Robert Smith Vance

Robert Smith Vance (May 10, 1931–December 16, 1989) was a federal appellate judge in the United States, and one of the few judges in American history to have been murdered as the result of his judicial service.

Vance was born in Alabama. He obtained his undergraduate degree at the University of Alabama and earned law degrees from the University of Alabama School of Law and George Washington University Law School. After military service, Vance worked as a lawyer in private practice in Birmingham, Alabama from 1956 to 1977. He was also chairman of the Alabama Democratic Party from 1966 to 1977.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter nominated Vance to a federal judgeship on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, whose jurisdiction then included six southern states, including Alabama. In 1981, the territory of the Fifth Circuit was divided into two circuits, and Vance was assigned to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, on which he served until his death.

On December 16, 1989, Vance was killed instantly at his home when he opened a package containing a nail bomb. Vance's wife, Helen, was seriously injured in the blast. After an intensive investigation, the federal government charged Walter Leroy Moody, Jr. with the murders of Judge Vance and of Savannah, Georgia civil rights attorney Robert E. Robinson, who was killed in a separate explosion. Moody was also charged with mailing bombs that were defused at the Eleventh Circuit's headquarters and at the Jacksonville office of the NAACP.

Moody had previously been convicted in 1972 of possession of a bomb that had exploded in his house, and served four years in federal prison. Prosecutors speculated that Moody's motive for killing Judge Vance was revenge against a member of the court that had refused to reverse that conviction, although Vance had not actually been a member of the panel that considered Moody's earlier case. Vance became the third federal judge in the twentieth century to be assassinated as a result of his judicial service, after John H. Wood, Jr. and Richard J. Daronco.

Moody's trial for murder and other crimes was presided over by U.S. District Judge Edward J. Devitt of the District of Minnesota, after an order was entered directing the recusal of all the circuit and district judges within the Eleventh Circuit. Moody was convicted on all counts and sentenced to multiple life terms. Subsequently, Moody was also convicted of Judge Vance's murder by an Alabama state-court jury, and sentenced to death in 1997. He is still on death row at the Holman Correctional Facility near Atmore, Alabama. [cite web|url=http://www.doc.alabama.gov/deathrow.asp|title=Inmates on Deathrow|accessdate=2007-05-21]

In 1990, the federal building and courthouse in Birmingham, Alabama was renamed the Robert Smith Vance Federal Building and Courthouse in memory of the late jurist.

Vance's son, Robert Vance, Jr., serves today as a state circuit court judge in Birmingham.

Footnotes

References

* Ray Jenkins, "Blind Vengeance: The Roy Moody Mail Bomb Murders" (University of Georgia Press 1997).
* Frank M. Johnson, Jr., "Reflections on the Judicial Career of Robert S. Vance", 42 Ala. L. Rev. 964 (1990).
* "United States v. Moody", 977 F.2d 1425 (11th Cir. 1992).
* "This article incorporates information obtained from the public domain" Biographical Directory of Federal Judges "compiled by the Federal Judicial Center."