Should Adeel Abdullah Mangi be confirmed to the Third Circuit?

In 1999, a
Florida lawyer, Anuraag Singhal, represented a man convicted of gunning
down a police officer. Singhal had to somehow persuade a jury that his
client, Jeffrey Lee Weaver, should face life in prison rather than the
electric chair, the punishment the hard-charging prosecutor sought.

“I
hope you can find some love in your heart for Jeff Weaver, and I hope
you’ll let him die in prison,” Singhal said, according to a report in The Sun Sentinel,
the local newspaper. The article described tears rolling down his
cheeks and his voice breaking with emotion as he pleaded for Weaver’s
life. Singhal won the day. A divided jury recommended life in prison.

Singhal
was clearly a very talented attorney and a man on the rise. He would
become active in conservative legal circles, joining the local chapter
of the Federalist Society. In 2019, President Donald Trump appointed him
to a federal judgeship in Florida. He was confirmed that December with a
bipartisan Senate vote of 76 to 17. Evidently no one raised a peep
about his defense of a man who killed a police officer, nor his pivotal
role in reducing the man’s sentence despite Republican posturing about
protecting law enforcement.

Among the
Democratic senators who voted to give Singhal this lifetime appointment
were three centrists who often burnish their bipartisan bona fides and
tough-on-crime credentials: Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, both
of Nevada, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.

So it is striking that these same three senators have come out
to announce that they will not support an eminently qualified nominee
of their own party’s president after Republican senators and
conservative activists smeared him, first accusing him of being an
antisemite and, when that effort fizzled in the face of staunch support
from mainstream Jewish organizations, of being soft on crime and
supporting cop killers.

This is an odd comparison.  Unfortunately and unjustly, Judge Singhal did face a lot of opposition when he first tried to become a judge.  His name went up over 15 times to the Governor for state circuit judge before he was finally appointed.  Then he distinguished himself as a judge, so the (ridiculous) issue of who he represented as a criminal defense lawyer became a non-issue (but only sort-of because Senator Nelson refused to return his blue-slip in 2018).  Second, and this is not meant to be a criticism of Mangi, but Judge Singhal ensured the Sixth Amendment rights of his client, a criminal defendant.  The criticism of Mangi seems wrong as well, but it’s different than any potential critique of Judge Singhal for giving a strong closing argument for his client.