Cato’s Tim Lynch notes that the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers recently gave Janet frickin’ Reno its “Champion of Justice” award, complete with standing ovation at the accompanying dinner.

Um. NACDL’s motto is “Liberty’s Last Champion.” It has the phrase “criminal defense” in its title.

Janet Reno oversaw and is largely responsible for Waco. She sent armed thugs into the private home of a peaceful family. Janet Reno is responsible for Richad Jewel and Wen Ho Lee. This is the Janet Reno who as a prosecutor in Florida pursued a number of bogus “recovered memory” cases, and wrongly prosecuted at least one man for child sex abuse, then refused to admit her error, allowing the man to fester in prison for more than a decade.

What the hell was NACDL thinking? I’m guessing this has something to do with the fact that now that she is retired from political office and done climbing the professional ladder Reno has made some meek overtures toward looking at wrongful convictions. Swell. She ought to know. But that doesn’t take the blood off her hands. And it certainly doesn’t merit her any sort of honor.

Shame on NACDL.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 13th, 2006 at 10:36 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.