Draft Prado For SCOTUS?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Blogging, General Politics, Supreme CourtHow is Edward C. Prado? Why, he’s the best man for the next SCOTUS opening. At least that’s what the new website “Draft Prado” is saying.
Here’s some information about his record.
In 1984, President Reagan appointed Prado to the District Court. In 2003, President Bush nominated him to the Fifth Circuit and the Senate unaminously confirmed the nomination.Throughout his tenure as a federal judge, Edward Prado has distinguished himself with his careful, intelligent, fair-minded opinions. His approach has won praise from independent observers for judicial conduct. For example, during the confirmation hearings for his nomination to the Fifth Circuit, Judge Prado received a unanimous “Well Qualified� rating from the American Bar Association – the highest rating the group bestows on candidates for the federal bench. In fact, of the 34 federal appeals court candidates President Bush submitted to the 108th Congress, Judge Prado was one of only 11 who had the unanimous “Well Qualified� rating.
So who is this guy really? Well, Talk Left has an interesting post about his opposition to mandatory sentencing laws.
From a speech Prado gave in 1996:
It’s estimated that close to 90 percent of the people that got convicted with a mandatory sentence were drug offenders. I’ll give you a quick run-down of people that got mandatory sentences and this was back in ’92, so my figures are a little off, but of those that got mandatory sentences, like I said, almost 90 Percent of them were drug offenders. But 85 percent did not play an aggravating role. 49 Percent had no prior criminal history. 77 Percent had no weapon involved, and it was found in the courts in 81 Percent of them that they did not have the ability to pay a fine. That doesn’t sound like a career violent offender to me, yet those are the people that are getting the mandatory sentences. You’re not getting the kingpins, you’re getting some of these low-level people.Furthermore, mandatory minimum sentences are not being used uniformly. Studies show that 46 percent of those people, when you look at the facts of the crime, 46 percent that could have been sentenced under the mandatory sentence were not. So you only have about half of those that could be getting mandatory sentences that are getting them. The prosecutors are using their discretion in deciding who gets a mandatory sentence and who doesn’t. It’s no longer up to the judge to decide. But (rather,) that prosecutor is making that decision, which is not right. That’s what the judge is there for.
Interesting. Anybody else finding more information about him?
The group behind the website and campaign is Start Change, which looks to be donkey-friendly as their first initiative was to get President Bush to “Stop Fake News”.
Start Change was also behind an initiative to pressure Sinclair Broadcasting from playing a documentary on their stations about John Kerry (which worked).
This entry was posted on Friday, July 8th, 2005 and is filed under Blogging, General Politics, Supreme Court. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
