided after the SCOTUS reversed a Florida Supreme Court request for a selective manual recount of all under votes, over 61,000 ballots that the vote tabulation machines had missed. The five–four decision effectively awarded Florida’s 25 votes in the Electoral College — and thus the election itself—to Republican candidate George W. Bush. Rather, Justice Thomas should have recused himself due to a clear conflict of interest. Had Justice Thomas recused himself, the high court vote would have been 4-4 thereby compelling SCOTUS to send the case back to the Florida Supreme Court for the requested selective manual recount. Instead, we all know how history unfolded. Somehow, I just can’t imagine Justice Thomas celebrating Thanksgiving Dinner at Kennebunkport, ME, later that year and saying to George W. Bush, “Gee George, I’m sorry I couldn’t vote for you, do you mind passing me the mashed potatoes?”
******************************************************************************************************************* On December 8 the Florida Supreme Court ordered a statewide recount of all under votes, over 61,000 ballots that the vote tabulation machines had missed. The Bush campaign immediately asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the decision and halt the recount. Justice Antonin Scalia, convinced that all the manual recounts being performed in Florida’s counties were illegitimate, urged his colleagues to grant the stay immediately.[1] On December 9, the five conservative justices on the Court granted the stay for Bush, with Scalia citing “irreparable harm” that could befall Bush as the recounts would cast “a needless and unjustified cloud” over Bush’s legitimacy. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that “counting every legally cast vote cannot constitute irreparable harm.”[1] Oral arguments were scheduled for December 11.
Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court on December 12, 2000, that reversed a Florida Supreme Court request for a selective manual recount of that state’s U.S. presidential election ballots thereby settling a recount dispute in Florida’s 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. The 5–4 decision effectively awarded Florida’s 25 votes in the Electoral College — & thus the election itself — to Republican candidate George W. Bush.
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