Harry Eugene Claiborne (July 5, 1917 – January 19, 2004) was a United States district court judge who was impeached for tax evasion. He was only the fifth person in U.S. history to be removed from office through impeachment by the U.S. Congress, and the first since Halsted Ritter in 1936.
Harry Eugene Claiborne was born in McRae, Arkansas and graduated from Cumberland School of Law at Cumberland University in 1941. He was admitted to both the Arkansas and Nevada bars, and spent two years as a deputy prosecutor before becoming a well-known defense attorney in Las Vegas.
Claiborne ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in 1964, losing in the Democratic primary. He was appointed to be a federal judge for the United States District Court for the District of Nevada by President Jimmy Carter in 1978, on the recommendation of his former opponent, Senator Howard Cannon.
Claiborne was indicted by a federal grand jury for bribery, fraud, and tax evasion in December 1983. In April 1984, however, the jury deadlocked and a mistrial was declared. He was tried again in July on only the evasion charges and was found guilty the next month, making him the first federal judge ever convicted of crimes while on the bench. Claiborne was sentenced to two years in prison in October, and was in prison from May 1986 to October 1987. Many lawyers and judges in the Nevada legal community regarded it as a case of selective prosecution. According to Nevada State District Judge Michael Cherry in 2004, "He was very, very fair to criminal defendants to his detriment. I think that is why the government was so interested in prosecuting him and knocking him off the bench."[1]
Harry E. Claiborne was impeached by the United States House of Representatives on July 22, 1986, on two charges of tax evasion and one charge of bringing disrepute to the federal judiciary. He was convicted by the U.S. Senate on October 9, 1986, removing him from office.
Claiborne was allowed to begin practicing law again in Nevada in 1987, in a decision by the Nevada Supreme Court that implicitly questioned the federal prosecution. His attorney was future Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman.
On January 19, 2004, he committed suicide in Las Vegas, Nevada, apparently due to his health battles with cancer and Alzheimer's disease.