WASHINGTON – After Supreme Court decision landmark ruling in 2004 that Guantanamo detainees could file lawsuits challenging their indefinite detention, a federal public defender in the District of Columbia took on several such cases and assigned a young lawyer in his office to handle them: Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“They were dealing with very complex legal issues that were just being decided, and it took an incredibly smart and incredibly good lawyer,” recalled public defender A.J. Kramer. “We thought Ketanji was the best fit.”
Ms. Jackson, who went on to become a federal trial judge and then an appellate court judge, is now President Biden’s Supreme Court nominee. But her two and a half years as an assistant public defender, including her work on behalf of terrorism defendants and criminal defendants, is likely to come under scrutiny in light of the upcoming battle for her confirmation.
Lawyers who harbor ambitions to become a judge—as she clearly did when she wrote in her school yearbook that judging was her goal—usually act as prosecutors who help put criminals in jail. If confirmed, Judge Jackson would become the first modern court judge with experience as a public defender.
She also had to understand politics, representing the interests of unpopular clients. She has confirmation of the position of judge of the district court in 2012for example, Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, challenged her about her work at Guantanamo, saying that her record raises “some concern about how you will handle terrorism cases that may come before you” .
Ms. Jackson assured Mr. Grassley that she believed the terrorists were a danger to the United States and that the country was at war with them, while distancing herself from the Guantanamo cases she worked on.
“In all these situations, the opinions expressed were the views of my clients, whom I represented,” she told him, adding, “The notes do not necessarily reflect my personal views on the war on terror or anything else. ”
Judge Jackson is deeply rooted in thinking about criminal law from a variety of perspectives. One of her uncles was sentenced to life in prison on cocaine charges. But another was a Miami police chief, a third uncle was a sex crimes detective, and her brother was a police officer in Baltimore before he took a job as an investigator in the same federal public defender’s office where she mostly handled appeals. Mr Kramer said.
As a student at Harvard, she wrote her thesis in 1992 titled The Hand of Oppression: Guilt Negotiation Processes and Coercion of Criminal Defendants.
After graduating from Harvard Law School, while clerking for several judges, including Judge Stephen J. Breuer, her successor, and practicing corporate law, Ms. Jackson worked for several years as a lawyer for the United States Sentencing Commission.
There she is later wrote, she realized that she “lacked a practical understanding of the real workings of the federal criminal justice system, and I decided that serving in the trenches, so to speak, would be useful.” She thought the public defender’s office would provide that knowledge, as well as provide “an opportunity to help people in need and promote core constitutional values.”
Mr. Kramer, who interviewed her for this job, recalled that her previous work on the Sentencing Commission has focused on a data and numbers-based approach to the criminal justice system.
“She clearly wanted to see how the system actually worked, and she was more interested in the defense side trying to help people from very disadvantaged backgrounds,” he said. “And it also gave her a chance, I think, to work with the people involved in the system.”
Judge Jackson served as an Assistant Public Defender from February 2005 to June 2007 before returning to corporate law. IN Senate Questionnaire for her first judicial appointment in 2012, Judge Jackson said that as a public defender she had appeared in the appeals court about 10 times.
One of her cases involved a man named Andrew J. Littlejohn III, who was convicted of illegal possession of a firearm as a felon after police found the gun hidden in a laundry basket while searching the house where he lived with his mother. Ms. Jackson appealed his conviction on several grounds, including because the trial judge asked potential jurors questions in a way that could disguise the presence of police officers in some relatives and could be biased.
In a unanimous decisiona panel of three judges agreed that jury examination was erroneous and vacated Mr. Littlejohn’s conviction.
“In the special circumstances of this case, the use of compound questions by the district court violated Littlejohn’s right to a fair jury under the Sixth Amendment,” Judge David S. Teitel wrote.
During her 2021 confirmation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, Senator Ben Sass, R-Nebraska, asked Judge Jackson in writing did she ever worry that her time as a public defender would “lead to more violent criminals, including gunmen, returning to the streets?”
She responded that in order for the justice system to work properly, those accused of crimes must be represented by “competent legal counsel to hold the government accountable for ensuring a fair trial and otherwise assist in preparing a defense against the charges.” Lawyers in the federal public defender’s office, she continued, “perform this critical function.”
She also won ruling of the appellate court overturning the conviction of a former lawyer who was convicted of tax evasion in connection with the seizure of a Mercedes-Benz 500SL car that the mother of a drug-dealing client gave him as collateral. The case involved a complex dispute over the release of documents that the court found violated his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.
And she won new judgment for a man who pleaded guilty to possession of counterfeit identity document making tools because a trial judge did not follow a federal rule on a disputed factual issue that affected the length of a prison sentence.
Mr. Kramer remembered her as a friendly colleague who was tactful and never complained about the heavy workload. He said they often discussed raising their children. Ms. Jackson loved the reality show The Revenant, he added, and “spoke about the strategies of the various contestants.”
It was in this job that Mr. Kramer assigned Ms. Jackson to help with the habeas corpus lawsuit for several Guantanamo Bay detainees. And later, at a corporate law firm, Ms. Jackson also filed Friend of the Court briefs on behalf of two groups supporting protests against Bush-era detention policies, including a claim that the government could detain a lawful permanent resident arrested on domestic soil. without charge and as an enemy combatant.
During her 2021 confirmation hearing, Senator Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, challenged her about some of those jobs. Judge Jackson retorted, telling him that she had been given the cases and noting that her brother had been sent to Iraq with the military.
But in follow-up written responseshe opened up further, portraying herself as one of “many lawyers who were acutely aware of the threat that the 9/11 attacks posed to fundamental constitutional principles, in addition to the clear danger to the people of the United States.”