Obama nominates Martin to federal appeals court

President Barack Obama on Friday nominated Judge Beverly Martin to fill a vacancy on the federal appeals court in Atlanta.

Martin, a former U.S. attorney in Macon, has served as a judge on the U.S. District Court in Atlanta since 2000. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton and confirmed by a Republican-controlled Senate.

In addition to nominating Martin to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Obama also nominated Judge Joseph A. Greenaway to the Third Circuit in Philadelphia.

“Judge Greenaway and Judge Martin have distinguished themselves as first-rate jurists with unflagging integrity and evenhandedness,” Obama said.

When reached Friday, Martin, 53, declined comment.

As a district judge, Martin has presided over a number of high-profile cases. In 2006, she rejected the appeal of Wayne Williams, the suspected Atlanta serial killer convicted of killing two men in 1981. Last September, as a visiting 11th Circuit judge, she issued a strong dissent in an excessive force case.

In a 2-1 ruling, the court dismissed a lawsuit filed by Jesse Buckley who was tasered repeatedly by a Florida deputy as Buckley sat distraught beside a rural roadway, unwilling to move. The majority opinion said Deputy Jonathan Rackard was entitled to qualified immunity because there was no prior case law at the time that found such conduct unconstitutional.

Martin noted that the deputy unnecessarily discharged his taser against Buckley three times “simply to goad him into standing up” and also repeatedly prodded Buckley’s body with the stun gun’s live electrodes “inflicting additional pain and leaving Mr. Buckley with 16 burn scars.” Such conduct was clearly unconstitutional, Martin wrote.

A Macon native, Martin graduated from Stetson University and the University of Georgia School of Law. She served as an assistant state attorney general and a federal prosecutor before serving as U.S. attorney in Macon from 1997 to 2000. She is married to Knox Dobbins, a partner at the Atlanta law firm Sutherland.

If confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Martin would succeed Judge R. Lanier Anderson III of Macon, who took senior status in February. The 11th Circuit, which has 12 judges, hears federal appeals out of Alabama, Florida and Georgia.