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| Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP |
Eric Holder Jr., the nation's first black U.S. attorney general, will resign his post after a tumultuous tenure marked by civil rights advances, national security threat, [controversy over failing to prosecute more Wall St. corporate CEO's over the 2008 economic meltdown], reforms to the criminal justice system and 5 1/2 years of fights with Republicans in Congress. He currently ranks as the fourth-longest tenured AG in history.
President Obama said on Thursday that Holder, 63, intends to leave the Justice Department as soon as his successor is confirmed, a process that could run through 2014 and even into next year. A former U.S. government official says Holder has been increasingly "adamant" about his desire to leave soon. Holder and President Obama discussed his departure several times and finalized things in a long meeting over Labor Day weekend at the White House.
Holder already is one of the longest-serving members of the Obama Cabinet and the Justice Department is where he previously worked as a young corruption prosecutor and as deputy attorney general — the second in command — during the Clinton administration.
Holder most wants to be remembered for his record on civil rights: refusing to defend a law that defined marriage as between one man and one woman; suing North Carolina and Texas over voting restrictions that disproportionately affect minorities and the elderly; launching 20 investigations of abuses by local police departments; and using his bully pulpit to lobby Congress to reduce prison sentences for nonviolent drug crimes. Many of those sentences disproportionately hurt minority communities.
Speaking of which, Mr. Holder announced his support for a class-action lawsuit against NYS for perpetuating a system that violates the rights of people who cannot afford to hire lawyers. See below:
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| Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. spoke Tuesday at New York University School of Law. Last year, Mr. Holder told colleagues that ensuring equal access to lawyers was “our moral calling.” Credit Julio Cortez/Associated Press |
Holder Backs Suit in New York Faulting Legal Service for Poor.
N.Y. TIMES
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who last year declared a crisis in America’s legal-defense system for the poor, is supporting a class-action lawsuit that accuses Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the State of New York of perpetuating a system that violates the rights of people who cannot afford to hire lawyers.
The lawsuit claims that public defenders in New York are so overworked and overmatched that poor people essentially receive no legal defense at all. It describes a system in which indigent defendants navigate courts nearly alone, relying on spotty advice from lawyers who do not have the time or money to investigate their cases or advise them properly.
Because of substandard legal aid, children are taken from their parents, defendants in minor cases are jailed for long periods and people are imprisoned for crimes for which they might have been acquitted, the civil rights lawyers who filed the suit said.
The lawsuit, which was filed by the New York Civil Liberties Union, has been winding through the courts for seven years and is set for trial on Oct. 7. It names three upstate counties — Onondaga, Schuyler and Washington — and Suffolk County on Long Island as defendants.
Although the United States is not a party to the case, Mr. Holder is using the same core legal arguments as the plaintiffs and the weight of the federal government to resolve what he sees as deep-seated unfairness in local criminal courts. His views will bring national attention to a case that has mainly been of interest in New York. After Mr. Holder weighed in last year in a similar case in Washington State, the judge strongly rebuked the public-defense systems in two cities there and ordered improvements.
If the New York lawsuit succeeds, the state could be forced to take over the public-defense system, which is now run by county governments. Such an outcome would also quite likely encourage similar lawsuits, and, in turn, additional intervention by the Justice Department.
Mr. Holder has made the right to legal representation part of a broad effort to address inequities in the criminal justice system. He has pushed to reduce harsh sentences that were adopted during the country’s crack epidemic, for example, and to eliminate mandatory-minimum sentences for nonviolent drug crimes.