Prepared Floor Statement of Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Ranking Member, Senate Judiciary Committee
The Nomination of Ronnie L. White
to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Today I’d like to spend a few minutes discussing the nomination of Justice Ronnie White to the Eastern District of Missouri and explain why, regrettably, I am unable to support this nominee.
As my colleagues know, Justice White was originally nominated by President Clinton during the 105th Congress and this body voted on, and rejected, his nomination in 1999 during the 106th Congress.
After careful consideration of his record, I voted against Justice White’s nomination at that time.
Since 1999, Justice White completed a term as Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court and has returned to private practice.
So, today I’d like to revisit a few aspects of Justice White’s legal and judicial career that first led me to vote against his nomination.
I’ll also discuss developments since 1999. Unfortunately, his record since that time has only reinforced my concerns.
First, let me begin with some troubling aspects of Justice White’s record from his days on the Missouri Supreme Court in the 1990s.
I only need to point to a few cases to illustrate my concerns.
In the 1998 Johnson case, Justice White was the sole dissenter on the state high court in a capital appeal involving a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel.
The case was heartbreaking.
The defendant shot four people to death: three Missouri sheriffs and one of the sheriffs’ wives.
The facts were stark and clear-cut.
This was not a close case. The defendant was convicted based on the overwhelming evidence of his guilt.
Now, Justice White conceded that there was more than sufficient evidence to sustain the conviction on appeal.
But, he went out of his way to create a standard that wasn’t based in Missouri law when he evaluated the conduct of the defense attorney.
Unsurprisingly, not a single member of the state court agreed with his dissenting opinion.
That’s because it was obvious there was no reasonable probability that anything the defense attorney did would’ve changed the outcome of the trial.
That’s the applicable legal standard.
It’s straightforward.
And in that case every member of the state supreme court applied it correctly, except for Justice White.
Unfortunately, Justice White’s dissent in that case was not an isolated example.
On a number of other occasions throughout his judicial career, Justice White misapplied standards of review or considered issues that were not germane to the law when he was deciding cases.
Justice White has even admitted as much.
Discussing his judicial philosophy, he said in 2005 that he thinks it’s appropriate for judges to let their opinions be “shaped by their own life experiences.”
I think the personal characteristics of the judge – what this nominee calls his “own life experiences” – should play no role whatsoever in the process of judicial decision making.
And I know that my colleagues on our Judiciary Committee share that view as well.
But let me get back to the nominee’s judicial track record.
Justice White was the sole dissenter in another case the Missouri Supreme Court heard in 1997.
That case raised the question of whether the defendant was entitled to an additional evidentiary hearing.
In his dissent, joined by none of his colleagues, Justice White again ignored a straightforward standard of review and wrote that the defendant should have the hearing because Justice White thought it would cause “little harm.”
Here, again, we see Justice White’s personal preferences creeping into what should be objective, law-based decision making.
So, those are just two examples of what led me, after consideration of the nominee’s record as a whole, to vote against his nomination in 1999.
Unfortunately, my concerns about Justice White’s first nomination have only been reaffirmed by his subsequent record.
For instance, I’m troubled by Justice White’s concurrence in the Eighth Amendment case of Roper v. Simmons.
That case was first heard by the Missouri Supreme Court, was appealed to the Supreme Court, and was eventually affirmed.
But, Mr. President, the affirmance is not what my colleagues should focus on.
What should concern them is the opinion that Justice White concurred in, which ignored binding Supreme Court precedent, the Stanford v. Kentucky case.
Let me explain.
In 2003, when Justice White’s court decided Roper, binding Supreme Court precedent permitted applying the death penalty to individuals if they committed their crimes when they were under 18.
Nonetheless, Justice White concurred in the state court opinion that simply ignored that precedent.
Justice White concurred even though the Supreme Court had reaffirmed Stanford twice in 2002, the year before Justice White’s state court decision.
Moreover, in 2003, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal raising legal arguments that were identical to the ones that Justice White endorsed.
That’s the very same year that Justice White’s court ruled in Roper and ignored Stanford outright.
Now, my colleagues on our Judiciary Committee often ask nominees about their commitment to Supreme Court precedent and faithfulness to the doctrine of stare decisis.
And nominees who appear before us routinely repeat the mantra that they will unfailingly apply precedent and nothing else. Justice White did as much at his hearing, too.
But – and this is what I find so troubling – when I asked him about the Stanford case, he admitted that Stanford was, in fact, binding on his state court at the time he concurred in Roper.
What he didn’t explain – what he couldn’t explain – was why he ignored that binding precedent as a state supreme court justice. He couldn’t explain why he thought it was appropriate for him to concur in a state court opinion that, in effect, overruled U.S. Supreme Court precedent.
I don’t doubt that Justice White has always done what he thought was right and that he ruled the way he thought best to achieve justice for the litigants before him.
But, in my view, that’s not an appropriate role for a federal district judge.
Judicial decision making requires a disinterested and objective approach that never takes into account the judge’s life experiences, or policy preferences.
And, from the careful look that I’ve taken at Justice White’s 13-year track record as a judge, I just have too many questions about his ability to keep his personal considerations separate from his judicial opinions.
Finally, it’s worth noting that there continues to be opposition to this nominee from the law enforcement.
Specifically, both the National Sheriffs’ Association and the Missouri Sheriffs’ Association oppose this nominee.
I always try to give judicial nominees the benefit of the doubt when I have questions about their records.
But in this nominee’s case, I simply can’t ignore so many indications that the nominee isn’t the right person to occupy a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.
I sincerely hope that I’m wrong about Justice White. And I hope that Justice White serves with distinction. But I’ll reluctantly vote no on this nomination, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
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