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u.S. District Judge Baer Removes Himself from Controversial Drug Case

UPDATE
SUMMER 1996

On May 16, 1996 Federal District Judge Harold Baer, Jr. removed himself from a Manhattan, NY drug case saying his decision was "in the interest of justice" for the defendant (Don Van Natta Jr., "Baer, U.S. Judge, Removes Himself From Washington Hts. Drug Case," New York Times, May 17, 1996, p. B1).

Judge Baer ruled on January 24 that the search of Carol Bayless' car was unreasonable because police brutality and corruption are so prevalent in some neighborhoods in New York City that it is natural for people to run away from police. He said that even innocent people flee the police in Washington Heights, a neighborhood where officers were viewed as "corrupt, violent and abusive." Because he found the search unreasonable, Baer excluded 80 pounds of drugs as evidence and a videotape confession in which Ms. Bayless stated that she had made at least 20 round trips from New York to Michigan since 1991 to ferry drugs.

As was reported in the April issue of NewsBriefs, the judge reinstated the crucial drug evidence on April 1 in the case after a rare rehearing in March and considerable public and political criticism. Judge Baer denied that the political pressure had influenced his reversal, saying that he changed his mind after hearing the testimony of a second arresting police officer, and the defendant, Ms. Bayless.

The backgound on this case was reported in the March issue of Newsbriefs. On April 21, 1995, police observed four men putting duffel bags in the trunk of a rental car with Michigan plates. When the officers approached, the men ran away in different directions. The police then searched the car for drugs, confiscating 34 kilograms of cocaine and 2 kilograms of heroin. Officers testified that the men running away from them and the out-of-state rental car constituted enough "suspicion" to search the car.

By removing himself from the case, Judge Baer said he hoped to avoid time-consuming delays caused by an inevitable challenge to his decision to reinstate the drug evidence. He wrote, "It has become clear to me that for me to try this case will create several unnecessary and otherwise avoidable problems and attendant delay." The judge invoked a rarely used local rule, asking that the case be reassigned to another Federal District Judge.

The controversy over the original ruling and the decision to reinstate the evidence ignited a debate about whether political leaders were meddling in the courts. President Clinton said that he "regrets his decision" to appoint Baer and Bob Dole called for Baer to be impeached. This prompted four judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to respond in a March 28 statement, "The recent attacks on a trial judge of our circuit have gone to far. ... These attacks do a grave disservice to the principle of an independent judiciary (David S. Broder, "Rehnquist's rebuke to Dole and Clinton," Boston Globe, April 15, 1996, p. 11)."

Ramon W. Pagan, Ms. Bayless' lawyer, said he thought the judge's decision to remove himself was intended to get around the issue of political pressure. "This is one of the most unusual cases in jurisprudence, where you had the three most powerful men in the United States threaten a judge and cause my client to feel that she could not trust any of his future decisions." Pagan vowed to address the issue again in appeal.

We've got a Class A New York judicial moonbat, on the loose:

Another Baer Mauling in NYC
Infamous District Court Judge Harold Baer has come up with another stinker of a decision:

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a victory for a Ku Klux Klan group, a federal judge on Tuesday ruled that a New York state law violates the U.S. Constitution by barring public demonstrators from wearing masks.

In his decision, U.S. District Judge Harold Baer held that the law violates the free speech rights of the Butler, Indiana-based Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. If the judge's decision is upheld, members of the group would be able to hide their identities by wearing hoods and masks at future New York rallies.

The city said it would appeal."

You may recall that in March 1996, Judge Howard Baer, Jr., a Manhattan U.S. District Court jurist and Clinton appointee, set off a storm of criticism when he ruled that 80 pounds of cocaine and heroin found by police in a car could not be used as evidence.

The incident in Washington Heights (a lower middle class, largely Hispanic neighborhood in Northern Manhattan) involved two New York City police officers who observed a woman slowly drive down a street at 5 a.m., double park her car and open her trunk. Four men then emerged from between parked cars and placed two large duffel bags in the trunk. When the men spotted the police officers they ran away from the car and the woman drove off. After following the out-of-state rental car for several blocks, the officers stopped the car, searched the trunk, found the drugs and arrested the woman.

In declaring the drugs inadmissible, Judge Baer said there was no probable cause to search the car because it is not unusual for people to be leery of police in an inner-city neighborhood like Washington Heights.

After the public outcry about this ruling, including criticism from President Clinton and calls for his impeachment by Senator Dole, Baer reversed his decision and removed himself from the case.

In the current case, Judge Baer ruled that an 1840s NY State statute that prohibits two or more persons from "congregating" in public while wearing masks to obscure their identities was unconstitutional. To my way of thinking, preventing anonymous mobs from congregating in our cities is hardly an infringement of political speech. The law did nothing to restrict people's rights of assembly or free expression: it merely required that they show their faces while doing so.