GOP/LEGAL/POLITICAL FIGURES/WOMEN: “Roy S. Moore, the cowboy-hat-wearing Republican running for the Senate in Alabama, had been known for years as an attention-grabbing judge who blocked same-sex marriages and insisted on displaying the Ten Commandments in his courthouse.
But as women have accused Mr. Moore of sexual misconduct and assault in recent days, and as politicians in both parties have urged him to step aside, attention has focused on another part of his judicial record: his writings on rape and sexual abuse.
Democrats and news outlets have noted, sometimes with scandalous subtext, that Mr. Moore dissented from the Alabama Supreme Court’s majority in several instances to side with a person accused of sexual crimes…
A New York Times review of 20 cases focused on sexual crimes or misconduct during Mr. Moore’s tenure on the Alabama Supreme Court found that he sided with the accused 13 times, a higher rate than almost all of his colleagues.
Many times, Mr. Moore was not ruling on the sexual conduct itself, but rather a convict’s request for the appeal to be heard.
In at least three cases, the majority of the court sided with someone accused of sexual misconduct, but Mr. Moore dissented and sided with prosecutors.”
-Mitch Smith an Kitty Bennett, “In Sex Crimes and Other Cases, Roy Moore Often Sided With Defendants,” The New York Times online, Nov. 17, 2017