U. S. Congressman, Alcee Hastings
Alcee Lamar Hastings was appointed by former President Jimmy Carter and became the first African-American Federal Judge in the state of Florida. Currently, he is the U.S. Representative for Florida’s 23rd congressional district. Hastings has held this position since January 3, 1993. Prior to this position, Representative Hastings held the seat of Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida from November 2, 1979 until October 20, 1989. Representative Hastings just happens to be one of only eight federal officials in American history to be impeached and removed from office.
Facts surrounding the Impeachment In 1983, Hastings was acquitted of conspiracy to solicit a $150,000 bribe. In 1989, while working as a Federal Judge, Alcee Hastings was found guilty of bribery and perjury and removed from office. However, in 1992 Hastings was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida. It was alleged that in 1985, Alcee Hastings improperly revelation of sensitive government information obtained through a federal wiretap.
Third Chances A lawsuit has just been filed against Alcee Hastings (D-FL) by a former female employee is alleging that, over a period of two years, Hastings repeatedly made unwelcome sexual advances and crude comments towards her. The misconduct allegedly occurred while Hastings served as Chairman to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. The former employee, Winsome Packer, alleges that she was threatened with being fired when she raised the issue with Hastings and Commission Staff Director Fred Turner. Turner and the Commission are also both named in the suit. Hastings has not yet responded to the charges. (Matt Berman- 3/7/2011)
Joseph Alexander Peel Joseph Alexander Peel was a lawyer born and reared in West Palm Beach, Florida. He was a family man by all intents and purposes. He accepted monetary gifts, personal favors and any other form of payments from criminals to allow them from being imprisoned for crimes. When any person got in his way, he dealt with them accordingly. Sometimes, he dealt too harshly. His downfall was the killing of a prominent Judge that he felt could be a severe threat to the ruin of his career in the county. Joseph Peel was very outspoken about what he did not like and would not accept from Judge Curtis E. Chillingworth, so much so that in 1953, Peel said so in public. Judge Chillingworth had openly displayed his disgust with Attorney Peel and would pay for the feelings with his life. Joseph Peel hired two convicts to kill Judge Chillingworth and his wife Marjorie. On June 14, 1955, the plan was executed and the Judge and his wife were never heard or seen again. Joseph Peel later became a Judge and served in the position until the convicts that he previously hired to kill Judge Chillingworth and his wife went to jail and started telling the tales that only the killers could know. This was the downfall that Peel never expected. Joseph Peel would later be arrested on October 4, 1960 and sentenced to two (2) life terms in prison. He would be paroled in 1982 due to ill health and died nine (9) short days later. David Aronberg David Aronberg was born in Miami. He attended North Miami Senior High School in 1989, and then Harvard College for a degree in Government in 1993, and then attended Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1996 with a Juris Doctorate. As an attorney, Aronberg worked closely with then-Florida Insurance Commissioner Bill Nelson to investigate European insurance companies that refused to honor World War II-era policies sold to victims of the Holocaust. In 1999, Aronberg became an Assistant Florida Attorney General for economic crimes. Among other cases, he headed the State's lawsuit against "Miss Cleo." In 2000, Aronberg was selected to be one of 15 White House Fellows from across the country. In this non-partisan position, Aronberg served in both the Clinton and Bush administrations as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury Department for international money laundering.
What Dave Did Wrong Dave Aronberg was accused of conducting a secret campaign for seat as the Attorney General while working as an attorney on paid state time. In the process, Aronberg was defaming his running mate’s past. Abe Fortas Abe Fortas was lawyer and associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1965 until 1969. Mr. Fortas was nominated to replace Earl Warren as chief justice by Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968, Fortas became the first nominee for that post since 1795 to fail to win Senate approval. The following year he became the first Supreme Court justice to resign under threat of impeachment. Abe Fortas was the son of William Fortas, an Orthodox Jew and cabinetmaker who had immigrated to the United States from England, and Ray Berson Fortas. He graduated from Southwestern (now Rhodes) College in 1930, after which he attended Yale Law School, where he became editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal and graduated in 1933. A protégé of future Supreme Court justice William O. Douglas—who was then teaching law at Yale—he became an assistant professor of law at Yale and then became assistant director (1937), under Douglas, of the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. Fortas held a number of government posts, including undersecretary of the interior and general counsel to the Public Works Administration, before entering private law practice in Washington, D.C., in 1946. The law firm that he cofounded represented the Washington interests of many of the country’s largest corporations. In 1963 Fortas successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court the case of Gideon v. Wainwright, which established the right of the accused in criminal trials to assigned counsel, regardless of ability to pay. In July 1965, after President Johnson had persuaded Justice Arthur Goldberg to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Johnson nominated Fortas, an old and trusted friend and adviser, to the Supreme Court. He was confirmed by the Senate by voice vote on August 11. Three years later Johnson nominated Fortas to replace retiring Chief Justice Earl Warren. Fortas generally had sided with the liberal court majority, and his nomination was quickly assailed by various critics, who also cited his continued counsel on policy to Johnson and his acceptance of $15,000 for a series of university seminars. When the nomination came to the Senate floor, a filibuster ensued. Shortly afterward, Fortas requested that his name be withdrawn from consideration, and the president complied. In 1969 Fortas’s earlier financial involvement with a financier who was subsequently imprisoned for securities violations appeared likely to precipitate impeachment proceedings in Congress; in May Fortas, declaring his innocence, resigned from the court. Subsequently he returned to private practice.