Law alumna faces uphill battle to judgeship

Frederica Massiah-Jackson could be the city's first black woman to sit on the U.S. District Court. No one ever said "making history" was a speedy process. But 1974 Law alumna Frederica Massiah-Jackson, 47, probably didn't expect her nomination to the federal bench to lag this long. If confirmed, she would be the first black woman to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The issue: whether Massiah-Jackson is an "activist judge" who tends to ignore the law for the sake of an agenda. According to her opponents, Jackson's agenda is one that favors defendants and snubs the prosecution -- particularly in cases involving drugs. Because of the accusations, Massiah-Jackson, who was nominated in early August, must wait until January 28 -- or maybe even longer -- for the Senate to vote. "She is highly qualified," said Penn Law Professor David Rudovsky, who specializes in criminal procedure and civil rights law. He said the issue has "much less to do with race? and more to do with a policy and attitude in the D.A.'s office that justice is done when the prosecution wins." Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham, who was re-elected to her post in November largely due to her "tough-on-crime" reputation, vehemently opposes Massiah-Jackson's nomination, as does the executive committee of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association. In a recent letter to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., Abraham cited Massiah-Jackson's "leniency towards criminals" and "deeply ingrained and pervasive bias against the prosecution" as reasons to vote against the judge's confirmation. Although Specter himself supports the nomination, the senior Judiciary Committee member will meet next week with nomination opponents to discuss whether to further delay the Senate vote so the committee can investigate the accusations. That could entail holding another public hearing in Washington -- the last and only one was in October -- to decide whether Massiah-Jackson is unfit for the lifetime appointment. Further proving that politics makes strange bedfellows, Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., a conservative Judiciary member, holds the same view of Massiah-Jackson as Abraham, a Democrat who is widely thought to have mayoral aspirations. On the other side: Specter, Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell, a Democrat. But determining whether Massiah-Jackson is a fair judge is no easy task. In her 14 years on the Philadelphia Common Pleas Court -- a branch of the state court system -- she has heard more than 4,000 cases. Only 14 of those rulings, her advocates point out, have been reversed. Though some speculate that Abraham waited until she was safely elected to voice her opposition, she was not the first to voice doubt over Massiah-Jackson's record. In September, shortly after Massiah-Jackson was nominated, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairperson Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, began investigating reports of Massiah-Jackson's alleged anti-prosecution bias and leniency toward criminals. In a 1985 incident, for instance, she told a prosecutor to "shut the fuck up." In another incident, Massiah-Jackson acquitted a drug dealer accused of possessing $400,000 worth of cocaine. She also blew the whistle on the practices of undercover narcotics police, incensing "tough-on-crime" advocates. But Specter was not convinced. Massiah-Jackson's seat on the federal bench should be confirmed because she has acted fairly, he said. The controversy has swirled with accusations of racism. The NAACP described Abraham's opposition as "political treachery" rooted in racism, while the Philadelphia Judicial Council, an association of area minority judges, called it an "affront to the African-American legal community." And when Abraham was sworn in as district attorney, the seven black judges scheduled to be sworn in at the same time were all no-shows, presumably participating in a NAACP boycott of the ceremony. But Rudovsky said Abraham's opposition to Massiah-Jackson is less the product of racism than of the district attorney's protectionism of police. He said Massiah-Jackson and so-called "activist judges" are being treated as scapegoats for the city's crime rates, which have not seen the dramatic reductions that most large American cities have felt in recent years. State Sen.Vincent Hughes, a Democrat representing West Philadelphia, said "[Massiah-Jackson] deserves to be making history." But District Attorney's Office spokesperson Bill Duvall said neither Abraham nor the District Attorneys Association was the issue. "I'm really upset that everyone's choosing sides," he said. "The issue is [Massiah-Jackson's] record. If you're going to choose an African American woman, why do you have to choose this one?"

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