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Shootings prompt federal judges to seek review of their security

Joan Biskupic USA Today

WASHINGTON – The nation’s top federal judges declared judicial security “of the gravest concern” and asked the U.S. Justice Department and Marshals Service to particularly assess security at judges’ homes.

The action Tuesday by the Judicial Conference of the United States reflects the alarm caused by two recent shootings: the Feb. 28 murders of the husband and mother of U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow of Chicago, and the March 11 rampage in Fulton County, Ga., which left Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes and three others dead.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told the judges that he has directed the Justice Department to review judicial security measures.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is being treated for thyroid cancer and has not been on the high court’s bench since October, ran the two-hour meeting.

Several members of Congress have raised concerns about court security, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa. On Monday, Specter asked Benigno Reyna, director of the U.S. Marshals Service, to review court security.

“Judges all over the country are terribly concerned,” said U.S. Appeals Court Judge Carolyn Dineen King of Houston, who briefed reporters in Washington about the closed-door meeting of the Judicial Conference. She said the emphasis for federal judges is off-site security because the Lefkow family shootings and three past murders of U.S. judges occurred at homes.

The U.S. Marshals Service says no federal judge has ever been murdered in a courthouse. The three U.S. judges who were killed at home were: Judge John Wood of Texas, in 1979; Judge Richard Daronco of New York, in 1988; and Judge Robert Vance, of Alabama, in 1989.