Liteky v. United States
- Decided
- March 7, 1994
- Docket
- 92-6921
- Status
- Published
- Jurisdiction
- Federal
Cited 7,016 timesNo negative treatment found in this library
What later courts said
- holding that evidence of bias sufficient to require recusal of a judge must come from an extrajudicial source, rather than merely from unfavorable rulings — Information Technology & Applications Corporation v. United States, and Rs Information Systems, Inc. (2003)
- holding that charges of judicial bias and partiality cannot be established solely by “expressions of impatience, dissatisfaction, annoyance, and even anger” — Aguilar-Solis v. Immigration & Naturalization Service (1999)
- holding that charges of judicial bias and partiality cannot be established solely by “expressions of impatience, dissatisfaction, annoyance, and even anger” — Tito Ibrahim Barsoum Ishak v. Alberto R. Gonzales , Attorney General, Tito Ibrahim Barsoum Ishak v. Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General (2005)
Each line is a later court’s own words about this case, not a summary. Read the opinion before relying on it.
How the opinion begins
Justice Scalia delivered the opinion of the Court.
Section 455(a) of Title 28 of the United States Code requires a federal judge to “disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” This case presents the question whether required recusal under this provision is subject to the limitation that has come to be known as the “extrajudicial source” doctrine.
[*542] I In the 1991 trial at issue here, petitioners were charged with willful destruction of property of the United States in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 1361. The indictment alleged that they had committed acts of vandalism, including the spilling of human blood on walls and various objects, at the Fort Benning Military Reservation. Before trial petitioners moved to disqualify the District Judge pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 455(a). The motion relied on events that had occurred during and immediately after an earlier trial, involving petitioner Bourgeois, before the same District Judge.
Statutes cited
Cite this
Liteky v. United States, 510 U.S. 540 (1994)Read the full opinion
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