Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- March 23, 1998
Convicted judge's case
has Clinton parallels
By Mary Ann Akers
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Rep. Ed Bryant can recall when he was a U.S. attorney in 1992 leading the first-ever prosecution of a sitting judge for sexual assault under an arcane civil rights law.
Today, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, the second-term Tennessee Republican may soon find himself considering a case involving similar charges --this time against President Clinton.
Mr. Bryant, who isn't the first one to make the analogy, thinks the charges against Mr. Clinton, first from former Arkansas state worker Paula Jones and more recently from former White House volunteer Kathleen E. Willey, mirror those that brought down state Judge David Lanier, who is now serving a 25-year prison sentence.
"If you believe what [Mrs. Willey] said is true -- it is very similar to the kind of conduct that Lanier was convicted of in federal court," Mr. Bryant said in an interview last week.
If independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr finds impeachable evidence against the president and forwards it to the House of Representatives, Mr. Bryant's conclusions could become part of a larger debate by the Judiciary Committee. Chairman Henry J. Hyde, Illinois Republican, has been quietly meeting with GOP leaders to discuss how to handle Mr. Starr's evidence.
Although Mr. Bryant said he personally believed there was "a federal violation" if Mrs. Willey's charge is true that the president groped her and forced her to touch his genitals, the lawmaker said he is under no illusion that Mr. Clinton may actually be prosecuted on criminal charges for sexual assault.
For one reason, in the Lanier case, the judge was charged with sexually assaulting at least a dozen women in his chambers and was convicted on seven counts, including rape. The Paula Jones case is a civil lawsuit and Mrs. Willey's story is being investigated by Mr. Starr only as part of his probe to determine whether the president lied under oath about whether he had an extramarital affair with a 21-year-old intern and then coerced her and others to lie about it.
"The independent counsel is more focused on perjury," Mr. Bryant said, adding that it would be easier to prove perjury as a "high crime and misdemeanor" -- which would fit the definition of an impeachable offense -- than it would the sexual charges against the president.
Legal experts and other observers have been generally reluctant to describe Mrs. Willey's story as evidence of sexual assault by Mr. Clinton. But Patricia Ireland, president of the National Organization for Women, said Mrs. Willey's description of events, if true, amounted to just that.
Like Mr. Bryant, however, she said she does not believe the Willey matter will wind up as a sexual assault case in court, but Mrs. Ireland drew an analogy to the Lanier case, saying, "I think we're heading in some very deep water here with this kind of allegation" against the president.
The Lanier case made it all the way to the Supreme Court. Ironically, it was argued within one week of Clinton vs. Jones, the case in which a unanimous court ruled that the president was not immune from a civil lawsuit while serving in office.
In her civil suit against the president, Mrs. Jones has invoked the same civil rights law under which Lanier was convicted on criminal counts. It is a Reconstruction-era law that makes it a federal crime to act "under color of any law" to deprive another of "any rights, privileges or immunities" protected by the Constitution or federal laws. The 1874 law was enacted to protect newly freed slaves from the Ku Klux Klan.
Mrs. Jones has charged that Mr. Clinton, when he was governor of Arkansas, propositioned her and exposed himself but did not physically force himself on her. She maintains her civil rights were violated "under color of state law."
But the question of whether sexual assault is covered by federal law is a murky one.
After Lanier was convicted in Memphis, the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati overturned the conviction on the theory that sexual assault was not a protected right. The Supreme Court last year reversed that ruling, reinstating Lanier's prison sentence, but it stopped short of declaring an explicit constitutional right of freedom from sexual assault.Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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