Judge Carnes

In her landmark ruling that finally derailed the unfounded investigation and hysterical targeting of the Ramsey's in JonBenet's murder, Judge Julie Carnes was a National Merit scholar at the University of Georgia and an English major--

Northern District of Georgia's New Chief Judge Reflects on Her Career
by R. Robin McDonald
March 16, 2009


"...On Jan. 1, Carnes, 58, became the chief judge of the Northern District of Georgia. Appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, Carnes has been a federal judge for 16 years. She came to the bench as a career prosecutor in Atlanta who had served as appellate chief under three U.S. Attorneys and as one of seven members of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, a post to which Bush had also appointed her and that she held for six years, until 1996.

...One case that made Carnes' name one that now is nationally recognized was her order in an Atlanta defamation case naming as defendants the parents of 6-year-old slain beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey.

Through the prism of that defamation suit, Carnes examined the 1996 murder case and became the first official associated with the justice system to determine that there was "virtually no evidence" to support theories, including those held by the Boulder, Colo., Police Department, that the little girl's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, had killed her.

In her 93-page order, which dismissed the case against the Ramseys brought by a Boulder man who claimed they had told police he was a possible suspect, Carnes found "abundant evidence" to support assertions that an intruder entered into their home at some point during the night of Dec. 25, 1996, and killed their daughter.

Carnes' opinion helped to turn the tide of public opinion that had condemned the Ramseys and breathed life into a fresh reconsideration of the case by Boulder authorities.

Reflecting on the opinion, which she issued in 2003, Carnes said she treated it as she would have any other summary judgment motion, noting that "the plaintiff made very little effort to offer any facts" to support his allegations that the Ramseys were killers.

But she said she was surprised at the dearth of evidence against the Ramseys given that the media "had played the story very differently."

There are lessons to be drawn from the Ramsey case, she said. "What it teaches is that drawing broad inferences based on very limited and selective evidence is a very dangerous thing to do."