Tom Parker (judge)

As a candidate in 2004, he was criticized by the Southern Poverty Law Center for distributing Confederate flags at a funeral of a Confederate widow.[13] Parker was photographed at the funeral standing between Leonard Wilson, a board member of the Council of Conservative Citizens, and Mike Whorton, a leader with the League of the South. He denied being a member of either group and said he did not consider his actions in either event inappropriate for a judicial candidate.[14] Parker was also criticized for attending a party in Selma commemorating the birthday of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, founder of the Ku Klux Klan.[13] The party was hosted at "Fort Dixie" by Pat and Butch Godwin, operator of Friends of Forrest Inc. and also involved with the League of the South.[15][16]

In 2006, Parker wrote an op-ed, published in The Birmingham News, in which he criticized his colleagues on the state supreme court for a ruling the previous year in which the court reversed a death sentence for a 17-year-old convicted of murder, following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roper v. Simmons.[2] In the op-ed, Parker criticized the Roper decision as "blatant judicial tyranny" and asserted that "State supreme courts may decline to follow bad U.S. Supreme Court precedents because those decisions bind only the parties to the particular case."[17] The claim was criticized by legal experts (as well as Alabama Chief Justice Drayton Nabers Jr., whom Parker was then running against) because it contravenes the accepted principle of American jurisprudence that the U.S. Supreme Court has ultimate authority on matters of federal law.[17] Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor criticized Parker's op-ed in a Wall Street Journal commentary, writing that it was an inappropriate attack on fellow judges and was at odds with the Constitution's Supremacy Clause.[18]

Justice Tom Woodall, then running for his second term as an associate supreme court justice, criticized Parker as a candidate for chief justice in 2006. Woodhall characterized Parker's views as extreme, called Parker's op-ed criticizing his colleagues "cowardly and deceitful" and said that Parker "doesn't handle his cases; he just let's them pile up."[19] Parker had the lowest productivity compared to the state's other new justices, writing only one opinion in his first fifteen months compared to 38 by Mike Bolin and 28 by Patricia Smith. Parker attributed slowness to the fact that he had no experience as a judge and because he had to hire new staff members.[20]