Thomas Penfield Jackson
Thomas Penfield Jackson (born January 10, 1937) was a US District Court Judge for the District of Columbia. He was appointed in 1982 after serving as president of the District of Columbia Bar Association. He is currently an attorney with the Jackson and Campbell, P.C., law firm.
He is perhaps best known to the public as the presiding judge in the United States v. Microsoft case where his controversial handling of the case was the subject of discussion by both legal professionals and the media alike.
The judge's conduct during the case was extremely controversial and was later found to have unfairly favored the prosecution. This, along with his inappropriate public statements about the Microsoft Corporation and its employees while the case was still pending, eventually resulted in his removal from the case by the US Court of Appeals. Speaking about Microsoft executives, he compared them to "gangland killers" and "stubborn mules who should be walloped with a two-by-four". The judge also characterized Microsoft leader and co-founder Bill Gates as "unethical" as well as comparing him to a "drug trafficker" and Napoleon. Statements of this nature by a presiding judge while the case is still being argued are considered to be a violation of ethical judicial conduct and were later found to have compromised the integrity of the judicial process.
The ruling was overturned by the US Court of Appeals who criticised Jackson's conduct. In part, the court found "the actions of the trial judge seriously tainted the proceedings before the District Court and called into question the integrity of the judicial process." [1]
Judge Jackson's order that Microsoft be divided into two companies, one owning the Windows operating system and the other owning Microsoft's various application software products, including the Internet Explorer Web browser, was also reversed on appeal. His factual findings, however, were partially upheld, though the key elements of the case, the finding that Microsoft had acted improperly in tying its Internet browser to the Microsoft Windows operating system and that Microsoft had illegally sought to monopolize the browser market (according to the Sherman Act) were rejected.
Judge Jackson, in spite of the findings of the appellate court, continued to deny that any such bias existed and insisted that any perception of bias in the minds of observers was created by Microsoft, though he declined to explain how this was done or even how it was possible.
When an unrelated case involving Microsoft and charges of discrimination was assigned to him in 2001, Jackson recused himself from the case.