Connecticut law professor Sarah Russell’s nomination to the federal court suffered through another brutal Senate judiciary committee hearing Thursday that focused again on her decision to sign what amounts to an anti-prison manifesto.
But in the end she was approved on a narrow 11-10 party line vote and the nomination was sent to the full Senate for confirmation.
Republicans attacked Russell, as they did during an earlier hearing, over a 2020 letter she signed with hundreds of others calling on Gov. Ned Lamont to release thousands of state prison and jail inmates at the start of the pandemic and “declare a moratorium on incarceration” during it.
The letter said prisons and jails are “detrimental to human rights and disproportionately harm marginalized communities, including Black, brown, Indigenous and other communities of color; immigrants; people with mental illness; people with disabilities; people in the LGBTQ+ community; people who use drugs; people engaged in sex work and street economies; and people experiencing houselessness [sic] and poverty.”
Committee Republicans, in unusually strident terms, complained that Russell’s call for at least a temporary halt to the incarceration of criminals, showed not only a bias but a disdain for the criminal justice process. They also accused Russell of intentionally trying to conceal the letter from the committee.
Russell delivered thousands of pages of her writings to the committee, as all judicial nominees are expected to do, but failed to include the 2020 letter, something she called an oversight.
One longtime observer of the political battles that have come to consume the judicial nomination process called the debate over Russell on Thursday “one of the harshest I’ve ever seen.”
“It was brutal,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor who tracks federal judicial nominations at the University of Richmond. “I still think she is going to get through, but I don’t know how she recovers from what they did to her reputation.”
U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, said the letter Russell signed “reflects a certain betrayal and in turn reflects a lack of judicial temperament.”
“In other words, they were basically declaring an incarceration holiday,” Lee said. “Think of the message that sent at the time. ‘If you commit a crime in the state of Connecticut you are not going to be thrown in prison.’ ”
U.S. Sen John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, accused Russell of purposefully withholding a “radical” letter.
“This is America,” he said. “Ms. Russell has a constitutional right to say these things, to believe those things. She does not have a constitutional right to be a federal judge. And she is not qualified to be a federal judge if those are her beliefs.”
Connecticut U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who recommended Russell’s nomination to the White House, tried twice to shut off debate and rehabilitate Russell. Blumenthal said that Russell “in effect disowned the letter” in correspondence she submitted to the committee after being criticized during her earlier appearance on Nov. 1.
“I thank my colleagues on the other side for the comments, which really don’t call into question the fundamental credentials of this nominee, which are extraordinary,” Blumenthal said. “As to the letter, Senator Kennedy, those are not her beliefs.”
Blumenthal then read from Russell’s supplemental statement, in which she wrote: “The letter does not accurately reflect my views. In particular the letter’s suggestions were overly broad and failed to make expressly clear that all decisions about whether to incarcerate people and whether to release people who are already incarcerated must be conducted in a manner that is consistent with the law and public safety.”
“And she also expresses regret for failing to submit that letter,” Blumenthal said. “She made a mistake.”
Kennedy retorted that he appreciated Blumenthal’s thoughts, but addressing Blumenthal directly, said he didn’t believe it.
“Richard, here is how I see it,” Kennedy said. “She got caught. She had an epiphany once she got caught. And I am looking at her qualifications. And I am looking at her record. And I don’t know that she didn’t help write this letter. I know she signed it. And I know she tried to hide it from this committee.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, also was dismissive of Blumenthal’s defense of Russell.
“I don’t believe that it is an accident that she didn’t turn it over,” Cruz said. “To my friend from Connecticut, if she is not bright enough to figure out that this letter is saying, ‘Let the criminals go’ … then she needs to go back to remedial English in fifth grade and not become a federal judge.”
The vote on whether to approve Russell’s nomination by President Joe Biden to a U.S. District Court seat in Connecticut occurred on a day when partisanship among committee members was in full bloom.
The committee meeting opened with a sharp argument over issuing subpoenas as part of an investigation of ethics rules at the Supreme Court. And tempers rose still higher when minority Republicans complained they were being denied opportunities to debate the credentials of certain nominees.
The hearing ended when Republicans walked out of the meeting, causing the vote on subpoenas to be postponed for lack of a quorum.
Russell is a law professor at Quinnipiac University who has taught at Yale University and worked as a public defender in federal court. She is part of the cohort of federal judges nominated by Biden, who called on the Senate at the start of his term to confirm federal judges that diversity the court by race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and professional background.
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