Federal Judge Stresses Trial Record on Calif. Gay-Marriage Ban

Whatever Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker winds up deciding on Proposition 8, it’s clear he wants an airtight trial record to support it.

Holding his first hearing Thursday on the controversial measure that outlawed same-sex marriage, Walker repeatedly stressed the importance of establishing a record that will stand the test of time.

He told a packed courtroom that he was “reasonably sure” that the challenge launched by two high-profile litigators is “only touching down in this court” and merely a “prelude” for things to come.

“How we do things here,” Walker said, “is more important than what we do.”

He noted that other courts have rendered decisions on same-sex marriage without holding full trials, which he suggested was a “problem.”

Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 09-CV-2292, was filed in May by Theodore Olson, who represented George W. Bush in the landmark Bush v. Gore case, and David Boies, who represented Al Gore. Boies wasn’t present on Thursday. The suit attacks Prop 8 on equal protection and due process grounds.

Walker had already issued a tentative order allowing Prop 8 proponents to intervene and denying a preliminary injunction (pdf). He stood by both orders during Thursday’s 50-minute session.

Olson, a partner in Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Washington, D.C., office who has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court 55 times, nonetheless made a fleeting attempt to persuade Walker to change his mind on the injunction.

“Every day that Prop 8 is enforced perpetuates a tragic injustice” on gays and lesbians, he argued, saying it “brands” them as “second-class citizens, unworthy and different.”

“The Supreme Court,” Olson argued, “has held again and again and again that the right to marry is the most important relationship in life.”

Representing the Prop 8 proponents, Washington attorney Charles Cooper, who was a top Justice Department lawyer during the Reagan administration, warned that the lawsuit could “sweep away” not only Prop 8, but the definition of marriage in 43 states and the federal government.

The Cooper & Kirk partner also argued that marriage has by tradition always been the union of a man and a woman, and said that every Supreme Court case that describes marriage has noted that its central purpose is procreation.

See Federal Judge Stresses Trial Record on Calif. Gay-Marriage Ban Above the Law

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Missing e-mails at issue in Wone murder

Attorneys representing three gay men charged with obstruction of justice in connection with the murder of Washington attorney Robert Wone accused prosecutors in court Friday of failing to preserve evidence from Wone’s BlackBerry cell phone that could have helped prove their clients’ innocence.

The lead prosecutor in the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Glenn Kirschner, disputed the significance of the lost e-mails. He said the government has solid evidence showing that defendants Joseph Price, Victor Zaborsky and Dylan Ward obstructed justice by engaging in evidence tampering to hide the facts surrounding Wone’s August 2006 murder.

But Bernard Grimm, Price’s attorney, told reporters after Friday’s status hearing before D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederic Weisberg that the government theory about the timing of the murder is “now under question.” He said the questions surfaced as a result of the government’s disclosure April 17 that Wone sent at least two e-mails from his BlackBerry at a time when prosecutors believed Wone dead. See Missing e-mails at issue in Wone murder * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual