A Dishonest Judge And The Fight For Life

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – In  2013 the investigative journalist David Daleiden, and his firm, Center for Medical Progress, went undercover to expose the illegal activities of the abortion industry. During the following 30 months, he documented the sale and purchase of aborted baby parts. He was able to document that oftentimes these baby parts were purchased with tax dollars for research purposes.

He also found that some organs would fetch a higher price if the abortion was performed in a manner that might cause a higher risk to the mother seeking the abortion. His report also indicated that some of the fetal parts sold were from babies that were actually born alive.

In 2015 he began to release the undercover videos he had recorded. They confirmed evidence of illegal partial-birth abortions, of infants born alive and vivisected for their organs, as well as a spate of other financial and ethical violations relating to the illegal trafficking of aborted baby parts.

Congress, in response, conducted an investigation that led many states to defund Planned Parenthood. But it also brought multiple suits against Daleiden, including a criminal claim brought by then California Attorney General Kamala Harris.

During the pendency of one of the suits, Daleiden’s defense team became aware of several connections that the federal judge hearing the case, William Orrick, had with the abortion industry. They immediately requested that the judge recuse himself from the case, which the judge refused to do. When Daleiden persisted, another judge was named to resolve the issue who then found that Orrick was fine because the financial involvements were all in his wife’s name.

That case resulted in a $16 million verdict in favor of Planned Parenthood against Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress. But even before the case ended, Judge Orrick issued a gag order preventing Daleiden and the Center for Medical Progress from releasing any of the videos to the public and suppressed them at trial. Some of those videos showed how abortion clinic employees callously and flippantly negotiated the price of baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains.

Daleiden’s legal team appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and in its petition noted Judge Orrick’s conflicts of interest. Recently, The Wall Street Journal included Orrick in a list of judges who broke judicial ethics, and perhaps the law, by hearing cases in which they might have a financial interest and who ruled in favor of their interests.

In the report it found that Orrick had founded a Planned Parenthood clinic that fed pregnant patients into “fetus-harvesting” programs. And before becoming a federal judge, he worked as the board secretary and legal counsel for an entity called the Good Samaritan Family Resource Center, which partnered with Planned Parenthood. While Orrick was working there, it set up a PP facility on site.

So how will this new information affect the case on appeal?

“This may turn out to be determinative,” Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society, which represents Daleiden, told my Iowa Catholic Radio audience.

“This is something [the judge] should have told us, but didn’t,” Brejcha said, noting that the defense team didn’t find out about the judge’s prejudices until the trial was underway. He noted that they had tried to appeal the recusal matter after the second judge ruled against them, but interlocutory appeals during trial are normally disfavored. Now that the case is over, at least on the trial level, we have a better appellate case.

“We believe we have a good case on appeal on this issue and many others,” he said. “His [Orrick’s] view of the law was so jaundiced — negative to our side; much of our evidence and expert witnesses were barred.”

He added, “It was a one-sided adjudication before Judge Orrick. The Planned Parenthood connection was evident in his slanted instructions he gave to the jury.”

Noting that Daleiden was not trying to make a profit on his reporting, but to shine a light on the abortion industry’s actions, Brejcha said, “You never had a sense in his courtroom that David was only trying to affect public policy.”

Federal law requires judges to recuse themselves from cases in which they or a family member have a financial interest, or the “ownership of a legal or equitable interest, however small.” This Orrick not only did not do, but resisted attempts to have him removed from the case.

The Judicial Administrative Office had responded that the original reports were “troubling” and that the office is carefully reviewing the matter. “That may be something the Ninth Circuit will look at; his ties to Planned Parenthood should have disqualified him from hearing the case,” Brejcha said.

The appellate case is being briefed now, he said, and repeated that he believes they have a good case for reversal; if not, they are prepared to go to the Supreme Court.

Voris And Free Speech Rights

There’s another case that is being appealed to the Second Circuit that you might want to follow. It involves a traditional Catholic ministry that wants to hold a prayer rally in Baltimore near where the bishops are meeting next month.

The case is St. Michael’s Media, Inc. v. The Mayor and City Council of Baltimore and it involves a well-known Catholic media personality, Michael Voris, whose daily “Vortex” episodes are distributed under the program name “Church Militant.”

Voris, as you might know, has been very critical of many of the bishops, especially over the sexual abuse scandal and his claim that the bishops are collectively not taking a strong enough stand against pro-abortion Catholic politicians who still present themselves — unworthily, he suggests — for Communion.

As a result he rented an outdoor city pavilion near the hotel where the bishops will be meeting in November, as he has done several times in the past. The idea is not only to pray for the bishops’ correction, but to be in a place where they can see the gathered crowd. The title for this year’s activity is called: “Bishops: Enough is Enough Prayer Rally.”

To make a long story short, Voris and the entity that controls the pavilion entered into a rental arrangement last summer to coincide with the bishops’ meeting. The city later canceled the agreement, citing reports that Voris and crowd were violent and had connections with the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Voris then brought suit in federal court claiming that the cancellation violated St. Michael’s Media’s First Amendment rights. A hearing was held before U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Hollander, a Clinton appointee, who, in an 86-page Memorandum Opinion, sided with Voris, finding no evidence to support the claims that the prayer rally would become violent or a public safety concern (“The City cannot conjure up hypothetical hecklers and then grant them veto power.”), and carefully took apart the constitutional argument that the city had proposed that its action would not violate anyone’s free speech rights (“The First Amendment to the Constitution is at the heart of this case.”).

“Viewpoint discrimination,” the judge found. But when Voris went to check on arrangements, the city — ignoring the court order — shooed him away. As it turned out, the next morning the city was filing an appeal with the court of appeals which may be calculated to drag the legal proceedings out long enough for the bishops to conclude their meeting while things are pending.

This will be a classic First Amendment case. The court of appeals reaction will be interesting, especially if it acts immediately so as to allow the prayer rally should it decide to affirm Judge Hollander’s decision.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. CT on Faith On Trial on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)