The case against a Tennessee judge, convicted of sexually assaulting five women in his chambers, was wrongly dismissed, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday.
Setting the stage for a new round of proceedings in the closely watched case, the justices said the lower court had set too high a legal standard for prosecuting Judge David Lanier of Dyersburg, Tenn.
Lanier was convicted in 1992, sentenced to 25 years in prison and fined $25,000. A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld the conviction and sentence, but the full appeals court reversed that decision and set him free.
The appeals court held that Lanier could not have been on notice that the sexual assault crimes for which he was convicted were covered by a Reconstruction-era law.
That law makes it a crime for officials acting under “color of state law” to deprive persons of their “rights, privileges or immunities” protected by the Constitution. It has been used successfully by federal prosecutors in a variety of cases, including against two Los Angeles police officers charged with beating motorist Rodney King.
Lanier, a member of a prominent local political family in Tennessee, was prosecuted under the federal law. His brother, the local prosecutor, declined to bring state charges.
In Monday’s decision, Justice David Souter pointed out that the 6th Circuit’s standard would cause trial judges to demand an “unnecessarily high” standard of certainty likely to cause “much wrangling.”
To underscore his suspicion of that standard, Souter noted with agreement the dissent of one lower court judge. She said that welfare officials accused of selling foster children into slavery would not be immune from prosecution under the 19th Century law just because there had never been such a case before.
“We will have to wait and see what happens,” said Lynn Schafran of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund of the Lanier case. Among the questions to be resolved, Schafran said, are whether the misdemeanor charges of groping and felony charges of coerced sex are both covered by the law.
The Justice Department has argued that previous rulings of the Supreme Court have held that bodily integrity is constitutionally protected.
In other action Monday, the high court:
– Reversed a lower-court ruling against Montana’s requirement that a young woman notify one parent or seek court approval before obtaining an abortion. Simon Heller, a lawyer at the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy and counsel in the case, said the ruling reflected the fact the court is “less protective” of the rights of women under 18.
– Denied an appeal by parents in Racine, Wis., who claimed their son, 4th-grader Andrew Muller, was denied his free speech rights last year when the school principal refused to allow him to hand out invitations to his church.
– Denied an appeal by University of California students challenging the use of mandatory registration fees to subsidize abortions under its student health insurance. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that this did not violate the students’ religious freedom.
