Lowell Jensen

Delwen Lowell Jensen was born June 3, 1928, in Brigham City, Utah. He earned a BA from UC Berkeley in 1949 and a JD from UC Berkeley School of Law in 1952, then served as an Army Corporal from 1952 to 1954. He entered the Alameda County District Attorney's office in 1955 as a deputy, rising to Assistant District Attorney by 1966 and District Attorney by 1969, a position he held until 1981. Among his significant prosecutions as Alameda County DA were members of the Black Panthers and the Patty Hearst case.¹

In 1981, Jensen was appointed Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division under Attorney General William French Smith, then elevated to Associate Attorney General in 1983 and Deputy Attorney General in 1985 under Edwin Meese. He was appointed to the federal bench as a U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of California in June 1986, a position he held until senior status in 1997.¹

DALITE and the Prior Competition with INSLAW

While serving as Alameda County District Attorney, Jensen received a Law Enforcement Assistance Administration grant to develop DALITE (District Attorney's Automated Legal Information System), a case management software program directly analogous to PROMIS. DALITE competed with PROMIS during the LEAA's evaluation of transferable prosecutor case management systems in the late 1970s. When INSLAW won subsequent federal contracts over DALITE and similar programs, Jensen became a member of the DOJ's PROMIS implementation oversight committee — a conflict of interest that INSLAW would later cite as evidence of institutional bias.²

Role in the INSLAW Contract

As Associate Attorney General and subsequently Deputy Attorney General, Jensen oversaw the DOJ officials responsible for the INSLAW contract. C. Madison Brewer, the project manager for the PROMIS implementation, reported through a chain of command that reached Jensen. INSLAW alleged that Jensen had a "previously developed negative attitude about PROMIS and INSLAW" stemming from his DALITE background, and that he consciously allowed Brewer's campaign against INSLAW to proceed unchecked despite receiving complaints about Brewer's conduct.³

Bankruptcy Judge Bason concluded in his September 1987 findings that Jensen's "biased attitude toward Inslaw contributed to the situation in which Inslaw's complaints about Brewer and the administration of the PROMIS implementation contract went unheeded."³

The Meese recusal added further significance to Jensen's role: Meese reportedly recused himself from PROMIS matters upon becoming Attorney General in February 1985, given his association with Earl Brian from the Reagan California cabinet years. Jensen therefore handled all DOJ decision-making on PROMIS from February 1985 onward.⁴ It was Jensen's secretary who brought a letter to William Bradford Reynolds for signature during a period when Jensen was out of the building — a letter advising that PROMIS software was being provided to an Arab sheik for resale and general distribution, which Reynolds signed under the impression it required a signature from someone in Meese's inner circle.⁴

House Judiciary Committee Findings

The House Judiciary Committee's September 1992 report (House Report 102-857), produced after a three-year investigation chaired by Representative Jack Brooks, named Jensen as among those who "consciously ignored INSLAW's proprietary rights." The committee found it "incredible that the Department, having made this determination [that INSLAW's claim was legitimate], would continue to pursue its litigation."³ The report noted that INSLAW alleged Jensen had been induced by Brian's political influence — routed through Meese — to engineer disputes with INSLAW and drive the company into bankruptcy, with Brian positioned to acquire the company and its software assets through his vehicle Hadron.³

Bua Report Findings

Special Counsel Nicholas J. Bua, appointed in November 1991, found no credible evidence supporting any of these allegations. Jensen, by then a sitting federal district judge, denied engineering contract disputes with INSLAW or directing any DOJ action to harm the company. He denied any financial interest in Brian-controlled entities including Biotech, Hadron, Accumenics, and Simeon, and denied ever being promised stock in any computer-related company. He stated he had been genuinely interested in modernizing DOJ through information technology, specifically recalling "Project Eagle," a multi-million dollar initiative to automate DOJ's litigating divisions, but denied any role in awarding Project Eagle contracts, noting that the Request for Proposals was issued in May 1986 and he was appointed to the bench the following June.²

The Bua Report found Jensen to be a credible witness and concluded there was no evidence to support the claim that he acted out of bias toward INSLAW or in coordination with Brian.²