The Senate will soon consider an appellate court nominee who once praised electric shock punishment as a law professor.
Stephanos Bibas–picked by President Trump to preside over the Third Circuit–wrote a paper in 2009, claiming that mild electrocution would be an acceptable alternative to imprisonment.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is planning on holding a confirmation vote on Bibas later this week. Bibas is among four federal appellate circuit judges set to be considered in the next few days by the upper chamber.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) spoke poorly of Bibas in superlative terms on Tuesday, in a floor speech decrying all of the judicial appointments up for a vote this week.
Durbin focused on a 2009 draft paper by Bibas entitled “Corporal Punishment, Not Imprisonment.”
In his paper, Bibas said that numerous common crimes should be met with “non-disfiguring corporal punishment, such as electric shocks.”
He said “multiple calibrated electroshocks or taser shots” should be acceptable and that medical professionals could be present “to ensure the offender’s health could bear it.”
The legal scholar also said that convicted criminals could be put “in the stocks or pillory, where they would sit or stand for hours bent for uncomfortable positions.”
“Bystanders and victims could jeer and pelt them with rotten eggs and tomatoes (but not rocks),” Bibas wrote.
The Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution bans “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Ultimately, Bibas disavowed his writings–as the nominee himself said during his confirmation hearing earlier this month. But Durbin said the paper was troubling nonetheless.
“This was a polished, heavily-footnoted, 60-page draft law review article,” Durbin remarked.
He noted that Bibas presented his writings to three legal academic conferences, and before three student chapters of the hard-line conservative Federalist Society. Bibas’ lecture to the students was billed: “the shocking case for hurting criminals.”
“And he wrote this paper after Congress considered the McCain torture amendment,” Durbin said, referring to legislation passed last decade to explicitly outlaw waterboarding.
Durbin additionally noted that Bibas had written his pro-electroshock advocacy after serving as a federal prosecutor.
“I wonder about the temperament of this nominee,” the lawmaker later added.
The other three appellate circuit nominees scheduled to be considered this week are Amy Barrett, Joan Larsen, and Allison Eid. They have been selected to serve on the Seventh, Sixth, and Tenth Circuits, respectively.
All four nominees are members of the Federalist Society—upon which President Trump has leaned heavily for judicial nominations. Larsen and Eid were on President Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist.
