The Judge is asking to be heard. Again. Judge Shira Scheindlin is the New York District Federal Judge who issued a ruling-heard-round-the-world months ago that Stop & Frisk as used by NYPD was unconstitutional. She then got dismissed from the case for "apparent bias" by a 2nd Circuit Panel of judges, who stayed her order and assigned the case to another District Judge.
Scheindlin decided not to meekly accept the 2nd Circuit's decision.
U.S. District Judge Shira Scheindlin has asked for a hearing before the appeals court panel that removed her last week from the NYPD stop-and-frisk case...
"She wants an opportunity to be heard," said Burt Neuborne of NYU Law School, the attorney who filed ((the)) motion... "She wants to file papers questioning the procedural fairness and the substantive adequacy of the removal order."
...
Neuborne, in his court filing, denounced the behavior of the three appeals judges... The panel's attack without any notice "was not merely a breach of the norms of collegiality and mutual respect," he wrote, "it is an affront to the values underlying the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process of law."
...
Neuborne said that if the three-judge panel refuses to hear the judge's arguments, she will seek to have the full court hear the case.
Judge Scheindlin's removal from the case - when the appeal by New York City to the 2nd Circuit did not ask for it, nor say anything about Scheindlin's conduct - has been roundly criticized both in the press and by the legal community as "overreach."
If Judge Scheindlin has failed to be impartial, as the three judge panel of the 2nd Circuit suggested, then what can be said about the panel itself?
The judge was "completely blindsided," according to her court filing, which says the appeals panel violated its own rules requiring notice and an opportunity to appear whenever a judge is accused of misbehavior in an appeal.
A basic tenet of American tradition is that you get to face your accusers and answer the charges against you. Even if the claim that the 2nd Circuit "violated its own rules" is subject to debate, the notion that the panel made its decision without even giving Scheindlin an opportunity to respond should raise red flags.
Perhaps the best thing that could happen, given this unsavory mess, is for the entire case to be settled by the new DeBlasio Administration, rendering the appeal which caused the 2nd Circuit to dismiss Scheindlin irrelevant. Unfortunately, we have to wait another two months, at least, for any such thing to happen because Mayor Bloomberg does not lose power until January, 2014.
Until and unless this happens, lets hope that Judge Scheindlin gets her day in court.
9:29 AM PT: Scheindlin's request to be heard is here. Thanks to Adam B.