By: Derek Hawkins//June 15, 2016//
Supreme Court
Case Name: Williams v. Pennsylvania
Case No.: 15-5040
Focus: Due Process violation
Denial of a recusal motion and subsequent judicial participation violated due process clause of 14th amendment
The Court’s due process precedents do not set forth a specific test governing recusal when a judge had prior involvement in a case as a prosecutor; but the principles on which these precedents rest dic tate the rule that must control in the circumstances here: Under the Due Process Clause there is an impermissible risk of actual bias when a judge earlier had significant, personal involvement as a prosecutor in a critical decision regarding the defendant’s case. The Court applies an objective standard that requires recusal when the likelihood of bias on the part of the judge “is too high to be constitutionally tolerable.” Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U. S. 868, 872. A constitutionally intolerable probability of bias exists when the same person serves as both accuser and adjudicator in a case. See In re Murchison, 349 U. S. 133, 136–137. No attorney is more integral to the accusatory process than a prosecutor who participates in a major adversary decision. As a result, a serious question arises as to whether a judge who has served as an advocate for the State in the very case the court is now asked to adjudicate would be influenced by an improper, if inadvertent, motive to validate and preserve the result obtained through the adversary process. In these circumstances, neither the involvement of multiple actors in the case nor the passage of time relieves the former prosecutor of the duty to withdraw in order to ensure the neutrality of the judicial process in determining the consequences his or her own earlier, critical decision may have set in motion.
Vacated and Remanded
Concurring:
Dissenting: ROBERTS, ALITO, THOMAS