Circuit judge accused of pro-torture bias
by Josh Richman
Wednesday, February 13th, 2008
I was at Cal's School of Law this morning to cover arguments to a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in the federal civil rights lawsuit brought against San Francisco and its police department in the "fajitagate" case. Sitting on this three-judge panel was Circuit Judge Jay S. Bybee, an Oakland native who maintains his chambers in Las Vegas.
As John Roemer reported in Monday's edition of the Daily Journal legal newspaper, attorney Dennis Cunningham, representing plaintiff Jade Santoro, filed a motion last Thursday asking Bybee to recuse himself on the basis of an August 1, 2002 memo he signed while serving as the assistant attorney general in charge of the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel...
Cunningham's motion argued Bybee shouldn't hear Wednesday's case involving police officers with a history of excessive-force accusations because "unnecessary, and gratuitous, and so often sadistic, uses of force" are among "domestic forms of torture."
