A judge has withdrawn his nomination for one of the most senior judicial appointments in California after he admitted lying about being the brother of a black youth murdered in Alabama at the height of the civil rights struggle in the 1960s.
District Judge James Ware (51) had been nominated by President Clinton for a seat on the California branch of the US federal appeal court. But he decided yesterday that he would not let his name go forward.
"I regret my lack of honesty," he said.
From early on in his legal career, Judge Ware frequently claimed in public that he was the elder brother of Virgil Ware, who was shot dead by two white teenagers in the aftermath of the notorious 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in which four black girls were killed.
In a 1994 interview with the San Jose Mercury News, for example, Judge Ware said: "When I went through the death of my brother I came very close to becoming someone who could hate with a passion. What happened to me was a defining experience, a turning point in my life."
And in a talk this year he described riding his bike to a football game with Virgil on the handlebars when the shots were fired. "The shots knocked us off the side of the road, and he died there by the side of the road."
But the judge was forced to admit his lie after the Birmingham News published a story yesterday in which members of Virgil Ware's family exposed his false claims. The News revealed that Virgil's real brother - also named James - has worked for an Alabama coalmining company for the past 20 years.
The Alabama James Ware was quoted as saying: "I couldn't believe a judge would do something like that, being a man of the law. I think he was wrong. He was trying to better himself off somebody else's grief."
Judge Ware, who was himself born in Birmingham, said that his father had told him that he had another son named James of about the same age with another woman.
"I made my tenuous connection with the Wares and my own feeling of loss as a basis for making a speech about Virgil Ware's death," he said.
At the White House, which had nominated Judge Ware for the appeal court in June, a spokesman said: "Anytime a man who has had a distinguished career is caught up in a situation like this, you can't help but feel sad."
California politicians took a harder line, however, with Senator Dianne Feinstein condemning it as "a very serious matter" that could not be excused as an indiscretion.