A liberal activist notorious for bending laws to protect child sex offenders and a long history of extreme leniency in criminal sentencing is one step closer to getting confirmed as a federal appellate court judge.
The Democratic-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee just voted 11-7 to advance the nomination of Robert Chatigny, President Obama's most controversial judicial nominee, to the influential U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.
The president named the Connecticut federal district judge to the appellate court at the recommendation of Senator Christopher Dodd, an honorary two-time member of Judicial Watch's Most Corrupt Politicians list.
Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, and Judge Chatigny have been close for years. The judge, his wife and extended family have long been generous donors to Dodd's political campaigns and when the senator recently remarried, Chatigny performed the ceremony. Ironically, Dodd's official Senate biography boasts that he's best known for bringing "much-needed attention to children's issues," yet he's tight with an activist judge who protects monsters that commit sexual crimes against them.
As a federal judge in Connecticut, Chatigny repeatedly reduced sentences for sex crimes and even murder based on questionable factors not authorized under sentencing guidelines. Chatigny regularly issued light sentences for sexual crimes such as possession of child pornography and overturned Connecticut's law requiring registration of sex offenders, a decision subsequently overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In his most famous campaign on behalf of a child rapist and murderer, Chatigny openly advocated for a man (Michael Ross) sentenced to death for killing eight women and girls. In prison Ross described with graphic detail how he strangled and raped two of the teenage girls for a documentary on serial killers. Claiming that he "never should have been convicted," Chatigny issued two stays of execution and said that Ross was "the least culpable" of the death row convicts. The Supreme Court upheld the death sentence and Ross was executed in 2005.
Seven Connecticut state prosecutors filed complaints against Chatigny for violating judicial ethics by acting as an advocate to rescue a sadistic murderer from execution, abandoning neutrality and exceeding his judicial authority by defying the rulings of higher courts. It appears that his deplorable actions won't interfere with a promotion, however.
This would constitute a contradiction of massive proportions, says a national women's public policy group, because Obama recently created a White House Counsel to promote the well being of women and girls in America. Therefore it's egregious for the president to elevate a man with a history of excusing sexual crimes against women and girls to the court of appeals. One conservative news publication calls it "Nominating Evil to a Higher Bench."
----------------------------------------------------------
