Harry Eugene Claiborne (July 2, 1917 – January 19, 2004) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Nevada from 1978 until his impeachment and removal in 1986. Appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, Claiborne was only the fifth person in United States history to be removed from office through impeachment by the United States Congress and the first since Halsted Ritter in 1936.

Claiborne was born in 1917 in McRae, Arkansas. He attended Ouachita Baptist University and Cumberland School of Law where he received a Bachelor of Laws before serving in the United States Army during World War II. After the war he settled in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he established himself as a flamboyant and well-known defense attorney representing many prominent people with ties to Las Vegas, including entertainers like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Judy Garland, and Carol Burnett, and mobsters like Bugsy Siegel, Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal, Joe Conforte, and Benny Binion.

Claiborne served one term as a Democratic state assemblyman and ran unsuccessfully against Howard Cannon in the 1964 Democratic primary for the United States Senate in Nevada. The two remained friends, however, and Cannon later recommended Claiborne to President Carter for an open federal district court judicial seat in 1978. He rose to Chief Judge of the United States district court in Nevada and held that position from 1980 to 1986.

Claiborne was convicted in 1984 of tax evasion and served 17 months of a two-year prison sentence before his release in 1987. In 1986 the United States House of Representatives impeached him and the United States Senate convicted him and removed him from office. His impeachment proceedings set a controversial new precedent of using a special twelve-member committee to collect and hear evidence, rather than the full Senate. He maintained that the Justice Department had a vendetta against him and improperly obtained the false testimony of brothel owner Joe Conforte, one of Claiborne's former clients.

Claiborne was allowed to begin practicing law again in Nevada in 1987 in a decision by the Nevada Supreme Court that implicitly questioned the federal prosecution. In 2004, he killed himself with a self-inflicted gunshot wound following health battles with cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's disease.

Early life and education

Claiborne was born on July 2, 1917, in McRae, Arkansas. His father was Arthur Smith Claiborne Jr., a cotton farmer, and his mother was Minnie King Claiborne, a schoolteacher in Little Rock, Arkansas. According to Harry, the Ku Klux Klan's grand wizard once criticized Harry's father, Arthur, for being the only white farmer in the region who was not a member of the organization. Arthur responded, "I won't join any organization whose members need to wear hoods over their faces."

Claiborne attended Ouachita Baptist University. He was determined to attend law school at Louisiana State University so he hitchhiked to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, seeking admission. At the time one only needed two years of college for admittance to law school. After he was refused admission, Claiborne hitchhiked back home to Arkansas and caught a ride with a salesman named Schneider, who told Claiborne that he was childhood friends with Judge Albert B. Neil, the chief justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court. Mr. Schneider gave Claiborne a letter of introduction, and after visiting Neil in person, Claiborne was granted admission to Cumberland School of Law, then part of Cumberland University in Tennessee. He graduated from Cumberland with a Bachelor of Laws in June 1941 and returned to Arkansas, where he was a clerk in the Coulter Law Firm of Little Rock (Pulaski County).

1964 United States Senate campaign

In 1964, Claiborne launched a "quixotic, albeit short-lived, campaign for Senate at the last minute on July 15." His campaign in the Democratic primary for the United States Senate was against his friend, incumbent Senator Howard Cannon. Years later Claiborne indicated he was recruited to run by party activists concerned that Cannon's ties to Bobby Baker, the Senate secretary who was then at the center of a financial scandal, would cause the party to lose the seat. He served as Chief Judge from 1980 to 1986.

Joseph Yablonsky, who headed the Las Vegas FBI office from 1980 to 1983, offered Conforte millions of dollars in tax breaks for his testimony against Claiborne.

With Swanson neutralized, Yablonsky was able in 1983 to get the help of the IRS in returning Conforte to the United States in exchange for testimony against Claiborne. A federal grand jury heard testimony against Claiborne in Portland and Reno, where the Conforte bribes allegedly took place, before indicting Claiborne on bribery, fraud, and tax evasion on December 8, 1983. In April 1984, however, the jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared, primarily because Conforte's bribery testimony did not hold up in court. Trial evidence showed that Conforte could not have been in Nevada to make one of the bribes because he was in New York renewing a passport while appealing his tax conviction. According to Swanson, "Conforte perjured himself consistently at the trial. His testimony was fabricated. I don't think there were any bribes at all. Conforte constructed the testimony to suit Yablonsky's needs." Supporter Nevada State District Judge Michael Cherry further alleged in 2004, "He was very, very fair to criminal defendants to his detriment. I think that is why the government was so interested in prosecuting him and knocking him off the bench." That the money was owed, but not paid, was generally conceded.

Impeachment and removal

When Claiborne entered prison on March 16, 1986, for tax evasion, he intended to return to the bench two years later and therefore did not resign his judiciary post. As a result, he continued to receive his salary of $78,700 a year. This brought considerable controversy and pressure on some in Congress to remove him. However, the United States Constitution allowed only one method for removing a federal judge – impeachment.

U.S. House proceedings

Impeachment articles

On May 22, 1986, Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R, WI) called for impeachment. On June 3, 1986, Rep. Peter Rodino (D, NJ) introduced H.Res 461 calling for impeachment of high crimes and misdemeanors. The resolution was referred to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Civil Liberties and the Administration of Justice. The subcommittee approved the impeachment articles on June 24, 1986.

The subcommittee version of Article IV also charged that Claiborne had violated his oath of office. But several members, particularly Bruce Morrison, D-Conn., and Michael DeWine, R-Ohio, opposed this language. Morrison argued the entire article was unnecessary and preferred to rely on only the first three articles to make clear that conviction of a felony was enough to warrant removing a judge from office. However, Robert Kastenmeier, D-Wis., chairman of the U.S. House Courts Subcommittee, argued strongly for inclusion of the article, saying it alleged conduct that was an impeachable offense and was premised on the fact that Claiborne had violated the canons of judicial ethics.

Ultimately the subcommittee agreed to a DeWine amendment striking language referring to the oath of office and adding language asserting that Claiborne had "betrayed the trust of the people of the United States." The article was subsequently approved and adopted by the subcommittee on June 24, 1986. In drafting the impeachment articles, the Judiciary Committee tried to stick closely to the jury findings on tax evasion and to the conviction itself. Committee members wanted to avoid general charges that could give Goodman an opening for going beyond the findings of the Nevada jury.

Claiborne became the 14th federal official to be impeached by the U.S. House and the first of only three federal officials to be impeached on a unanimous roll-call vote, the others were Thomas Porteous and Walter Nixon. While his impeachment was historic, the debate and final action on July 22 was anticlimactic. No one really doubted that Claiborne would be impeached or that it would be unanimous. On August 6, 1986, the U.S. House presented articles of impeachment to the U.S. Senate.

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Hamilton Fish IV, R-N.Y., the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, expressed his position saying, "Judge Claiborne is more than a mere embarrassment. He is a disgrace — an affront — to the judicial office and the judicial branch he was appointed to serve." Judiciary Chairman Rodino spoke of safeguarding the judicial system, noting, "If we fail to act, the confidence of the people in that system will be gravely jeopardized." Goodman also went on to accuse several Senators of not properly reviewing the committee transcripts.

Life after impeachment

Claiborne was allowed to begin practicing law again in Nevada in 1987, in a decision by the Nevada Supreme Court that implicitly questioned the federal prosecution. His wife, Norma Ries, said they and their 22-year-old grandson, Aaron, were in the house watching American Idol "and laughing about the people who couldn't sing. Harry said his back was hurting and he wanted to go into the den to sit down. Two minutes later my grandson and I heard a gunshot. He was in so much pain, but didn't want to go to the hospital. He was in the hospital in June, and he told me he never wanted to go back there again."