Obama's appointments are "far out" and not in a good way

Majority of D.A.s in state oppose Obama nominee
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Forty-two of California's 58 county district attorneys are opposing President Obama's nomination of Goodwin Liu to the federal appeals court in San Francisco, saying they believe the UC Berkeley law professor is hostile to the death penalty.
In a letter to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the prosecutors attacked a paper Liu coauthored in 2005 that criticized death penalty decisions by Samuel Alito, then President George W. Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court.
The paper did not state its authors' views of the death penalty, but said Alito's opinions "show a disturbing tendency to tolerate serious errors in capital proceedings." The district attorneys said Liu's critique shows he would vote as a judge to overturn nearly every death sentence.
The document "demonstrates beyond serious question that his views on criminal law, capital punishment and the role of the federal courts in second-guessing state decisions are fully aligned" with an appeals court that is "far out of the judicial mainstream," the prosecutors said.
They included two Bay Area district attorneys, Ed Berberian of Marin County and David Paulson of Solano County.
In response, the White House released a letter from the state's prison guards union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, saying Liu would "further the cause of justice and follow the law and Constitution for all parties ... including crime victims and peace officers."
The dueling messages continued a partisan battle for public opinion over Liu's nomination to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The 39-year-old professor has drawn rave reviews from academic colleagues and the American Bar Association. But conservatives have branded him a liberal activist and criticized his support for affirmative action, same-sex marriage and the view that constitutional rights evolve over time.
The Senate Judiciary Committee postponed a confirmation hearing last week because of Republican objections and is scheduled to take up the nomination April 16.
Liu's 2005 critique of the death penalty opinions that Alito authored as a federal appeals court judge in Philadelphia included a case in which a prosecutor had removed all three black prospective jurors from a panel that proceeded to condemn a black defendant to death. The prosecution had also removed all African Americans from juries in three other trials in the county that year.
Alito dissented from a ruling overturning the death sentence and said the statistics did not prove the prosecution had been racially biased in picking juries. Liu said Alito's reasoning was later rejected by the Supreme Court and illustrated his willingness to excuse constitutional flaws in death penalty cases.
That demonstrates Liu's bias, said the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a conservative organization. The foundation said Liu had distorted the Supreme Court ruling in order to "indict and convict prosecutors of racism on flimsy evidence."