November 14, 2003

On Friday, Nov. 14, at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time, Ambassador Alan Keyes will hold a press conference in Detroit, Michigan, to discuss the removal Thursday of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore by an Alabama judicial panel.

Dr. Keyes will also discuss the unbridled assault by the judiciary on the moral foundations of America.

The event will be held at the Detroit Athletic Club, 241 Madison Avenue.

Justice Moore was stripped of his office for refusing to obey a federal court order to move a stone Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court building.

The Court of the Judiciary unanimously imposed the harshest penalty possible following a one-day trial in which Moore argued that his refusal was a moral and lawful acknowledgment of God. Prosecutors said Moore's defiance would harm the judicial system.

"I have absolutely no regrets. I have done what I was sworn to do," Moore said.

"It's about whether or not you can acknowledge God as a source of our law and our liberty. That's all I've done. I've been found guilty," added Moore.

Presiding Judge William Thompson said the nine-member court had no alternative since Justice Moore publicly ignored a federal court order. "The chief justice placed himself above the law," Thompson said.

Moore, 56, stated that he was following his conscience in defying the court order--an order that prohibited him from publicly acknowledging God--and he said he did nothing to violate judicial ethics.

"To acknowledge God cannot be a violation of the Canons of Ethics. Without God there can be no ethics," Moore testified.

Ambassador Keyes has been the most outspoken national political figure to support Judge Moore's right to display the Ten Commandments, and has argued that the federal judiciary has been acting outside the Constitution in repressing public religious expression.

Joining Ambassador Keyes will be Richard Thompson, former Oakland County Prosecutor, now President and Chief Counsel of the Thomas More Law Center. Thompson's Law Center filed briefs on behalf of Justice Moore in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, and recently in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Justice Moore's public display of the Ten Commandments.

For more information, contact Brian Burch, Director of Communications of the Thomas More Law Center, at 734-730-1018 or bburch@thomasmore.org.

See:

• "Ten Commandments judge removed from bench" (Nov. 13)
  
  
• "Trial of Alabama Chief Justice Moore begins" (Nov. 11)
  
  
• "Court stays out of Ten Commandments fight" (Nov. 5)