The battle of Hastings: should the impeached judge head the House Intel Committee?(ELECTION AFTERMATH)(Alcee Hastings, House Intelligence Committee)

IN the summer of 1988, the House of Representatives considered articles of impeachment against Alcee Hastings, a federal judge in Florida accused of conspiring to take bribes. It was only the tenth time in U.S. history that a judge had faced impeachment, and Michigan Democratic congressman John Conyers took to the floor to suggest that some of the allegations against Hastings, the first black to serve on the federal bench in Florida, might be racially motivated. Nevertheless, Conyers said, the case had to be judged on its merits, and on those merits--as chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Justice that investigated the matter, he knew the case backward and forward--he had decided to vote for impeachment.

In his speech, Conyers harked back to civil-rights days, when corrupt judges some times twisted and ignored the law. "We did not wage that civil-rights struggle merely to replace one form of judicial corruption with another," Conyers told his fellow lawmakers. "The principle of equality requires that a black public official be held to the same standard that other public officials are held to. Just as race should never disqualify a person from office, race should never insulate a person from the consequences of wrongful conduct."

Conyers's argument prevailed: On August 3, 1988, Hastings was impeached by a vote of 413 to 3. And Conyers, a cosponsor of the impeachment resolution, went on to serve as one of the House managers who argued for impeachment in Hastings's Senate trial. There, on October 20, 1989, Hastings was convicted and removed from the bench.

One might expect such a verdict to end a career, but Hastings was more resilient than that. In 1992, he rebounded from his impeachment to win election to Congress from the 23rd district of Florida. (The terms of his conviction didn't bar him from holding future public office.) Hastings has served in the House ever since, and has accumulated a good deal of seniority.

His troubles in the 1980s would be ancient history but for the fact that Democrats won control of the House on November 7. As a result, Hastings is now in line to become the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. (By rights, that spot should go to Rep. Jane Harman, but a feud with speaker Nancy Pelosi has bumped her out of the running.) Now Pelosi has to decide whether a man who was impeached for bribery and convicted in the Senate is qualified for one of the most sensitive posts in Congress. Before she makes her decision, Pelosi will undoubtedly give Hastings's case a close look. When she does, here's what she'll find:

Hastings was a prominent South Florida attorney when he was appointed to the federal bench in 1979 by Jimmy Carter. His problems began in 1981 with the case of two brothers, Frank and Thomas Romano, who had been accused of stealing $1 million from a union pension fund. The men were tried and convicted in Hastings's court. While they were awaiting sentencing, a man named William Dredge--a longtime criminal who at the time was facing drug charges--got in touch with the FBI and said that Hastings had solicited a bribe in an ongoing criminal case.

Dredge said that a close friend of Hastings, a D.C. lawyer named William Borders, was the go-between: Borders's job was to collect the bribe money and pass it on to Hastings. In addition, Dredge said that Borders was interested in soliciting a bribe for Hastings from the Romano brothers. He said that Borders had asked him, Dredge, to see if the brothers were interested in paying Hastings $150,000 in exchange for no jail time and having their ill-gotten gains, which had been confiscated, returned to them.