Alabama’s Court of the Judiciary said it could decide soon whether to remove the state’s suspended chief justice from office after hearing Monday from both sides on his misconduct charges. WIAT-TV reported that Moore will instead go to trial in September. Earlier, activists on both sides of the gay marriage debate held dueling rallies outside the judicial building. He said their written arguments are enough to show why the Alabama Court of the Judiciary should dismiss the charges.
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Staver said no matter the immediate outcome, the bigger issue of such politics in the judiciary and how they impact justice will be further addressed.
The Court of the Judiciary is usually made up of nine judges, but one seat was left empty Monday as Court of Judiciary Judge John V. Denson, an Opelika attorney and former Auburn University board of trustee, had recused himself from Moore’s case.
Joiner asked John Carroll, one of the prosecutors for the JIC, how the COJ could rule on their summary judgement and punish Moore without having a trial.
“It is a great quote about standing up to tyranny”, Carroll said.
“Moore has said he was simply trying to clarify that a previous state ban on issuing marriage licenses to gay couples remained in effect because his fellow justices had not moved to rescind it”, the AP reports. Moore also mentioned what the Bible says about marriage in that letter. Carroll said Moore abused his power as chief justice to promote a private agenda against same-sex marriage. Before that ruling, Moore issued a similar order in February 2015 after a U.S. District Judge declared Alabama’s same-sex marriage law unconstitutional.
“They said I tried to influence them”.
The charges center on Moore’s January 6 order that informed probate judges that an order issued in March 2015 by the Alabama Supreme Court telling them not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples was still in place, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s and other federal courts’ rulings in the months prior to that time stating that same-sex marriage is legal. The facts of the case are not in dispute: Six months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that everyone has a fundamental right to marry, Roy Moore sent an order to 68 probate judges saying the Alabama Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ban remained in effect.
“They’re the ones who hired the prosecutor, they’re the ones that brought the case for the second time”, Moore said of the SPLC after the hearing. He was later re-elected to the post in 2012.
She and dozens of others who gathered carrying signs stating, “Judge Roy Moore is Right”, “Outlaw Sodomites” and “Don’t make a moral wrong a civil right”, are advocating for all charges against Moore to be dropped and that he be reinstated as chief justice.
A hearing on judicial misconduct charges against Alabama’s chief justice has begun before a packed house in Montgomery.
After the hearing Staver told a crowd of Moore supporters on the steps of the judicial building that the charges are “politically motivate”.
Moore’s case is being heard Monday afternoon. I said until the Alabama Supreme Court rules, this order remains in full force and effect.
Moore noted that Carroll – more than 30 years ago – had been legal director of the SPLC.
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After the hearing, Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Moore ordered probate judges to defy a federal court order and was playing “word games” in his defense. “There is nothing in that administrative order that says that”. “It’s clear that Justice Moore has abused his power to push his personal agenda”.
