Joan Lefkow

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Joan Marilyn Humphrey Lefkow (born January 8, 1944) is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois .

Contents

• 1 Education and career

  • 1.1 Federal judicial service

  • 1.2 Matthew Hale

• 2 Double homicide at Lefkow's home

  • 2.1 Perpetrator

• 3 References

• 4 External links

Education and career

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Lefkow was born in Nemaha County, Kansas . She attended Wheaton College in Illinois, where she received an Artium Baccalaureus degree, and obtained her Juris Doctor (J.D.) at Northwestern University School of Law in 1971. After graduation, she became a law clerk for Judge Thomas E. Fairchild of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit .

From 1972 to 1975, Lefkow was a staff attorney at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago. After that, she served as an administrative law judge for the Illinois Fair Employment Practices Commission from 1975 to 1979. She was an instructor at University of Miami School of Law in 1980 and 1981 before becoming the executive director of the Cook County Legal Assistance Foundation from 1981 to 1982.

From 1982 to 1997 she was a United States magistrate judge , and from 1997 to 2000 a United States Bankruptcy Judge of the Northern District of Illinois.

Federal judicial service

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Lefkow was nominated by President Bill Clinton on May 11, 2000, to a seat on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois vacated by Judge Ann Claire Williams , and confirmed by the United States Senate on June 30, 2000. She received her commission on July 11, 2000. Lefkow assumed senior status on September 1, 2012.

Matthew Hale

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In May 2000, Judge Lefkow presided over the enforcement of a high-profile trademark infringement case against the World Church of the Creator (WCOTC), an organization run by white supremacist leader Matthew F. Hale . The Oregon -based TE-TA-MA Truth Foundation —described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "a peace-loving, multicultural church"—sued Hale's church for using the name "Church of the Creator." WCOTC argued against the validity of the suit because Hale's church had been using the name since 1973, but the Foundation had trademarked it in 1987, and no contest was filed against the trademark within a five-year period, making their ownership legally incontestable. In January 2002, Lefkow ruled in favor of Hale, but her decision was overturned on appeal. On July 25, Lefkow ruled against Hale, saying that his church infringed the Church of the Creator's trademark. (Hale's organization has since been renamed the Creativity Movement .)

An injunction was issued on November 19 forbidding Hale's church from using the term "Church of the Creator." Hale's World Church of the Creator was ordered to stop using the name on the Internet , and to remove or cover up the phrase "Church of the Creator" on all of Hale's publications and products. In response to this decision, Hale sued Lefkow on December 24, claiming that her order violated the Constitution in requiring the "destruction" of the group's bibles. At around the same time, threats were made against Lefkow on the Internet, and her home address, and family photographs of her husband and children, were posted on the Stormfront website.

Meanwhile, an undercover FBI informant, posing as Hale's "security" chief, taped a conversation with Hale where he asked about Lefkow's home address, and discussed her impending "extermination." On January 8, 2003, Hale was arrested on charges of plotting to murder Lefkow. The FBI informant in that trial received several death threats, and Lefkow initially was protected by a detail of the United States Marshals Service .

On April 24, Judge Lefkow ruled that the Creativity Movement had failed to stop using the name "World Church of the Creator," and should be fined $1,000 a day until it complied.

On April 6, 2005, Hale was sentenced to a 40-year prison term for soliciting the undercover FBI informant to kill Judge Lefkow. His conviction and sentence were affirmed in 2006. A subsequent application to void them, on grounds including ineffective assistance of counsel, was rejected, and his appeal from that decision was affirmed on March 5, 2013. In a separate proceeding, sympathizer Bill White was convicted and sentenced to prison for threatening the life of the foreman of the jury that convicted Hale in Judge Lefkow's courtroom, although the conviction was overturned on appeal.

Double homicide at Lefkow's home

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