"Beyond Thin" Judge Draws Notice for a SC Vacancy

Justice Diane P. Wood is drawing attention as a leading candidate to fill the first vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Wood is famous in some circles (especially in Wisconsin) for her judicial equivalent of voiced disgust shown towards Stephen Biskupic, former U.S. Atty for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, who launched several political prosecutions during his tenure with the Bush administration's Department of Justice, including the repulsive political prosecution of an innocent woman, Georgia Thompson.

Wood was nominated to serve as an appellate judge by President Clinton and confirmed in 1995.

As Mark Pitsch notes in a State Journal piece in 2007 [largely an it's-not-what-Biskupic-did-that-really-matters piece]:

Georgia Thompson, a state purchasing agent for Doyle's Department of Administration, was indicted in January 2006 and convicted six months later in the midst of a heated gubernatorial election.

She spent four months in prison before the federal appeals panel reversed the conviction and ordered her immediately set free - with one judge saying the evidence was 'beyond thin.'

The same judge, Diane P. Wood of the 7th U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, also had harsh words when the panel rejected a 2005 voter fraud conviction won by Biskupic's office against a woman who voted despite having a felony record, The New York Times reported.

'I find this whole prosecution mysterious,' Wood said. 'I don't know whether the Eastern District of Wisconsin goes after every felon who accidentally votes. It is not like she voted five times.'

Biskupic said he hasn't prosecuted for political reasons.

The evidence for the conclusion that Biskupic was an apolitical US atty is beyond thin, and Wood was not shy about pointing out the many deficiencies in Biskupic's prosecutions.

Wood's name has been mentioned in numerous news reports on President Obama's likely leaning toward appointing a woman to the court, and Wood came up again today in a piece in the Washington Post by Carrie Johnson:

At the White House, advisers already had begun drafting a short list for the court in case one of the several aging justices decided to retire this summer. Speculation has been that the list includes Harvard Law School Dean Elena Kagan, who has been nominated to serve as solicitor general; Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit; Judge Diane Wood of the 7th Circuit; and Stanford University law professor Kathleen M. Sullivan.

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via mal contends