Judge describes his commandments fight in book

MONTGOMERY, Ala. - Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore acknowledges having feelings of "doubt and fear" on the night of July 31, 2001, as he sat alone in his state courthouse office awaiting delivery of a Ten Commandments monument he wanted to install in the rotunda.

In a new book, "So Help Me God," Moore describes that night as the completion of a lifelong mission to use his position as the state's highest judge to publicly display a symbol of his religion.

It was also the beginning of a two-year fight that ended with Moore becoming the first chief justice in Alabama's history to be expelled from office after he refused a federal judge's order to remove the monument from the judicial building's rotunda. He appealed his ouster to the U.S. Supreme Court, but lost.

He says he knew that night there would be repercussions to installing the 5,200-pound granite monument in a public building and that news reporters and his fellow justices on the Alabama Supreme Court would question his motives. He said he knew that the monument "would be difficult for them to understand."

The book, published by Broadman and Holman Publishers in Nashville, Tenn., and scheduled to be released in March, is written with John Perry. An unedited manuscript was released by the publisher to The Associated Press in advance.

Moore was removed from office in November 2003, by a judicial ethics panel after he refused U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson's order to move the monument. Since then, Moore has been working on the autobiography and giving speeches. He says in the book's final chapter that he has spoken in more than 30 states on his belief that the U.S. Constitution allows, and even requires, public officials to publicly acknowledge God.

In the book, Moore, 57, talks about growing up poor in rural Etowah County in northeastern Alabama, going to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and later serving as a company commander in Vietnam, where he tried to instill discipline into his troops, who nicknamed him "Captain America."

"They did not mean it as a compliment," Moore said.

Moore also describes attending law school, working as an assistant district attorney in Etowah County, then spending time as a ranch hand in Australia after an unsuccessful race for a judgeship. Much of the book details Moore's efforts to publicly display the Ten Commandments, first as a circuit judge in Etowah County in the 1990s with a hand-carved plaque and later as chief justice with a granite monument.

He said one of his first acts after being appointed circuit judge was to take a small wooden Ten Commandments display from his home and hang it in his courtroom.

Moore began speaking around the country about the Ten Commandments after his Etowah County display was challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union.