Montgomery, Alabama, Nov. 13, 2003 (CWNews.com) - An Alabama court on Thursday voted unanimously to remove the state's chief justice from office over his refusal to remove a Ten Commandments monument from his courthouse.
The Court of the Judiciary voted 9-0 to remove Roy Moore, who was elected to a six-year term as chief justice in 2000. The monument had been removed from the state courthouse on August 27 after Moore was suspended by an ethics panel for refusing to obey a federal court order to take the Ten Commandments from public view. The US Supreme Court last week refused to hear Moore's appeal of the lower court order.
The monument was installed two years ago after Moore was elected. He said the stone marker is a symbol of the Judeo-Christian foundations of US law. He was elected to the state Supreme Court partially on a previous legal battle over a display of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom when he was a district judge.
Moore said he had no regrets. "I have done what I was sworn to do," Moore told supporters, some of them crying, outside the courthouse. "We have got to stop the hypocrisy in this country." The court that removed him from the bench found that Moore had violated judicial ethics and placed himself above the law. "The chief justice showed no signs of contrition for his actions," said Judge William Thompson, who read the decision.
Moore's opponents, including the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center, said it
would continue to seek sanctions against him, and would file to have him
disbarred in Alabama.