9th Circuit says Judge Carney ‘clearly erred’ when giving Robert Rundo bail
An appellate court said this week that now-retired U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney’s choice to “gloss over” a white supremacist’s use of fake passports shows he was mistaken in ordering his release.
The order from the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reverses Carney’s April 30 bail order for Robert Rundo, who has been in custody since the same appellate panel stayed a previous release order in February pending the U.S. Department of Justice’s appeal.
Carney “clearly erred” when he said Rundo isn’t a danger to public safety and was unlikely to flee, the appellate panel said.
“The district court stated that ‘the government has provided no evidence that Mr. Rundo . . . caused any injury to anyone,’ despite mountains of evidence in the record to the contrary,” according to the order. “This evidence included photographs and videos of Rundo physically assaulting people, and posts on social media where Rundo gloated about having used violence to harm people.”
That along with Carney’s failure to mention Rundo’s use of fake passports and his extradition from Romania “leaves us with a ‘definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed’ in its analysis,” according to the order, citing a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court case that quoted a 1948 case.
The order is from Senior Judge Richard A. Paez, Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. and U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar, sitting by designation from the Northern District of California. The judges still are considering the DOJ’s appeal of Carney’s dismissal of Rundo’s two criminal charges for allegedly inciting violence at political rallies in 2017. Carney said the DOJ selectively prosecuted Rundo when members of Antifa caused more problems.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander Robbins said in oral argument on June 18 that Carney assumed three people were Antifa members, “but it’s not actually clear that they were.”
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