Judicial Incompetence

In its swiftly issued unanimous opinion reversing the conviction of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote for the US Supreme Court that the instructions given to the jury in Houston by Federal Court trial Judge Melinda Harmon were strikingly deficient. The instructions had been drafted by the Bush Justice Department and accepted by Judge Harmon.

How could the Federal prosecutors and the Federal trial Judge have gotten this so wrong? The current generation of cheating corporate executives, including the Enron villains for whom the Andersen firm worked, has developed the tactic of blaming corporate fraud on the accountants. If the tactic does not fully absolve the executives, it may at least spread the guilt and diffuse the public outrage against the corporate scoundrels.

Perhaps the inept prosecution of Andersen was a purposeful part of a plan to soften the punishment of the Bush friends and campaign contributors at Enron. It is not hard to see Attorney General Ashcroft having gone along with that one, but what about Judge Harmon - who is she? According to her brief background information reported by the Federal Judicial Conference, Judge Harmon was appointed to the Federal Court by Bush the first in 1989. Though she only had one year of experience as a trial court judge, and had served a two year stint as a clerk to a Federal court trial judge right after she graduated from law school, she did have an additional 13 years of experience practicing law - as a trial lawyer for the Exxon Company.

A contributing factor to the deficient instructions given by Judge Harmon may be that she is one of the lowest rated Federal Judges in Houston. According the the most recent Judicial Evaluation Poll by the Houston Bar Association, Judge Harmon is rated 7th out of the 9 Federal Judges in Houston, with one third of the lawyers giving her an overall rating of “poor”.

Ratings of judges by lawyers are the most accurate way to tell who is a competent judge. Attorney votes based on ideology tend to cancel each other out. Lawyers of all ideologies recognize and appreciate who the top judges are. With only one year of trial judge experience at the time of her appointment, Judge Harmon could not have been effectively rated as a judge in any lawyer poll. Surely there were Houston judges rated highly competent in 1989 that Bush the first could have appointed to the Federal bench, but he apparently decided an "energy friendly" corporate legal background was more important than proven judicial competency.