Stats experts, need help: District Judge Reggie Walton selected RANDOMLY?

[MakeItSo]

Walton is one of 14 active district judges in the US District Court in Washington D.C.

http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/judge-info.html

Walton has been "randomly selected" to preside over the following cases:

1) The Sibel Edmonds 9/11 Tort Claim case
2) The Sibel Edmonds gag order imposed by John Ashcroft (Walton upheld the gag, saying that her driver's license and birth certificate, among other things, are state secrets)
3) The Lewis Libby case
4) The Stephen Hatfill defamation lawsuit related to the Anthrax investigations, which he postponed back in March (since that time, a new judge has been assigned to the case).

Question: What are the odds?

[MakeItSo]

1. Also, does anyone know the alleged process for selecting district judges?

If there are any enterprising reporters out there who don't mind being spied on, this might make a great story!

[bluestateguy]

2. We'd need a lot more data

How big is the population of judges in the pool who could be chosen?

How many cases are randomly assigned in a given year?

Any other rules that might apply to assignment of judges? We need to know about that.

[Angry Girl]

3. And who counts the votes?

But we all know it's not an impartial process, so why bother?

[cascadiance]

4. Chris Deliso has a good article on this issue...

He explains in a bit more detail how this "random" selection process really isn't random, but more of a queue, that can be "timed" or set the way those wanting to use it a certain way can profit from it. Obviously it's been manipulated to favor Walton in these cases! Interesting that he also has his financial history totally redacted too!

http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=8340

Stacking the Deck to Save the Administration
How a "random" judicial appointment may decide the Libby trial in advance
by Christopher Deliso
balkanalysis.com

The Bush administration – and the nation – has a lot at stake in the upcoming trial of former Cheney aide I. Lewis Libby over the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity to the media. And if prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald decides to indict others (especially top Bush aide Karl Rove, as some expect), the stakes will get even higher.

If the trial gets messy for the administration, the president will be forced at least to reconfigure his government and suffer the fickle wrath of a duplicitous mass media. But things could get much worse, if convictions are handed down. At best (for the neocon-led government, anyway), the whole thing could just get smothered under a heavy blanket of "state secret" luxuries granted to the defense. Given the track record of the case's presiding judge, this is a distinct possibility.

The key issue arising out of not only Plamegate but so much else involving the current administration has been secrecy. Secret wiretapping and other secret requests put to the judiciary since 9/11 have doubled and have been handled in widely differing ways, even by the same judges, as have other cases in which secrecy has been cited. Examining some of these cases indicates how difficult and tortuous the issues are that the judiciary is being presented with by the most vigorously secretive American administration in history.

At the same time, we will also see how these precedents may inform the upcoming Libby trial, with special attention given to the trial's appointed judge – Reggie Walton, allegedly selected "randomly," but repeatedly and specifically chosen for cases presented by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds since 2002. In his 2004 decision, Walton ruled "with much consternation" to uphold the government's line that Edmonds could not present her case because it would threaten national security.