In December 1998 the Missouri Supreme Court scheduled the execution of convicted murderer Darrell Mease for the night of Jan. 29, 1999. That just happened to be the same day Pope John Paul II was going to be in St. Louis during his historic visit. The court quietly changed the execution date, but aides at the Vatican had already taken note.

On Jan. 29, Carnahan was asked to meet with the Pope's emissaries at the home of St. Louis Archbishop Justin Rigali. There, they urged Carnahan, a Southern Baptist, to spare Mease's life. Later, at a prayer service at St. Louis' Roman Catholic Cathedral, the pope, a crusading death-penalty opponent, approached Carnahan sitting in the front pew and asked him to "show mercy" on Mease. That night Carnahan created his own political firestorm when he signed papers commuting Mease's sentence to life in prison without parole.

Ashcroft, who received an honorary degree from controversial Bob Jones University, which has equated Catholicism with a cult, wasted little time tying Carnahan's decision to honor the papal request with a charge the governor was soft on crime. Ashcroft embarked on a victims' rights tour of Missouri, even inviting relatives of those murdered by Mease to testify. (The charge Carnahan was soft on crime never did stick, partly because he'd signed off on 26 executions as governor.)

Simultaneously, White's judicial record came under new scrutiny from Ashcroft, who warned that the Carnahan appointee would use the federal bench to "push the law in a pro-criminal direction, rather than defer to the legislative will of the people and interpret the law as written."

The record shows that as a justice on the Missouri Supreme Court White voted 41 times to affirm death penalty cases, and 18 times to reverse execution sentences. In many of those 18 rulings White joined the majority with justices appointed by Ashcroft. Five of those 18 decisions striking down death sentences were unanimous, where White was joined by conservative Missouri Supreme Court Justice Stephen Limbaugh, cousin of Rush Limbaugh. Just three times in nearly 60 death penalty cases did White write solo dissents urging death row prisoners be granted new trials. And in none of White's decisions did he argue the death penalty was unjust or unconstitutional.

In what may have been an unprecedented standard for nominees facing federal confirmation, in the final days of his campaign to defeat White, Ashcroft and his allies based their entire opposition around a single "shocking" dissent written by White while his nomination was pending. (The conservative press now clings to the same one dissent to justify Ashcroft's crusade.)

It involved the 1991 killing spree of James Johnson, a helicopter mechanic from California, Mo., who, during a 24-hour frenzy, stalked and murdered three sheriffs and the wife of another. Johnson was sentenced to death. In 1998 the Missouri Supreme Court heard Johnson's plea for a new trial. He lost by a vote of 6-1, with White being the lone dissent. White never suggested Johnson was innocent or that his crimes did not warrant the death penalty. "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," White wrote.

Instead, White argued Johnson's "unprofessional" counsel botched his defense by badly exaggerating, in the trial's opening statement, the post-traumatic stress disorder syndrome symptoms Johnson was supposedly suffering at the time of the killings. They were exaggerations counsel never backed up in court.

"I find it is reasonably likely that a jury that had not seen the defense destroy its own credibility would have been sufficiently receptive to the expert diagnosis of a mental disease or defect to permit a reasonable likelihood of a different result."

White wrote that opinion in April 1998. Sixteen months later in August 1999, Ashcroft held a press conference to criticize it.

At the time, Ashcroft also insisted Missouri law enforcement was up in arms over White's nomination and that he was responding to their groundswell of concern. But the groundswell, such as it was, had been entirely concocted by Ashcroft. Two police groups, the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police and the Missouri Police Chiefs Association, declined to oppose White's nomination, even after they were lobbied directly by Ashcroft's office. The Missouri Sheriffs Association did object to White, but two years after he was nominated, and only after a member read about Ashcroft's August press conference in the newspaper. So much for a grass-roots movement against White.

If Ashcroft's behavior during the White nomination was puzzling, Sen. Bond's 11th-hour flip-flop bordered on the bizarre. The senior, and more moderate, Republican senator from Missouri originally gave White his blessing, and even introduced him to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where he urged members to "act favorably" on a nominee "of the highest integrity and honor." As the process dragged on and White's nomination languished for months and then years, Bond reportedly pleaded unsuccessfully with Ashcroft to ease off the judge.

During Bond's 1998 reelection campaign he met with 100 black Missouri ministers at Roberts Steak House in St. Louis. During a question and answer session the Rev. Rice stood and asked Bond if he would support White's nomination. According to Rice, "He said, 'Most certainly I will.' All those preachers heard him say that."

Bond won reelection handily, thanks in part to winning roughly 30 percent of the black vote, an astonishing showing for a Republican candidate.

In January 1999, with no action taken by Congress, Clinton had to re-nominate White, and Bond again said he would support him.

Nine months later though, and one day after Ashcroft rose to oppose White on the floor of the Senate, Bond addressed members of the Republican caucus during its weekly meeting. There, behind closed doors, in a 20-second briefing, he announced he was now opposed to White's nomination. Two hours later the vote on White became a hard, party-line effort. Why? "To back up a Republican in a close Senate race, they all rallied behind Ashcroft," says one congressional aide who dealt with the White nomination.

Why, for a nomination that had been languishing for over two years and one that he initially sponsored, did Bond wait until the day of the vote to change his mind? At the time, he claimed he "did not have an opportunity to look at this [matter] sooner."

Since both senators from White's home state were voting against him, his confirmation, according to Senate protocol, was doomed. But unlike virtually every other scuttled judicial nomination, White's was voted down in public, a particularly humiliating defeat. (Today, the battle for judicial nominees is simply to make it to the Senate floor for an up or down vote; once there, they usually pass overwhelmingly.) In fact, White became the first District Court nominee voted down by the full Senate in nearly half a century.

"Senator Ashcroft could have killed the nomination in committee but he chose to do it a way that Justice White cannot ever be rehabilitated as a nominee again," says Rice. "That was to add insult to injury."

As Ashcroft prepares for his own confirmation hearing, his Missouri opponents want to make sure his colleagues understand what happened to Ronnie White. To advance his extreme anti-abortion agenda, as well as his own career, a United States senator denied a federal judicial nominee confirmation by grossly distorting his record. And if Ashcroft's rejection of Justice White leads to his own rejection by the Senate, so be it, his opponents say.

Either way, says Rice, "It's a decision John Ashcroft needs to live with."

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