John Pickering

John Pickering (22 September, 1737 - 11 April, 1805) served as Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Superior Court and as Judge for the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire. He was the first federal official to have been removed from office upon conviction upon impeachment.

Born in Newington, New Hampshire, Pickering studied law at Harvard and was admitted to the bar after graduating in 1761. In 1787 he was elected to be a member of the New Hamsphire delegation to the Constitutional Convention, but he declined to serve. He was appointed in 1790 to the New Hampshire Superior Court where he eventually served as Chief Justice.

Pickering assumed the position of Judge on the Federal District Court in April 1795 after an attempt to remove him from the New Hampshire Superior Court due to illness; This attempt had become bogged down in political problems and therefore the state convinced President George Washington to appoint him to the relatively low workload post of the Federal District Court.

He recovered from his illness and for the first few years served the Court well. In 1800 problems emerged since he was no longer attending Court as was expected. On 25 April, 1801 Court staff wrote to the Judges of the Federal Appeals Court for the First Circuit to send a temporary replacement for the Judge on the grounds that he had gone insane.

As a stop-gap measure, Circuit Judge Jeremiah Smith sat for part of the 1801 session of the Court. In March 1802, Pickering returned, adjourned the Court's business to the next day and then disappeared again. He had reappeared by June of that year and sat to consider United States v. Eliza, a case concerning a ship seized in violation of revenue laws. Allegedly, Pickering was drunk and raved profanities throughout the trial.

Political controversy waged in the Congress with Federalists accusing Democratic-Republicans of trying to usurp the Constitution by attempting to remove the Judge from office though he had committed neither high crimes nor misdemeanors as required by the Constitution.

On 4 February, 1803 President Thomas Jefferson sent evidence to the U.S. House of Representatives who voted to impeach Pickering on 2 March, 1803 on charges of drunkenness and unlawful rulings. The U.S. Senate tried the Impeachment the next year beginning 4 January, 1804 and convicted him of all charges presented by the House by a vote of 19 to 7 on 12 March, 1804.