That a democratic society's independent judiciary operating under the "rule of law" is nothing to be taken lightly for granted is illustrated by two news items from the past two weeks.

March 2, 2005, we learned that Iraqi Judge Mahmoud and his lawyer son were assassinated on their way to work in Baghdad. Ironically, they worked for the special Iraq human rights tribunal. But before we could put their deaths in the category of the thousands of deaths of Americans and Iraqis in that country we read of the murder of the husband and mother of an American U.S. District Judge, Joan Humphrey Lefkow. And that such threats and attacks on the federal judiciary have now reached 700 a year.

And then, on March 11, 2005, news of the assasination of Atlanta Judge Rowland Barnes circled the world.

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    Mourners filed slowly past the casket of attorney Michael Lefkow, his trademark gray fedora resting on top. They remembered that he would sometimes show up at the federal courthouse to take his wife, U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow, to lunch and brought her flowers. The couple often held hands.

    Judge Lefkow and the couple’s children greeted people arriving at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church for a 90-minute service that was conducted under tight security. Several of the daughters cried, but Lefkow appeared to comfort some mourners.

    The Rev. Jacqueline Schmitt, the Episcopalian chaplain at Harvard University and the couple’s longtime friend, addressed the family’s anger about the slayings in her eulogy.

    ‘‘You must know the depth of your grief is more than overcome by hope, that the garden you shared as a family is not really gone, that nothing will ever take that from you,’’ she said.

    The family has been in protective custody since the judge discovered the bodies on Monday.

    More than two dozen police and federal marshals were outside the church Saturday morning and parking was banned on nearby streets. The line to enter the church stretched down the block. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Cline and a number of federal judges were present.

    Funeral services for Judge Lefkow’s mother, 89-year-old Donna Humphrey, were expected to take place in Denver.

    FBI officials have said they do not have a suspect. They have asked for the public’s help and offered a $50,000 reward to shake loose information.

    FBI Agent Robert Grant said one avenue of investigation was white supremacist Matthew Hale and his associates. Hale, 33, faces sentencing next month for soliciting an FBI informant to kill Lefkow after she ruled against him in a trademark lawsuit. He has denied any involvement in the slayings.

    On Friday, Lefkow issued a statement.

    ‘‘We will never allow evil deeds to overcome the goodness and decency which inspired you to reach out and touch us and to help sustain us in our hour of need,’’ she said.

Judge Barwize Mohammed Mahmoud al-Merani and his son were shot dead early Tuesday in the Raghiba Khatoun neighborhood near the Al-Adhamiya district in northern Baghdad, considered one of the most dangerous areas in the city.

Mahmoud was a judge in the Iraq Special Tribunal and was a leading Kurdish politician, Iraq Special Tribunal officials said. It was not immediately clear what cases he was to hear.

The son, Aryan Mahmoud al-Merani, worked as an attorney for the tribunal.

The killings came a day after the tribunal said a half-brother of Saddam -- Barzan Ibrahim Hassan Al-Tikriti -- would probably be the first to face trial on human rights charges.

These would cover crimes allegedly committed in 1982 in the village of Al-Dujail, where 150 families were killed and hundreds more deported.

Another half-brother of Saddam -- Sab'awi Ibrahim al-Hasan al-Tikriti -- was captured with information provided by Syria, Iraq's interim defense minister said on Tuesday. (Full story)

However, a tribunal official, who did not want to be identified, said the judge was not killed because of his job.

"He was not killed because he was working at the tribunal," he told The Associated Press. "It was something personal. I don't have details, but investigations are still going on."

The judge's surviving son disagreed though, saying the two men were killed either because they worked for the court, or because they were minority Kurds.

"We believe that the murder is politically motivated, because the two killed were working in the special tribunal and the son was a senior member in the PUK office in Baghdad. The late judge had no personal problems with anybody at all," Kikawz Barwez Mohammed al-Merani told AP.

"This is a terrorist act carried out by Baathists and terrorists."

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is one of two key northern Kurdish parties. U.S. authorities dissolved Saddam's former ruling Baath party after ousting him from power.

The tribunal was established in late 2003 to bring charges against members of Saddam's regime for crimes against humanity, including war crimes in connection with Iraq's wars against Iran and Kuwait.

The statute establishing the tribunal calls for it to have one or more five-judge panels to hear cases.

Tuesday's killings were the first of any staff working on the Iraqi Special Tribunal, which comprises more than 60 judges, a tribunal official told AP.

The tribunal's judges and legal staff have never been publicly identified because of concerns for their safety, and officials have even refused to say where the court is located.

According to sources, Mahmoud was one of several people targeted around Baghdad.

Another judge, Moayad Hamed Al-Jader, and one of his guards were severely wounded in the neighborhood of Jadeeda. The 60-year-old investigative judge was riding with two guards when occupants of another vehicle began shooting at his automobile, the sources said.

Under Saddam's regime, Al-Jader was a judge in the general security court.

Meanwhile, two Iraqi police officers were killed in the Al-Dora neighborhood in southern Baghdad.

Officer Qosay Fayadh died near the Al-Dora police station when insurgents fired at his home as he was leaving for work. One of the two police officers who went to the scene was killed by a grenade.
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"He went from one level of the parking lot to another, apparently," Quigley said. "We don't know if any other cars are missing. I don't know if the person took public transportation or took another vehicle. There's lots of options." Quigley said authorities were reviewing surveillance tapes for leads.

Hundreds of officers in cruisers and helicopters swarmed the area in the search of the suspect, identified as 33-year-old Brian Nichols. The suspect, a former computer technician, had raised alarm a day earlier when he was found in court with two handmade knives hidden in his shoes, prosecutors said. (Related: Suspect had raised concerns | Pictures | Video)

The rampage led to chaos around the city, with schools, restaurants and office buildings locking down amid fears that the suspect might strike again. Nichols' mug shot was plastered all over TV screens, and highway message boards issued descriptions of the stolen vehicle.

"Mr. Nichols is considered armed and extremely dangerous and should not be approached," Fulton County Sheriff Myron Freeman said. "We are not going to rest until we find him."

Nichols got the semiautomatic pistol by overpowering the female deputy while he was being led down a corridor in the Fulton County Courthouse, Assistant Police Chief Alan Dreher said. After shooting the deputy in the face, the suspect then went to the courtroom, held about a dozen people at bay for a short time and shot and killed Superior Court Judge Rowland Barnes and court reporter Julie Brandau, authorities said.
 

Another deputy, identified as Sgt. Hoyt Teasley, was later killed outside the courthouse when he confronted the suspect, Dreher said. The deputy shot while leading Nichols to court, identified as Cynthia Hall, was in critical condition but was expected to survive.

Police said Nichols later pistol-whipped a reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, stole his green 1997 Honda Accord and sped away from a parking garage. Police Chief Richard Pennington said it was one of three or four carjackings that the suspect committed after the shootings.

The shootings occurred a day after the judge and prosecutors had requested extra security for deputies following the discovery of the sharp objects in Nichols' shoes, prosecutor Gayle Abramson said. She said the objects were apparently fashioned by sharpening pieces of a door knob assembly.

Freeman said the extra security that was requested by the prosecutor's office was provided. He refused to elaborate.

Nichols' attorney, Barry M. Hazen, told CNN that his client is a "very intelligent, articulate man" and never seemed violent. But he acknowledged the concern raised by the sharp objects found in his shoes.

"Judge Barnes indicated to us that he was going to have security in the courtroom beefed up for the remainder of the trial," said Hazen. "We were most concerned what reaction we would get if a jury were to convict him."

Dreher said there were no other officers assisting with taking Nichols to court other than the female deputy. The law requires that defendants on trial not be handcuffed as they enter the courtroom, to make sure the sight of cuffs doesn't unfairly influence the jury.

The shooting occurred shortly after Nichols had changed out of his prison uniform and into street clothes. After shooting the deputy, police said he went through a walkway that leads into the courthouse where the judge's chambers are located, proceeding to gun down the judge and his court reporter.

The shootings took place around 9 a.m. Friday — the fourth day of Nichols' trial. Nichols had been facing a re-trial on charges of rape, sodomy, burglary, and false imprisonment, among others, after his earlier trial ended in a hung jury a week ago.

"I think he probably realized ... he might be convicted this time, he might not have a chance to walk out," Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said. "We believe he came here with the intent to make sure that didn't happen."

Nichols was accused of bursting into his ex-girlfriend's home, binding her with duct tape and sexually assaulting her over three days. Howard said Nichols brought a loaded machine gun into the home and a cooler with food in case he was hungry.

Nichols, who had been jailed for the last six months, had faced a possible life prison sentence if convicted for rape.

Nichols' last known job was working as a computer technician for a subsidiary of Atlanta-based shipping giant UPS. Company spokesman Norm Black says Nichols joined the unit in March 2004 and left in September 2004, which was when he was arrested.

More than 100 state troopers and officers from several agencies, including the FBI, were assisting in the search, but there were few leads, said G.D. Stiles, a Fulton County deputy chief. Offers of help from officers on their days off were pouring in.

News of the judge being killed stunned Georgia's legal community, with lawyers praising Barnes for his personable approach to justice and his sense of humor.

"We're shook to the core," said Linda Dreyer, a longtime employee in the court administrator's office who knew Barnes.

"This is a profound shock. It's so unthinkable, it's like a 9-11 at the courthouse," said fellow Judge Craig Schwall.

Among the recent cases that Barnes handled was the sentencing of Atlanta Thrashers player Dany Heatley, who pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide in the death of a teammate.

Barnes, 64, also drew national attention last month when he approved a plea deal that required a mother of seven who pleaded guilty to killing her 5-week-old daughter to have a medical procedure that would prevent her from having more children.

James Bailey, a juror at Nichols' trial, said the jury was not in the courtroom at the time of the shooting. He said Nichols had made him and other jurors nervous. "Every time he looked up, he was staring at you," Bailey said.

The newspaper reporter also described a feeling of being unnerved while face to face with Nichols.

"When he had the gun in my face, you start to think, 'How can I stay alive.' I thought this was a routine carjack. I didn't know two other people were killed," said Don O'Briant, a features writer for the Journal-Constitution.

A reward of $60,000 was being offered for information leading to Nichols' capture.
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Nickolas Murnion, a prosecutor in Garfield County, Montana, had sheriff's deputies protect him for a while when an illegal court of Montana Freemen, the antigovernment militia, promised to hang him for his "crimes" and put a $1 million bounty on him and several court officials.

While actual assaults on judges and lawyers are quite rare, the everyday life of the men and women who work in the nation's courtrooms can be marked by a constant tension.

On the criminal side, judges face the worry that their life-changing verdicts will come back to haunt them. Across the board, cases often involve violent or unstable people, or family members caught up in emotional disputes. For those looking to vent their anger, a judge or prosecutor can be an obvious target.

Now the murders of a Chicago judge's family members have many who work in courtrooms reliving tense moments - and calling for greater efforts to ensure their safety.

"I would be surprised if a judge doing criminal cases, or family-law cases, or certain civil cases, hadn't had somebody make a threat against them," says Judge Nachtigal, president of the American Judges Association. "Are they all going to act on them? Probably not. But you do take precautions."

For the moment, of course, the anxiety about security is something of a cautionary tale. Authorities haven't determined that the slaying of the husband and mother of US District Court Judge Joan Lefkow was the result of her job, though early signs point in that direction. If that does turn out to be the case, it would be the first time a judge's family members were killed as a result of a decision he or she made - showing how rare it is.

Nonetheless, the incident is prompting something of a nationwide reassessment of how vulnerable judges are and what precautions they can take. For Nachtigal, those steps included installing a burglar alarm, keeping her address out of the phone book, and, when she received the threat about her children, talking with their principal and asking the school to refrain from giving out their names.

Often, the judges and prosecutors most at risk are those who, like Murnion and Lefkow - who presided over a copyright-infringement case against a white-supremacy group - take on cases involving nontraditional groups with nothing to lose and no "rules": terrorists, hate groups, crime rings.

"At the time I became a prosecutor I definitely did not appreciate that risk in the way I later came to understand it," says one former federal attorney who prosecuted an Albanian drug and murder-for-hire ring in the 1980s. One of the members he indicted took out a contract on his life, and for five months he and his wife lived with US marshals. Colleagues who prosecuted or presided over organized-crime cases and the first attack on the World Trade Center experienced similar threats, he says.

"I think it's an intractable problem," the former prosecutor says. "When you have groups - whether terrorists or insular nontraditional organized crime, the deterrent value is just not there."

Even after the months of round-the-clock protection were over, he took precautions he never would have anticipated: learning to use a weapon, listing his address and phone under a different name, and periodically driving around with the marshals to make it appear he was still under their protection.

Today, when he hears about the Chicago murders, he says, "I certainly empathize in ways that very few people can."

Federal judges and prosecutors can, like that prosecutor, get protection from US marshals when a threat is deemed serious. In 2003, marshals gave protection to 20 such individuals, 12 of whom got round-the-clock details. Lefkow, who at that time had been threatened by Matthew Hale, the leader of a now-defunct white-supremacy group, was among them.

But such protection can also take its toll. Lefkow, together with the marshals guarding her, called off her detail after a matter of weeks, deciding the threat was no longer serious. And the former prosecutor speaks of the awkwardness of sharing a small apartment - with few actual partitions - with both his wife and the marshals. Murnion, the Montana attorney, says he finally wanted his life back.

"It's very intrusive," says US District Judge John Coughenour in Seattle, who has been under protection a half dozen times. "It's a terrible imposition on a family." He takes some comfort, he says, in the seriousness with which police are treating the Chicago crime. "It sends a loud and clear message that when something such as this happens, no stone will be left unturned."

Of course, most judges and lawyers never come up against organized crime or dangerous terrorists. And almost all of the threats they receive are idle ones. But all threats, they say, need to be taken seriously - Nachtigal recommends keeping a file of them and having a courthouse protocol for whom to alert. Such threats often come from far less headline-grabbing sources than hate groups or mafia: people enraged over property disputes, for instance, or distraught over messy divorce or domestic-abuse proceedings.

In one informal survey by the family law section of the American Bar Association in 1997, 60 percent of 253 respondents indicated they had been threatened by an opposing party in a case. In 1987, a Florida judge was shot and killed following an alimony hearing, and in 1983 an Illinois judge was killed in his courtroom by a man whose divorce case he was presiding over.

The fact that courtroom proceedings can cause such heightened tempers has led to a greater focus on improving safety there. All federal courthouses have metal detectors, and more and more state and local jurisdictions are stepping up protection as well. Some have panic buttons, and many have regular security from local law enforcement.

When her courthouse first installed metal detectors in the mid-1990s, says Nachtigal, they began taking a survey of the items detected and turned away. "We were amazed, here in our small county in Oregon, at the number of people bringing fairly large-sized guns and knives into the courthouse on a regular basis," she says. "There were over 300 a month."

Only three federal judges have been killed in job-related crimes - one in connection with a Columbia drug case; one by a person angry that his conviction hadn't been overturned; and one by the father of a plaintiff in a dismissed sexual-discrimination case. The US Marshals Service says they record an average of 700 inappropriate communications and threats a year against federal judicial officials - a marked increase from the 1980s, when the average was closer to 240 a year, according to one study that examined threats from 1980 to 1993.

The list lengthens when it includes state and local officials, many of whom have less protection: a Maryland judge who was severely injured by a mail bomb sent to his home, a Mississippi judge who was murdered with his wife in an apparent contract killing by a racketeering group, a Washington judge killed by a mail bomb from a man he was scheduled to sentence.

The Federal Judiciary Protection Act, passed in 2002, increased the punishment for a person convicted of assaulting a federal judge or one of their family members - with some crimes eligible for the death penalty - and even idle threats can be severely punished. Last summer, in the northern district of Georgia, a woman was sentenced to seven years in prison, in part for leaving three threatening messages for a US District Court judge in Atlanta.

"No one should be able to use the threat of violence to subvert the fairness of our justice system," says US Attorney David Nahmias of Georgia's Northern District.

It's that sense of attack on the system that most angers many Americans, and is one reason the Lefkow murders - though a horrific crime by any standard - have received such attention. "It's something we might expect to happen in Iraq," says Nachtigal. "But it's not supposed to happen in our country. When it does, there's a great feeling of violation of the system."

Some hope that the murders here will at least bring renewed attention to the safety of court officials. US District Judge Wayne Andersen, who serves in the same court as Lefkow, has called on the US attorney general's office to examine safety. "We've got to be intelligently looking at what we can do to protect the privacy of judges and judges' families," he told the Chicago Tribune, citing the ready availability of personal information online as one potential problem.

For his part, Murnion hopes that the crime will galvanize Chicagoans. "When regular citizens come together and condemn this sort of violence, that has the most effect," he says. "That's what happened here in Montana. I hope people come together in that way in Chicago."

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