Utah's youngest federal judge resigns
On Friday, Cassell sent a letter to President Bush, informing him of his resignation, which is effective Nov. 5. In the letter, Cassell said he had accepted an offer to return to teaching law at the S.J. Quinney College of law at the University of Utah.
"Returning to the college of law will give me time to pursue research in my area of greatest scholarly interest — crime victim's rights. I have several important books and articles on this topic that I would like to turn to as quickly as possible," Cassell wrote to the president.
"I am both honored and thrilled that Judge Cassell has decided to accept an offer to return to teach and conduct research at the U.," said law school dean Hiram Chodosh. "He will contribute invaluably to our exciting and exemplary Utah Criminal Justice Center and joins the most outstanding criminal justice team in the country."
Among his reasons for leaving the bench, Cassell told the president that pay was also an issue. Cassell makes $165,200 a year but said federal judges have not seen a raise in several years. The uncertain future of any raises makes planning for his family's future, such as college for his children, difficult, he said. This in light that being a federal judge involves high stress and it is typical for them to receive death threats on them and their families.
Cassell's short career as a federal judge has been marked with several opinions that gained him national attention. In his 2004 decision in the United States v. Croxford, he became the first judge in the country to hold that the federal sentencing guidelines were unconstitutional based on prior Supreme Court decisions. In 2005, Cassell became the first judge to interpret the meaning of the Supreme Court Booker decision on the new advisory nature of the guidelines, and in 2004, defense attorneys applauded Cassell for authoring a lengthy opinion decrying a 55-year mandatory minimum sentence he was required to impose on young marijuana dealer Weldon Angelos. Also in 2005, Chief Justice William Rehnquist appointed Judge Cassell to be the chairman of the Judicial Conference Committee on Criminal Law.
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