Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- April 2, 1998
Decision ensures trial won't occur during Clinton's presidency
By Bill Sammon
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Susan Webber Wright made sure she will not be the first judge in history to try a sitting president.
By throwing out the Paula Jones sexual misconduct case yesterday, the U.S. District Court judge probably guaranteed that even if her decision is ultimately reversed by a higher court, President Clinton will not go to trial until he completes his term of office in January 2001. It would take that long for all appeals to be exhausted -- at which time the case could wind up back in Judge Wright's Little Rock courtroom.
Her decision yesterday is by no means the first controversial call she has made from the bench.
"Judge Wright, you may remember, was the judge who wanted to delay this case anyway till the president was out of office," said John W. Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, which is directing and paying for the Jones lawsuit. "That was lost on appeal."
She was also the judge who acknowledged in January that she should not have met privately with former Arkansas Sen. David Pryor, who pleaded with the judge Dec. 23 to release Whitewater figure Susan McDougal from prison.
The highly unusual meeting raised major ethical concerns because it occurred outside the presence of both McDougal's attorneys and prosecutors from independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's office. It was Mr. Starr who had asked the judge to hold McDougal in contempt for refusing to answer questions about Mr. Clinton's knowledge of an illegal $300,000 Small Business Administration loan.
Mr. Pryor, a Democrat and Clinton ally in the Senate, has known Judge Wright for decades and once testified in her behalf when she was confirmed as a federal judge.
Judge Wright said she agreed to meet with Mr. Pryor because he was a former senator "with a sterling reputation." She said he used flattery in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade her to free McDougal.
It was not the first time Judge Wright had allowed people other than the parties to a case to attempt to influence her legal decisions. Her husband, law professor Robert Wright, told The Washington Post in February that he and his wife often discuss cases that are pending before her and he even gives her suggestions as to how she should rule on them.
Mr. Wright went so far as to predict that his wife would not allow the Jones trial --which until yesterday had been scheduled to begin May 27 -- to turn into an examination of Mr. Clinton's personal life. He based that assessment on his wife's decision to exclude from the Jones case any evidence of Monica Lewinsky's reported affair with the president.
The Code of Conduct for federal judges forbids them to allow family relationships to influence their judicial conduct or judgment. It also frowns on judges' meeting privately with an advocate in a pending case unless opposing lawyers are present.
Judge Wright, 49, first met Mr. Clinton in 1974 when she took his course in admiralty law at the University of Arkansas law school and ended up challenging him over her grade. When Mr. Clinton later launched his first run for Congress, she campaigned for his opponent, Rep. John Paul Hammerschmidt.
Mrs. Wright went on to become a law clerk on the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Later, she taught law at the University of Arkansas, Ohio State College of Law and Louisiana State University.
As a Republican, Mrs. Wright was tapped by President Bush for appointment to the federal bench in 1989, winning confirmation by the Senate the following year. She has handled cases involving the desegregation of Little Rock schools and the constitutionality of Arkansas' death penalty.
She found herself in the national spotlight when several cases involving President Clinton landed on her docket. Her best-known decision in Mr. Starr's Whitewater probe was the jailing of McDougal for contempt.
But it wasn't until 1998 that Judge Wright became something of a household name. In January, she presided over the extraordinary deposition of Mr. Clinton, who was questioned by Jones' attorneys for more than five hours about reports of sexual encounters with numerous women.
Less than two weeks later, Judge Wright made headlines again when she declared evidence in the Lewinsky matter off-limits for the Jones case. That decision was appealed Saturday by attorneys for Mrs. Jones.
Yesterday's ruling was easily the biggest in Judge Wright's career. Her derailment of the Jones suit was of enormous importance to Mr. Clinton, even if attorneys for Mrs. Jones make good on their promise to appeal.
"I think the judge will be reversed by the 8th Circuit or the Supreme Court on this," said Thomas Neuberger, outside counsel for the Rutherford Institute. "But it will take at least two-and-a-half years, which takes us practically to January of 2001.
"[Mr. Clinton] then becomes a private citizen, and the case goes forward," Mr. Neuberger said. "So Judge Wright's ruling has killed this trial for the Clinton presidency. And it makes the Kenneth Starr stuff the real action in town."Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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