Source: United States Senator for Ohio Sherrod Brown
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) introduced Ms. Bridget Meehan Brennan, Mr. Charles Esque Fleming, and Judge David Augustin Ruiz at their Senate Judiciary Committee nomination hearing to serve on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.
If confirmed, Ms. Brennan would become the fifth woman presently on the bench in the Northern District, and has served as the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio since January 2021. Mr. Fleming would be the only African American man currently serving as an active-duty Federal District Court Judge for the Northern District, and has served as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Northern District of Ohio in Cleveland since 1991. Judge Ruiz would be the first Latino federal judge in Ohio’s history, and has served as a Magistrate Judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio since 2016.
Senator Brown and Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) recommended these nominees through a bipartisan judicial commission and praised their distinct career achievements.
Production quality video of Sen. Brown’s remarks can be downloaded HERE.
Sen. Brown’s remarks as prepared for delivery are available below:
Thank you, Madam Chair, Ranking Member Grassley, and Members of the Judiciary Committee.
It is my honor to introduce today three highly qualified nominees to serve in the Northern District of Ohio.
Each of these nominees brings with them not only impressive legal credentials, but also life experiences, empathy, and deep commitment to justice.
It’s why Senator Rob Portman and I both recommended these nominees to President Biden, to serve our state.
Ms. Bridget Brennan is the current Acting U.S. Attorney in the Northern District of Ohio, an office in which she has served in for over a decade.
During her time as a U.S. Attorney, Ms. Brennan has taken on complex and difficult cases.
She played a lead role as the prosecutor who took down multiple sex trafficking operations, including serving as the lead prosecutor of the largest juvenile sex trafficking case in the history of the Northern District of Ohio, a horrific case that included victims as young as 12 years old.
She also achieved the country’s first conviction for a sex trafficker’s use of heroin to control his victims, convincing the court to recognize heroin withdrawal as a “threat of serious bodily harm” for the purposes of proving coercion.
A champion for religious liberty, Ms. Brennan successfully prosecuted sixteen defendants in a single case under hate crime statutes for their roles in religiously motivated assaults, after they viscously attacked members of Ohio’s Amish community.
She also successfully prosecuted a man for arson and the destruction of religious property after he drove hours just to set fire to a mosque in Northern Ohio.
Mr. Brennan received glowing recommendations from those she’s worked with – and appeared against. In fact, people that she has placed in jail write to her seeking advice and guidance. Clearly, this is someone whose commitment to justice is obvious to all those who deal with her.
Mr. Charles Fleming is an Assistant Public Defender in the Northern District of Ohio, serving as Trial Team Leader in the district’s largest Public Defender branch.
A career public servant, Mr. Fleming has extensive trial experience in federal court, serving as a Federal Public Defender for over 30 years.
Mr. Fleming has received uniformly enthusiastic reviews from judges before he has appeared before – and from those he’s tried cases against.
As a lead Public Defender, Mr. Fleming often takes on what his supervisor described as, “the most difficult and challenging cases to which our office is appointed.”
In all his cases, Mr. Fleming has displayed exceptional empathy towards not only his clients, but also the victims of crimes.
I think of a story about Mr. Fleming – a person he represented was convicted of a brutal crime.
According to the Judge who sat on the case, when making his arguments for what he believed was a fair sentence for his client, Mr. Fleming turned and faced the victim and her family.
The Judge said he did not alter his arguments, Mr. Fleming just wanted to accord the victim and her family the dignity of hearing directly from him.
His client did the same while making remarks, something the judge surmised would not have happened but for Mr. Fleming’s urging.
That is the kind of temperament we need on the bench.
Judge David Ruiz, has served as a Magistrate Judge in the Northern District of Ohio for the past five years.
Before his time as a Magistrate, Judge Ruiz served for sixteen years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District, and as a private practitioner.
The breadth and depth of Judge Ruiz’s legal experience is extensive.
As an Assistant U.S. Attorney and in private practice, he took on a wide spectrum of cases.
Those he worked with praised his temperament and intellect, describing him as “unflappable”.
However, perhaps Judge Ruiz’s most powerful endorsement was that of the Judges already seated in the Northern District of Ohio, who selected him to serve as one of their Magistrate Judges.
And they selected Judge Ruiz to oversee groundbreaking multimillion-dollar, multidistrict litigation against opioid manufacturers and distributors that have devastated families and communities across Ohio.
Finally, Judge Ruiz is poised to make history as the first Hispanic District Court Judge to sit in the Northern District of Ohio.
A decedent of migrant farm workers, who worked picking fruit in the fields of Texas and Michigan to provide a better life for their family, his success represents the fulfillment of their wildest dreams, and the embodiment of the American Dream.
Martin Luther King said that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, but he also said that progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability.
I believe that each of these nominees will be wheels of progress that bends the arc of our state and country’s future toward justice.
I proudly urge my colleagues to vote yes on each of these nominees, and urge the Senate to confirm them quickly, so they can get to work serving the people of Ohio.
Thank you.
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