Source: The Associated Press
On November 13, 2003 The Associated Press reported that "Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was ousted Thursday by a judicial ethics panel for defying a federal judge's order to remove his 2 1/2-ton granite monument of the Ten Commandments from the rotunda of the state courthouse. The state Court of the Judiciary unanimously imposed the harshest penalty possible after a one-day trial in which Moore said his refusal was a moral and lawful acknowledgment of God. Prosecutors said Moore's defiance, left unchecked, would harm the judicial system... 'I have absolutely no regrets. I have done what I was sworn to do,' Moore declared, drawing applause from dozens of supporters at the courthouse. 'It's about whether or not you can acknowledge God as a source of our law and our liberty. That's all I've done. I've been found guilty,' he said."