In Congress, as in life, circumstances seldom collide to allow correction of a glaring injustice. Yet that is what happened in the Senate on Wednesday, when the chamber confirmed Ronnie White for a seat on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

Redemption for an old but still festering political error was a dominant theme of remarks in his support offered by Senators Claire McCaskill of Missouri; Richard Durbin of Illinois; Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Judiciary Committee chairman; and other Democratic lawmakers. Mr. White’s well-deserved approval for the federal bench was at least 15 years overdue.

Mr. White, the first African-American to sit on Missouri’s highest court and serve as its chief justice, was first nominated for a federal district judgeship by President Bill Clinton. Republicans joined in partisan lockstep to block his confirmation after a smear campaign led by Senator John Ashcroft of Missouri. Mr. Ashcroft depicted Mr. White’s reasoned refusal to rubber-stamp prosecutorial calls for the death penalty in every case as evidence of “a tremendous bent toward criminal activity.”

At the time, Mr. Ashcroft was facing a tough re-election fight and seized on the death penalty as a wedge issue. His strategy included trumped-up charges against Mr. White, which culminated in the Senate’s vote to kill the nomination in October 1999. Mr. Ashcroft lost the election anyway and went on to serve as President George W. Bush’s first attorney general. Mr. White completed his service on the State Supreme Court and entered private legal practice.