Supreme Court Petition: Judge Who Faced Complaints of Racial Bias, Abuse, Sat on Disciplinary Review Panel That Cleared Him

Circuit Council invalidated docketed charges alleging Christopher Cooper had ridiculed minorities over several years, barred judicial review of its actions; whistle-blower complainant challenging constitutionality of statute that allows conflicts of interest.

  By Doshon Farad

      WASHINGTON, D.C. – A military veteran and whistle-blower has appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States alleging that the Judicial Council of the D.C. Circuit acted in February that unconstitutionally violated her due process rights to have her complaint processed.

In the “Petition for Writ of Certiorari” filed May 16, 2022, and authenticated by Your Black World, Holly Clark challenges the D.C. Circuit’s February 2022 termination of her formal complaint against a federal judge she witnessed as an observer in an August 2018 hearing in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia courthouse.

As reported exclusively in Your Black World in February, Judge Christopher Cooper – who was appointed by President Obama in 2014 – had stood accused of abusing litigants and of ethnic bias against Arinderjit Dhali, a respected Sikh civil rights attorney in Washington, D.C., who also is of Indian Heritage and was representing legal scholar and civil rights attorney Amos Jones in Jones’s racial discrimination and contract-violations lawsuit against Campbell University and The Catholic University of America. The earlier complaint was filed by the late Jeanette Pollard. The pair of complaints against Cooper offer a rare look into the world of judicial discipline, especially involving alleged ethnic and gender bias.

A panel of the D.C. Circuit issued an order in February 2022 dismissing Clark’s complaint with no discussion of her factual allegations and exhibits she argues proved actionable judicial misconduct violating the law of judging. The panel – made up of a group of trial and appellate judges called the Judicial Council of the District of Columbia Circuit and including Cooper – ordered that the termination of Clark’s complaint was “not reviewable” based on a statutory section barring judicial review of any judicial-discipline proceeding. Clark challenged the constitutionality of both the statute and the judicial council’s actions.

“In this case, the complained-of district court judge (Cooper) was voluntarily assigned to the 28 U.S.C. § 352(d) Panel of the Judicial Council empaneled to rule on the Petition for Review of a complaint against himself,” the petition stated, producing in an appendix Circuit-furnished proof that Cooper was present and voting on himself. It then invoked “Nemo iudex in causa sua,” a Latin expression, to indicate that “a lawyer or judge is not supposed to sit in judgment of oneself in a disciplinary proceeding, for it is one of the cardinal rules of natural justice that no one should act as a judge a case in which they have a personal vested interest.”

Challenging the portion of the Judicial Improvements Act of 2002 that allows this situation, the Petition argued: “Section (c) of 28 U.S.C. § 352 is unconstitutional as a violation of due process in its barring judicial review of a final decision in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit where the complained-of district court judge (Cooper) was voluntarily assigned to the 28 U.S.C. § 352(d) Panel of the Judicial Council empaneled to rule on the Petition for Review of a complaint against himself.”

After discussion of the facts of the complaint, the Petition concluded, “Because the only way to correct the abrogation of Petitioner’s rights is to go to a higher court on the particular facts and law in this case, 28 U.S.C. § 352(c) must be struck down as unconstitutionally overbroad in barring that review.”

“The Supreme Court of the United States is petitioned to review the very brief appendix here that contains all case documents except exhibits, to apply the fundamental law … and to reverse the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s Judicial Council decisions as having erred as to all questions, with a remand for further proceedings as this case of apparent first impression requires.”

Cooper under fire over handling of ongoing criminal trial of Clinton operative Cooper – a Democratic operative prior to accepting an appointment to the federal bench – is currently presiding over the criminal trial of indicted Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman. In that case, John Durham, the special counsel from the Russia probe that cleared President Trump is prosecuting Sussmann for allegedly lying to then-FBI General Counsel James Baker that he was representing no one when, in September 2016, he brought Baker dubious Trump-Russia information. Sussmann also allegedly lied again when, in February 2017, he carried that story to the CIA.

Cooper has allowed multiple donors to Clinton’s campaign onto the jury, as reported by The Hill at https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3492664-tale-of-two-trials-how-sussmann-is-receiving-every-consideration-denied-to-flynn/. A May 26 Newsweek article at https://www.newsweek.com/deep-state-allies-play-judge-jury-perhaps-executioner-against-durham-opinion-1710197 all but accused Cooper of bias that has rigged the entire proceeding in favor of the defendant, who is a “professional acquaintance” of Cooper’s. George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley was quoted as claiming that Cooper has made life unusually difficult for Special Counsel Durham in pursuing Sussmann.

Recent precedents suggest tide is turning against establishment in corruption cases Clark is an educational administrator recognized in a national magazine in 2018 among “Top 25 Women in Higher Education.” Her public whistle-blowing – verified in concluded court proceedings – was covered in a surprise front-page centerpiece of the Lexington Herald-Leader on June 13, 2021, as a precipitating event in what led to the 2022 legislative takeover of Kentucky State University, by which the legislature dismissed, and the Governor replaced, the institution’s board. During her military career, she served as a Legal Specialist, but recently moved on to the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.

“Our nation confronts a time of increasing scrutiny of the ethical shortcomings among and even violations committed by federal judges across the country that go unpunished and even get privileged,” she asserted in her appeal to the Supreme Court. “In this climate, Respondent has arrogated a timely filed, fully documented, and seriously legally grounded Complaint of Judicial Misconduct out of existence.”

In an opinion published April 26, 2022, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit allowed judicial review and ruled against a host of federal-court insiders who had opposed the internal sexual-harassment complaint brought by attorney Caryn Devins Strickland under court rules she alleged were serially broken at every level. Strickland, a sole Appellant represented by a host of public-interest lawyers led by Harvard Law Professor Jeannie Suk Gersen, won a major reversal of a wholesale dismissal of her complaint against numerous parties hauled into court in her case.

The losing Defendants-Appellees in that case, No. 21-1346, included the United States of America, the Judicial Conference of the United States, the Hon. Brian Stacy Miller “in his official capacity as Chair of the Judicial Conference Committee on Judicial Resources,” the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, the Hon. Roslynn R. Mauskopf “in her official capacity as Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts,” Sheryl L. Walter “in her individual capacity as General Counsel for Administrative Office’s Office of the General Counsel,” and others.

“Because all members of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit are recused in this case, a panel of judges from outside the Circuit was appointed for this appeal pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 291, 294,” that opinion notes in Footnote 1.

Your Black World has not interviewed any named parties, attorneys, judges, or firms in the matter. Courts refuse to comment on complaints against judges, which are fielded in D.C. federal courts by Chief Judge Padmanabhan Srikanth “Sri”” Srinivasan of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, whose actions overseeing the Cooper disciplinary cases were challenged in the Supreme Court filing.

 

About Carma Henry 24455 Articles
Carma Lynn Henry Westside Gazette Newspaper 545 N.W. 7th Terrace, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33311 Office: (954) 525-1489 Fax: (954) 525-1861

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