Mississippi: Judging the Judge

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Only three sitting federal judges have ever been indicted for serious crimes, and until last week only one had been convicted (Las Vegas Judge Harry Claiborne, found guilty in 1984 of filing false income tax returns). Now a second name has been added to that happily short list. A Hattiesburg, Miss., jury found U.S. District Court Judge Walter L. Nixon Jr. guilty of two counts of perjury resulting from his intervention in a drug case against the son of a longtime friend.

Nixon, 57, who sits in Biloxi as chief judge of the Southern District of Mississippi, was accused of accepting lucrative oil and gas royalties in return for helping persuade state authorities to drop marijuana-smuggling charges against his friend's son. The jury in Hattiesburg, where the case was transferred, found the judge innocent of accepting an illegal gift and of one perjury charge, but guilty of lying to a grand jury when he denied having anything to do with the drug case or discussing it with the prosecuting attorney. Nixon faces a maximum ten-year prison sentence and $20,000 fine for perjury. Even so, he cannot be removed from the federal bench unless he is impeached by Congress.