Vice President Joe Biden and representatives from eight national law enforcement groups gathered at the White House this morning in praise of Sonia Sotomayor's credentials on crime.
"Sonia Sotomayor's lifelong commitment to law enforcement is hard to argue with," Biden said. "She knows firsthand the brave work of the police force in fighting crime. She has worked together with the officers and detectives on the front lines, gathering evidence and building fact by fact, witness by witness, the cases that would result in putting criminals behind bars."
The groups, including the Fraternal Order of Police, Major Cities Chiefs Association and National District Attorneys Association, sent letters to Senate Judiciary Committee leadership praising Sotomayor, who if confirmed would be the only Supreme Court justice with trial court experience. Most of the groups focused on her work as an assistant district attorney in New York early in her career, and some highlighted her prosecution of Richard Maddicks, New York's "Tarzan murderer." (Sotomayor discusses the case in her Senate questionnaire, beginning on page 162 of this PDF.)
Veteran New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau was on hand to tout his former employee's credentials. "She is intelligent, hard-working, and has her feet on the ground," he said. "Like young Assistant District Attorney Sotomayor, Justice Sotomayor won't be pushed around, and she will do all she can to reach the right conclusion on each case."
Opponents on the right, meanwhile, are taking issue with some of Sotomayor's stances on law enforcement issues. Wendy Long, general counsel for the Judicial Confirmation Network, admonished the administration for hosting the event and put forth a critique of the nominee's record on crime.
"Today's event looks like a county sheriff election rally," Long said. "The purpose of this sideshow is to avoid facts in Sotomayor's actual record that indicate a soft-on-crime judge who twists the law, particularly law at the intersection of race and crime issues."
On Friday, the group had lashed Sotomayor for her 1981 remark that "capital punishment is associated with evident racism in our society."
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