Idiot of the Day: CourtTV Anchor Catherine Crier
Catherine Crier has been on FoxNews all day touting her view that the law giving the federal courts authority to hear Terri Schiavo’s case is unconstitutional. On Hannity & Colmes, she repeated this charge, screaming over ACLJ representative Jay Sekulow at least twice that the law is a “bill of attainder.” The end of their exchange was particularly embarassing:
HANNITY: This is what is in play here, Catherine. Here you have Congressional subpoenas ignored by an arrogant judiciary.
SEKULOW: Right.
HANNITY: Here you have laws that are dismissed outright without any consideration. They’re supposed to be, Catherine, co-equal branches of government and for these judicial tyrants, frankly, to ignore these laws …
SEKULOW: Right.
HANNITY: …to that extent, really puts into jeopardy the question of whether or not we have co-equal branches of government.
CRIER (talking over the last half-sentence): OK, Sean, let me answer it. Let me answer it. Number one, the request they made was that the federal judiciary take a look at this. That was the legislation out of the federal government, and in fact the federal judiciary has bent over backwards to do exactly that.
SEKULOW: Catherine, it was supposed to be de novo …
CRIER: Second, secondarily…
SEKULOW: Hold it. It … the statute said, if you read the statute, the statute says de novo trial. That’s what it says. That means a complete re-look. You can’t do that in an hour and thirty-five minute oral argument. You know that, and I know that. That’s not due process.
CRIER: Well, but, but it …
SEKULOW: That’s a wink and a nod.
CRIER: But it was illegitimate for the federal government or the state …
SEKULOW: No one said … you may not like the statute but no one’s held it unconstitutional.
CRIER (talking over the last half of that sentence): Jay, we’re going to take turns here, I assume we’re going to get both a hearing here.
SEKULOW: Get your facts right.
CRIER: And that is the state court just like the federal court cannot do a bill of attainder. They cannot write a piece of legislation for ….
SEKULOW: No court yet has said that this statute is unconstitutional.
CRIER (in a raised voice): Jay, are you just going to simply filibuster and shout me down or are we going to have a two-way conversation here?
SEKULOW: Well, get your facts right.
CRIER (screeching): Well, get YOUR facts right! And that is this is a bill of attainder
SEKULOW: It’s called an an act of Congress, and nobody’s held it unconstitutional.
CRIER: It is inappropriate for the government to write a piece of legislation for a single individual. You know that, I know that it’s absolutely UN-CONSTITUTIONAL.
SEKULOW: No court has held it unconstitutional.
HANNITY: Guys, hang on one second. Here’s the point I want to make here.
CRIER: Yeah, Sean.
HANNITY: We elect representatives to go make laws. That’s what we hire them to do. But for judges to just dismiss out of hand Congressional subpoenas, dismiss out of hand laws passed by Congress, signed by the President of the United States, it shows that they have no respect for that other branch of government. They are the ones that are out of control…
CRIER: But Sean…
HANNITY: I don’t understand why you …
CRIER: Sean…
HANNITY: don’t see that.
CRIER: If it is unconstitutional for Congress to write a bill regarding one individual, if that is inappropriate given our Constitution forward, why are we supposed to say the judges are doing wrong?
HANNITY: One judge…
SEKULOW: Catherine! No judge has said it’s unconstitutional!
CRIER (screaming): It is unconstitutional!
SEKULOW: They raised that, the courts did not say it was unconstitutional. You don’t like it. That doesn’t make it unconstitutional.
CRIER (screaming over that last sentence): You can scream all day long, but the fact is it is unconstitutional.
SEKULOW: I guess you’re the judge and the jury now.
CRIER: No, I believe in the rule of law, and obviously you don’t.
In other words, not only is Crier the legal eagle too stupid or too lazy to look up the phrase “bill of attainder” before bandying it about, she also thinks that it’s OK for a court to take jurisdiction and do a half-assed job if the Constitution says they had no right to take jurisdiction at all. Can just anybody work for CourtTV these days?
UPDATE: According to Wuzzadem, this mental midget was a judge, too. So basically, we have one judge who doesn’t know what a bill of attainder is, passionately defending the credentials of another judge, who doesn’t know what teh common English words “clear” or “convincing” mean. That should do wonders to build everybody’s confidence on the judiciary.
UPDATE x2: Here’s the silver lining. While constitutional illiteracy appears to be a helpful trait for those seeking to appear on CourtTV, at least it’s not an absolute requirement. In this online call-in program, Florida lawyer and blogger Matt Conigliaro states correctly the ruleof what is or isn’t a bill of attainder:
Question from anna: Isn’t it unconstitutional for Congress to get involved in a personal matter such as this?
Question from tfarrugia: Doesn’t the fact that the law specifically addresses an individual make it unconstitutional?
Matt Conigliaro: Unfortunately, constitutional questions can be very complex. Congress has the authority to pass laws that affect an individual, so long as the law comes within one of Congress’s powers and does not violate any constitutional right. For instance, Congress is prohibited from passing bills of attainder. If this is a bill of attainder, then it’s unconstitutional. Whether it is or not is rather complicated and concerns whether Terri is being punished. In the past, bills of attainder were usually laws that were passed in order to sentence someone for an offense. Imagine if Congress decided that Michael Jackson was guilty of a crime and just passed a law saying he is to spend 10 years in prison. That would be a bill of attainder.
[Emphasis added.]
Bingo. The only thing I would have said differently myself is that the chances of Congress passing any statute designed to punish Terri Schiavo were slim to none, and therefore, this issue wasn’t really so complicated after all.
March 30th, 2005 at 8:42 pm
I don’t know about bill of attainder, but Judge Birch’s opinion denying the petition for re-hearing en banc definitely shows that Crier’s view is not in left field.
March 30th, 2005 at 9:21 pm
That’s frustrating. She had the germ of one good point, though. A law can certainly be unconstitutional without any court ever finding it unconstitutional.
But for her to simply not know what a bill of attainder is is inexcusable for an attorney — at least one who is planning to shout the term a half dozen times on national television.
March 30th, 2005 at 9:22 pm
Balasubramani: A bill of attainder is a law singling out an individual or a group for punishment without a trial. This law doesn’t come close to that. So yes, Crier is in left field, for reasons having nothing to do with the merits of Judge Birch’s opinion or the dissent, one way or the other.
Spoons: That’s true, of course, but even if the law were unconstitutional, that would be no excuse for the courts to have applied it half-heartedly. If that were their position they shouldn’t have pretended to apply it at all.
March 30th, 2005 at 9:27 pm
I caught the tail end of that. I thought it was pretty funny of her to talk about the rule of law when her new book depended on someone violating the Scott Peterson gag order.
March 30th, 2005 at 9:56 pm
Crier was actually a judge, which may explain her strident defense of the Judiciary.
She also attempted to shout Joe Scarborough down, insisting that Greer must have been acting with only the best of intentions, since he’s a “fundamentalist Christian”.
March 30th, 2005 at 11:07 pm
Regardless, there is support for the view that the law is unconstitutional. She got the reasons wrong but her conclusion has support. There are others a lot more in left field than that (some members of Congress, for example).
March 30th, 2005 at 11:44 pm
Balasubramani, you’re missing the point. It is simply not possible to be “more in left field” than Catherine Crier on this issue. Her view is 100% ignorant, so the worst anyone else can be is equally wrong, not wronger. The fact that one lone judge thought the law unconstitutional was cute, but it has nothing to do with Crier’s ignorant ramblings, any more than I can brag about my wonderful skill at billiards when I call the 7 ball in the corner pocket, miss that ball completely, bounce the cue ball off a few sides, and inadverently sink the 5 ball in the side pocket.
If you had read Judge Birch’s creative dissent before citing it, you would know that the basis of his dissent is that he thinks any jurisdictional statute that specifies the level of review (in this case, de novo) violates the separation of powers. Crier’s objection, by contrast, is based on the fact that the statute relates to a specific person – which she falsely believes to be the definition of “bill of attainder.” The two theories have nothing to do with each other. They are conceptually unrelated, they are based on separate parts of the Constitution, and one is based on a “constitutional” objection any true constitutional scholar can easily identify as a non-issue, while the other is based on a rather expansive interpretation an otherwise legitimate constitutional concern. The only thing that Birch and Crier’s “constitutional” analyses have in common is that they are both wrong.
March 31st, 2005 at 12:47 am
“CRIER: It is inappropriate for the government to write a piece of legislation for a single individual. You know that, I know that it’s absolutely UN-CONSTITUTIONAL.”
Uh, folks, it is done quite often. Usually a one-time recognition of a particular act or set of acts, sometimes to bestow citizenship, and for several other reasons.
But the “de novo” doesn’t stretch as far as many seem to think. The House version called for it to be applied to BOTH the legalisms AND the evidence, but the bill as passed only applied to the legal side – for yet another review of the original (1994?) case not transferring guardianship from husband to parents. And the court was quite correct (if too literal-minded) to dismiss it, no evidence in-I-don’t-know-how-many-appeals showed Judge Greer ruled improperly according to what he had at the time has been shown or was in this appeal.
Now, I happen to think if evidence arising since then were included in a NEW trial over guardianship it would probably toss Mikey out. But it is mostly evidence pertaining to medical matters, not legal, which would dispose a judge toward awarding the case to the parents.
March 31st, 2005 at 5:26 am
Speaking of embarassing, dude says this:
“Hold it. It … the statute said, if you read the statute, the statute says de novo trial. ”
It says “de novo”, but it doesn’t say “trial.”
Oh and also: “SEKULOW: No court has held it unconstitutional.”
At least the one district court opinion has said that for temporary restraining orders, statutes are presumed constitutional.
But I thikn the concurrence in the EnBanc denial yesterday didn’t say it was a bill of attainder. It said it was a separation of powers issue. Damn liberal activist judges!
March 31st, 2005 at 6:57 am
Puh-leeze.
Yes, I made that point before. IOW, for all the damned liberal activist judges out there – and they are legion – only 1 in 12 (or 13, if you count the district court judge) could find a way to strain the Constitution far enough to get this statute to violate it. Seeing as 1 judge in 12 does not speak for the court, and seeing as 0 judges in 12 ruled under any theories remotely related to Crier’s, I think it’s pretty clear who won last night’s debate.
March 31st, 2005 at 7:19 am
” (or 13, if you count the district court judge)”
I thought he assumed the constitutionality. As far as I know everyone is assuming it, and this one liberal activist republican appointee on the 11th circuit pointed out his problems with it.
“Puh-leeze.”
That discussion is completely inapposite. De Novo is a standard of review, not a procedure. These aren’t word games. These words aren’t twisted.
Although I think there might be constitutional problems with us taking a reading of the statute that would force a court to reach an equitable result. But I have no idea what the strength of this argument is.
March 31st, 2005 at 8:21 am
Hey look, aren’t we all forgetting that Crier is a judge, and if a judge says it’s unconstitutional it must be. I mean that’s what I always thought right, Judges are always right, and that if something is unconstitutional it is only because judges say so. That’s also why campaign finance reform is constitutional because judges say so. They’re like the constitutional dictionary.
See how easy this is, so how could Crier be wrong. Oh, and don’t you forget if a judge says that it’s a bill of attainder it must be, because a judge says it and if a judge says it, it must be true. We don’t need to know what a bill of attainder really is, I mean because after all what a bill of attainder really is, is whatever a judge says it is. What, is that law a law about cutting taxes? That’s an unconstitutional bill of attainder…trust me on that, our constitution just lived a little longer and evovled to include that defination in bill of attainder…sorry you missed it, you must just be non-enlightened (a judge).
March 31st, 2005 at 9:34 am
“Hey look, aren’t we all forgetting that Crier is a judge, and if a judge says it’s unconstitutional it must be. ”
The other dude said so, at least. well, he said the opposite, if a court hasn’t said its unconstitutional, then it must be constitutional.
March 31st, 2005 at 9:40 am
I caught that screeching banshee on Scarborough also. I don’t know the legalities, but I do know that I won’t be looking at Court TV to learn about law.
March 31st, 2005 at 11:31 am
Couldn’t agree more, XRLQ. I caught her on Scarborough, and was more of the same.
April 1st, 2005 at 8:12 am
I always enjoy watching Catherine Crier on TV — particularly when the sound is off.
April 10th, 2005 at 12:00 pm
You folks ain’t heard nothin’ yet.
Didn’t anybody catch Crier’s Court TV show where she proclaimed (on the day before Schiavo died) that Terri Schiavo’s soul “had already left her body” ?
How’s THAT for leftist, judicial arrogance? Crier did not specifically say WHEN Schiavo’s soul left her body, just that it was already gone from her body. Typically, Crier dropped her little bomb and then breezily moved on to another topic.
Crier is no longer a judge (Texas is well rid of her) but she obviously represents the attitude of many of these black-robed folks sitting on various benches across our country, whose maniacal egotism has now gotten to the point where they now second-guess God.
August 12th, 2005 at 1:21 pm
[...] Xrlq has Rikki Klieman Said What? CourtTV contributor Rikki Klieman has been filling in for Bill Handel for KFI lately. This morning, while discussing the Cindy Sheehan affair with Michelle Malkin, Klieman said Sheehan could be “the next Rosa Parks.” O-kay. Between Nancy “Win Ugly” and Catherine “Whutz a Bill of Attayndur?” Crier, Klieman’s silliness brings to three the number of CourtTV talking heads who have me convinced that the network has no quality control whatsoever. [...]