J. Robert Elliott

James Robert Elliott (January 1, 1910 – June 27, 2006) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia.

Education and career Born in Gainesville, Georgia, to Thomas M. Elliott, a Methodist minister, and Mamie Glenn Elliot, Elliott received a Bachelor of Philosophy degree from Emory University in 1930. He taught school to earn money for his legal education. He was also a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1948 and 1952. where he is buried.

Notable cases In his first year on the bench, Elliott issued an order halting a civil rights demonstration led by the Martin Luther King Jr. in Albany, Georgia. He later said that the decision – subsequently overturned on appeal – was made due to a threat of violence against King and his supporters. Nevertheless, King biographer Taylor Branch wrote that Judge Elliott was a "strident segregationist." In 1983, The American Lawyer would rank Elliott as the worst federal judge in the newly created Eleventh Circuit, describing him as:

In 1974, Elliott gained notoriety for overturning the conviction of Army Lt. William Calley for killing 22 people during the 1968 My Lai massacre, a decision later overruled by the appeals court.

In 1996 and 1997, Elliott was reprimanded by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit for his evidentiary rulings in cases involving DuPont and Mazda. Elliott had fined DuPont $115 million for withholding evidence in a suit over Benlate fungicide, and had ruled that Mazda forfeited the right to trial when it failed to comply with his order to turn evidence over to the plaintiffs. The 11th Circuit reversed both rulings, and in the Mazda case found that Elliott had abused his power and "effectively abdicat[ed his] responsibility to manage a case."