The Democratic spin is that the Republican Senate’s Oct. 5 party-line vote, 54-45, to reject Ronnie L. White’s nomination for a U.S. District Court seat in Missouri was tinged with racism. At the very least, as President Clinton put it, the vote adds "credence to the perceptions that they treat minority and women judicial nominees unfairly and unequally." The Republican spin is, not surprisingly, quite different. In the words of White’s main critic, Sen. John Ashcroft, R-Mo., White’s record as a Missouri Supreme Court judge is "pro-criminal and activist," and exudes "a serious bias against…the death penalty," even "a tremendous bent toward criminal activity." Indeed, said Sen.

Don Nickles, R-Okla., "many" Republican Senators "didn’t know what race Judge White is." Which is closer to the truth? Numbers supply part of the answer. Judge White has voted to uphold 70 percent (41) of the 59 death sentences he has reviewed, while voting to reverse the other 18, including 10 that were unanimously reversed and three in which he was the only dissenter. That’s a bit below the 75 percent to 81 percent averages of the five current Missouri Supreme Court judges whom Ashcroft himself appointed when he was Governor, according to numbers compiled by the Missouri Democratic Party. It’s well above the 53 percent average of Elwood Thomas, the now-deceased Ashcroft appointee whom White replaced in 1995. As for race, the raw fact is that the Senate’s rejection of the 46-year-old White–the first black person ever to sit on the Missouri Supreme Court–was its first floor vote against any judicial nominee since 1987, when the Senate spurned Robert H. Bork for the U.S. Supreme Court.

But Democrats are quick to cite statistics showing that the Senate has confirmed a substantially smaller percentage of Clinton’s minority judicial nominees than of his white nominees–while taking longer to bring their nominations to a vote. Some Republicans claim that a higher percentage of Clinton’s minority nominees are liberal activists. Perhaps that’s true. But does Ronnie White fit that bill? Consider White’s two lone death-penalty dissents specifically criticized by Ashcroft. One involved a rape-murder for which one Brian Kinder was sentenced to die. Judge White’s "only basis" for voting to give Kinder a new trial, Ashcroft told his colleagues, was that Earl R.

Blackwell, the trial judge, had said he was "opposed to affirmative action." This was a cynical distortion. In fact, White’s dissent stated that Judge Blackwell’s criticism of affirmative action–which came in a campaign press release explaining his decision to leave the Democratic Party–was "irrelevant to the issue of bias." What was "indefensibly racist," he continued, was the following assertion in Blackwell’s press release: "While minorities need to be represented or [sic] course, I believe the time has come for us to place much more emphasis and concern on the hard-working taxpayers in this country." As White wrote, this "pernicious racial stereotype…is not ambiguous or complex (nor, unfortunately, original)." It means "that minorities are not hard-working taxpayers." And for Judge Blackwell to issue such a statement–six days before he was to begin the trial of a black man facing the death penalty–"created a reasonable suspicion that he could not preside over the case impartially." Judge White was right. And his eloquent dissent was both more candid and more consistent with his court’s own precedents than was the majority opinion. Ashcroft also assailed White’s dissent from a 1998 decision upholding the murder convictions and death sentence of one James Johnson. In an appalling succession of shootings growing out of a domestic dispute at Johnson’s home, the previously law-abiding Vietnam veteran had stalked and killed a sheriff, two deputies, and the wife of another sheriff. His only defense was insanity. "If Mr. Johnson was in control of his faculties when he went on this murderous rampage, then he assuredly deserves the death sentence he was given," Judge White wrote. But a blunder by Johnson’s defense lawyer, White added, had so "utterly destroyed the credibility" of his insanity defense as to deny him a fair trial. In his opening statement, the defense lawyer had focused on a story that Johnson–who claimed to have no memory of what he had done–had strung a "perimeter" of rope and tin cans around his garage under the delusion that he was "back in Vietnam," in combat. This scenario was soon exposed as fiction: The prosecution revealed with a flourish that the "perimeter" had been the work of police staking out Johnson’s home after the killings. The majority and Judge White alike faulted both the defense lawyer (for inadequate investigation) and the state (for leaving him with a false impression of the facts). They differed on whether there was a "reasonable probability" that, but for these unprofessional lapses, the jury might have upheld the insanity defense. The majority said no; Judge White–noting that Johnson’s homicidal conduct suggested at least "something akin to madness"–said yes. I’m not sure whether he was right. But it surely was a case on which reasonable judges could disagree. And in another such case, in 1996, it was Judge White who wrote the court’s decision upholding a brutal killer’s death sentence–and it was an Ashcroft appointee, then-Chief Judge John C. Holstein, who dissented.

"The cornerstone of any civilized system of justice," Holstein wrote then, "is that the rules are applied evenly to everyone, no matter how despicable the crime." That does not seem to be the view of many Senate Republicans now. Their treatment of Ronnie White suggests that they prefer judges to rubber-stamp the decisions of trial judges, prosecutors, and police. Sen. Ashcroft also stressed criticism of White’s record by police groups, including 77 of Missouri’s 114 sheriffs. This may help explain why the state’s other Republican Senator, Christopher S. Bond, joined Ashcroft in opposing Judge White on the floor–after having introduced him to the Judiciary Committee last year as "a man of the highest integrity and honor," with the "qualifications and character traits" to be a federal judge. But it turns out that Ashcroft himself orchestrated some of the police opposition. He faces a tough re-election battle next year and seems to be running as Mr. Death Penalty against the man who appointed Judge White–Democratic Gov. Mel Carnahan. (Carnahan also supports the death penalty.) Ashcroft urged at least two police groups to oppose White, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Carl Wolf, president of the Missouri Police Chiefs Association, told the newspaper that Ashcroft’s office had called to solicit his opposition. Wolf declined because his group does not comment on judicial nominations. Besides, he said: "I really have a hard time seeing that [White’s] against law enforcement. I’ve always known him to be an upright, fine individual." In short, the record shows that Judge White takes seriously his duty both to enforce the death penalty and to ensure that defendants get fair trials. It suggests neither that he’s "pro-criminal" nor that he’s a liberal activist. What it does suggest is courage. And while White may be more sensitive to civil liberties than his Ashcroft-appointed colleagues are, his opinions also exude a spirit of moderation, care, and candor. Would the Republicans who voted against Ronnie White–most of them in deference to Ashcroft and Bond–have treated an otherwise-identical white nominee any better? I doubt it. But by giving such transparently bogus reasons for trashing a nominee who happens to be black–at a time when statistics have already raised troubling questions about the Senate’s handling of minority nominees–Republicans provoked suspicions not only among those who are profligate in flinging charges of racism, but also among many fair-minded people. And those who claimed to have been ignorant of White’s race compounded insensitivity with obtuseness. Even if true, this shows that they went into the first floor vote in 12 years to reject a judicial nominee without listening to what their Democratic colleagues were saying or learning anything about the nominee’s admirable life story. In an era of politicized law, as I wrote recently, the best antidote for partisan gridlock over judicial nominees is for Presidents to shun ideological crusaders and choose moderate centrists. That’s what President Clinton did here. And that’s why–race aside–the Senate’s vote and the smearing of Judge White were shameful acts of pettiness and partisanship.