Thomas Penfield Jackson

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Thomas Penfield Jackson (born January 10, 1937) was a United States 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 graduated from Dartmouth College in the class of 1958, and from Harvard Law School in 1964.

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 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 on appeal eventually resulted in his removal from the case by the United States Court of Appeals.^[1] Speaking about Microsoft executives, he compared them to "stubborn mules who should be walloped with a two-by-four" and "gangland killers", referring to a murder case he presided over four years earlier:

On the day of the sentencing, the gang members maintained that they had done nothing wrong, saying that the whole case was a conspiracy by the white power structure to destroy them. I am now under no illusions that miscreants will realize that other parts of society view them that way.^[2]

The judge also characterized Microsoft leader and co-founder Bill Gates as a Napoleon, "unethical", as well as comparing him to a "drug trafficker" repeatedly caught as a result of telephone wiretaps. However, it was private meetings with journalists released after the verdict but during the appeal that granted the appeal.^[3]

The ruling was overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals in June 2001, which 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."^[4]

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. Eight of his factual findings about Microsoft's monopolistic practices against the Sherman Antitrust Act, however, were upheld, though cut down based on the June 2001 appeal.^[5]^[6]

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.^[7] His statements were a response to several evasive tactics Microsoft used at the trial, including falsifying video evidence^[8], non-responsiveness on the stand^[9], and denying allegations contained in evidence. ^[10] The recusal has been called into question by some commentators^[11], as other cases have warranted a "slap on the wrist", such as the Marion Barry trial in 1990 where Jackson said, "that he had never seen a stronger government case and was upset that some jurors would not vote to convict." The appeals court upheld the trial, but dissented that "It is worth noting that the district court judge could have recused himself in this case.... The recusal option was a compelling one."^[12]

When an unrelated case involving Microsoft and charges of discrimination was assigned to him in 2001, Jackson recused himself from the case.^[13]

He now serves as an attorney at the Jackson and Campbell firm.^[14]