The confirmation hearing for Judge Kato Crews, a federal court magistrate judge, was going swimmingly Wednesday until Sen. John Kennedy, the slow-talking Republican from Louisiana, asked the judge how he analyzes a Brady motion. The senator was referring to the legal requirement for a prosecutor to share any evidence with the defense that can help a defendant in a criminal case.
“Senator, in my 4 ½ years on the bench,” Crews replied, “I don’t believe I’ve had the occasion to address a Brady motion in my career.”
“Do you know what a Brady motion is?” Sen. Kennedy, an accomplished attorney himself, asked the current federal magistrate judge.
“Senator, in my time on the bench, I’ve not had occasion to address that and so it’s not coming to mind at the moment what a Brady motion is.”
There is the possibility that Judge Crews, if he learned the Brady ruling in law school, has long forgotten it. At the large law firms he worked at and later co-founded, the attorney worked in civil litigation going back almost 20 years. In his role as a federal magistrate, he is also removed from criminal court proceedings. Yet the federal judge nomination means Crews would oversee criminal cases, which involve that key U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and which would be on the mind and lips of defense attorneys protecting their clients.
Even when Kennedy reminded Crews of the Brady v. Maryland ruling, and asked the nominee what it held, the magistrate judge appeared unsure.
“I believe the Brady case involved something involving the Second Amendment,” Crews finally said.
Judge Crews is currently serving as a U.S. magistrate judge in Colorado, where he has served since 2018. He appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee after he was nominated by President Biden to move up to a soon-to-be-vacant U.S. District Court seat.
According to the White House announcement, Judge Crews worked as an associate then a partner at large law firms in Colorado before he was appointed a federal magistrate judge.
American Family Radio show host and attorney Jenna Ellis tells AFN most people don’t know about the Brady ruling but most people, she says, didn’t attend law school.
“He should be very well aware of some of these very basic Criminal Procedure 101 cases,” she says of Crews, “that all of us had to study for law school exams and also to get bar licenses.”
The nominee's stumble, Ellis observes, suggests not only that he was unprepared for the confirmation hearing but, worse, that he is not qualified to be a federal judge.
“We are getting people that are truly, truly unqualified to sit on the bench, and in various other government positions around the country, and it's outrageous,” Ellis warns.
One clue to why Judge Crews, who is black, was nominated to be a federal judge was the February announcement from the White House. It stated his nomination fulfills President Biden’s promise “to ensure that the nation’s courts reflect the diversity that is one of our greatest assets as a country—both in terms of personal and professional backgrounds.”
Two years into the President Biden’ term, the American public has witnessed that “diversity” such as a Vice President chosen because she is black and a woman, who speaks like a kindergarten teacher; a Secretary of Transportation, who takes three months off work for maternity leave during a supply chain crisis; a man who dresses like a woman named to a top post at Health and Human Services; and a homosexual “non-binary” man at the Department of Energy who was caught stealing women’s clothes for a sexual fetish.
