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Chicago killings raise worries about security Marshals Service deals with rising flow of threats |
By Gail Gibson-Sun National Staff:
Federal judge Lawrence L. Piersol was vacationing in Florida this week when a routine morning call to his office in Sioux Falls, S.D., turned up the latest -- but hardly the worst -- of the angry threats that in recent years have proliferated and troubled judges across the country.
This time, the message came from a state prisoner unhappy that his appeal to the federal courts had been rejected: "If you don't respond to me in 30 days," the inmate warned the judge, "I'm going to have somebody come see you."
While attacks are rare, the vulnerability of the bench was laid bare two weeks ago with the slayings in Chicago of the husband and elderly mother of U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow.
Authorities said Thursday that a man Lefkow had ruled against in a civil lawsuit claimed responsibility for the killings in a suicide note written shortly before he shot himself in the head during a traffic stop in Wisconsin.
Terrorism cases:
In courthouses across the country, the case heightened concerns about how best to protect judges, their staff and families -- an issue that has gained attention in recent years as sensitive terror cases have reached the federal courts and as public battles over judicial nominations have grown increasingly contentious.
It also has raised questions about how well-equipped the U.S. Marshals Service is to respond to the nearly 700 threats made against federal judges each year, well above the roughly 200 threats a year it received two decades ago.
In 2003, the most recent year for which figures are available, the agency provided security details to 20 federal judges and assistant U.S. attorneys considered to be at high risk.
Lefkow was in that group in 2003 after threats were made against her by Matthew Hale, the self-styled leader of a white supremacist group. In consultation with the Marshals Service, she ended the security detail after a few weeks, when the threat was no longer considered to be serious.
Suspicion turned again to Hale and his followers last week when Lefkow discovered the bodies of her husband, Michael Lefkow, 64, and her mother, Donna Humphrey, 89, shot to death in her North Chicago home.
Difficult to predict
But Thursday's rapid shift in the investigation illustrates the difficulties in trying to keep judges safe. Security experts say judges who are attacked usually know their assailant, but that person often is not the most obvious, or even the most dangerous, defendant on their docket.
"Research on violence to public officials strongly suggests that the people who act generally are not the ones who reach out before," said Frederick S. "Ted" Calhoun, who developed the threat-assessment process used by the Marshals Service and who has written extensively about violence against judicial officials.
"You can't fall into a trap of thinking the case has to be weighty or important. It all depends on how important the case is to that person."
A picture emerged Thursday of perhaps a very different assailant in the Lefkow killings with the suicide confession of Bart Ross, a 57-year-old Chicago man who had turned to the courts seeking redress for cancer treatment by the University of Illinois-Chicago Hospital he said amounted to a "terrorist act."
Ross complained about many judges who rebuffed his claims, including Lefkow, who had dismissed his case late last year. But it was not clear Thursday whether he ever made direct threats to any of them.
Looking at behavior:
Calhoun, formerly with the Marshals Service, said that in many cases a reporting system that is able to detect unusual behavior can be as important in tracking possible suspects as direct messages.
Developing that expertise is just one area that could come under consideration as judges push for better protection in the wake of the Chicago slayings.
Piersol, who was appointed to a seat on the U.S. District Court for South Dakota 12 years ago and who now heads the Federal Judges' Association, said other judges in the past week have raised the possibility of government-paid home security systems, the use of criminologists to review caseloads for danger signs and a systematic review of privacy issues.
"I think there will be some reassessment going forward, because there is a real concern among judges," Piersol said. "There is no foolproof system, but what you hope to do is reduce the percentages for some thing like what happened in Chicago ever happening again."
The Marshals Service is almost certain to face close scrutiny in that review. A report last year by the Justice Department's inspector general said that in spite of funding and staffing increases since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Marshals Service "routinely failed to meet its internal standards that require threats against judges to be assessed within a specific time period."
The report also concluded that "the validity of [the agency's] assessments is questionable because the historical threat database used to assess reported threats has not been updated since 1996."
In a written response, the Marshals Service noted its long record of success. Only three federal judges were killed between 1979 and 1998, and none in the past six years. The agency said it was addressing concerns about the timeliness and adequacy of its threat assessment system, but officials did not respond this week to requests for comment.
Public record:
Complicating the work of those who protect judges is the vast amount of personal information available in public records, many of which can be accessed online, such as records of home sales or notices of public appearances.
"Unfortunately, in this very open society, it's very hard to cover your tracks," said Jordana C. Beebe, communications director for the San Diego-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
For judges, the problem can be compounded by their frequently high-profile status in the community.
U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott of Ohio -- and her exact home address -- made the newspaper in Cincinnati last fall after her husband, class-action attorney Stan Chesley, purchased an extravagant estate listed at $11.9 million, the highest housing price ever listed in the Cincinnati area.
Last week, Dlott was in the news again. A Cincinnati woman with no known cases pending before Dlott was charged with mailing threatening communications after she sent the judge a letter with a threat scrawled across the bottom of an envelope and a photograph of Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow inside. From The Baltimore Sun |
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