Pickering joins bench

last updated 8 January 2015

Jackson, Miss.

President Bush installed Mississippi Judge Charles Pickering Sr. on a federal appeals court last week, bypassing Democratic opposition by acting while Congress was in recess. Sen. Charles Schumer, one of the Democrats who had blocked a confirmation vote on Pickering for three years, called the recess appointment “a finger in the eye.” Democrats said Pickering had shown bias against blacks on and off the bench—he once reduced the sentence of a man who burned a cross near the home of an interracial couple. Bush said the critics had unfairly smeared a good man. “If he were given a vote, he would be confirmed,” Bush said. Pickering can serve until the next Congress convenes, in January 2005.