Clyburn, architect of Biden’s court pledge, pushes his pick

At President Joe Biden’s lowest moment in the 2020 campaign, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn came to him with a suggestion: He should pledge to put the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. After some cajoling, Biden made the promise at a Democratic debate, a move Clyburn credits with turning out the Black support that helped Biden score a resounding victory in the South Carolina primary and ultimately win the White House. Two years later, the hoped-for vacancy on the court has arrived with the retirement of Justice Stephen Breyer. Biden is standing by his pledge. And Clyburn, the highest-ranking Black member of Congress, has another ask. As the lobbying begins over filling the open court seat, Clyburn is harnessing his history with Biden and his stature as the No. 3 House Democrat to make a forceful case for his preferred choice, U.S. District Judge J. Michelle Childs, a jurist from his native South Carolina. It’s a campaign he’s making in public and in private, helping elevate Childs to an emerging short list of Black women who could soon make history. In addition to Childs, early discussions about a successor include California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger, as well as Ketanji Brown Jackson, a former Breyer clerk who is now on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Biden is also looking at U.S. District Court Judge Wilhelmina Wright from Minnesota and Melissa Murray, a New York University law professor who is an expert in family law and reproductive rights justice. For Biden, the court opening is a chance to show Black voters that he has not forgotten his promises to them, particularly after his failure this month to deliver on voting rights legislation in the Senate. He said Thursday that having a Black woman on the court is “long overdue” and that he would announce his choice by the end of February.

Court to hear appeal of man convicted in son’s hot-car death

A man whose toddler son died after he left him in a hot car for hours is asking Georgia’s highest court to overturn his convictions for murder and child cruelty. Justin Ross Harris, 41, was convicted in November 2016 on eight counts including malice murder in the death of his 22-month-old son, Cooper. A judge sentenced him to life without parole as well as 32 more years in prison for other crimes. Harris has appealed his convictions for murder and first-degree child cruelty. The Georgia Supreme Court scheduled oral arguments for Tuesday. Harris, who moved from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to the Atlanta area for work in 2012, told police he forgot to drop his son off at day care on the morning of June 18, 2014, driving straight to his job as a web developer for Home Depot without remembering that Cooper was still in his car seat. Cooper died after sitting for about seven hours in the back seat of the vehicle outside his father’s office in suburban Atlanta, where temperatures that day reached at least into the high 80s. Prosecutors argued at trial that Harris was unhappily married and killed his son on purpose to free himself. Defense attorneys described him as a doting father and said the boy’s death was a tragic accident. Police officers who interacted with Harris after his son’s death didn’t think he acted the way a father should under the circumstances, and began investigating all aspects of his life, according to a defense brief filed with the high court. Evidence showed he was a loving and attentive father, even if exchanging sexually explicit messages and graphic photos with women and teenage girls and meeting some of them for sex revealed that Harris was not a great husband, the defense brief says. Investigators “cherry picked the mountain of electronic data to support the conclusion that (Harris) murdered his son, ignoring contrary evidence,” the brief says. Harris’ lawyer, Mitch Durham, argues that the judge shouldn’t have admitted evidence of Harris’ extramarital communications and in-person trysts at trial because his sexual misconduct had nothing to do with the death of his child. Prosecutors argue that plenty of evidence was presented to allow jurors to infer that Harris “acted out of a desire to be free of his wife and son so that he could pursue his self-described sexual addiction.” Durham argues that there was insufficient evidence to show that he intended to kill his son and that some of his internet searches, activity and messages were twisted to fit that narrative. He says the evidence of sexual misconduct served only to prejudice the jury against Harris.