The elusive appearance of impropriety

Judges of both state and federal courts must step down from cases where they are presiding where there is even an "appearance of impropriety".

That is because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that, as a matter of federal due process of law, not only justice must be done in court cases, but appearance of justice must be done, too, to satisfy the public in the integrity of the court proceedings.

Yet, while the rule is declared that even "appearance of impropriety" is enough for the judge to step down, courts also introduced a mirror rule cancelling the constitutional requirement to judges to step down because of "appearance of impropriety" to ensure due process through both justice and appearance of justice in court proceedings.

The mirror rule is "discretion".  "Discretion", as interpreted and applied by most courts in the United States, both state and federal courts, is absolute and unrestricted power of a judge to do what he wants.

Judges of state and federal courts also have "discretion" (absolute power) to impose sanctions upon litigants and their attorneys for "frivolous conduct", which is defined so vaguely and applied so selectively against the "mere mortal" parties and attorneys and privileged and politically connected parties and attorneys that it appears to be a tool targeted for retaliation of certain individuals for voicing certain political opinions rather than a rule established as part of the "rule of law".

So, on the one side we have "appearance of impropriety", constitutional rights of litigants to impartial judicial review, due process, justice and appearance of justice, and, on the other hand, all of the is swept away by the rules of "discretion", "discretion" not to step down, "discretion" to impose sanctions for motions for recuse, "discretion" for raising constitutional arguments and any other arguments that the judge simply does not like, whether they are legitimate and lawful or not.

Appellate courts routinely rule that failure to recuse and imposition of sanctions for making motions to recuse is not "abuse of discretion".  Appellate courts also routinely rule that failure to make a motion to recuse (even for fear of these "discretionary" sanctions) is a waiver of a right to raise issues of judicial bias.

The "discretion" not to recuse and to sanction for motions to recuse is given by the courts to themselves because courts presume upon themselves integrity - even while giving themselves absolute judicial immunity for malicious and corrupt acts on the bench.  

Of course, to a reasonable person all of that is nonsense and corruption, but try saying that in the court pleadings - you will be sanctioned thousands of dollars and, if you are an attorney, you may end up without your law license, since in America the very same government misconduct of which lawyers are supposed to challenge on behalf of their clients is regulating the lawyers' licenses and livelihoods.

Such control by the government of independence of court representatives has been pronounced a human rights violation and undemocratic in such parts of the world as Iran, but remains in full force in the United States of America.

Because of the "rules of discretion", the rule requiring that judges step down from cases because of "appearance of impropriety" is interpreted so broadly that nothing at all, no glaring conflict of interest, can be or is considered improper for a judge to preside over a case.

Cases interpreting "appearance of impropriety" are read like a combination of George Orwell's "1984" and the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Health Disorders.  In other words, they are simply crazy for a normal person to read.  What a reasonable person clearly would see as an appearance of impropriety, judges, after no less than "consulting their own conscience", consider proper - and consider it proper to punish the challenger who raised the issue of impropriety in the first place, and appellate courts do not see anything wrong in that, and affirm, cutting off any possibility for people for further effective legal remedies for the clear wrongs dealt to them by the government, through a member of its judicial branch.

What I suggest is that rules allowing judges' "discretion" to recuse or not to recuse, or to punish for anything at all, including motions to recuse, should be legislatively abolished, judges should be legislatively prohibited to impose sanctions for making motions to recuse, and judicial immunity (illegal and unconstitutional that it is) should be at the very least legislatively stripped from the judges for imposing sanctions when a motion to recuse is made, allowing victims of such sanctions to sue the judge for that particular retaliation.

That would be at least the first good step forward to prevent chilling litigants from raising legitimate issues in litigation and protecting their legitimate rights.

What is in common between the State of Nebraska and Tatiana Neroni, or kings of the bench begging to be dethroned

It appears that the common denominator is that both the State of Nebraska and Tatiana Neroni were punished by judges for investigating the judge's backgrounds while appearing before those judges in litigation.

On August 26, 2015 a senior-status federal judge Richard George Kopf of the U.S. District Court of Nebraska, who describes  himself in his blog as "Judge, U.S. District Court, District of Nebraska
Nominated by George H.W. Bush on April 7, 1992, to a seat vacated by Warren K. Urbom. Confirmed by the Senate on May 21, 1992, and received commission on May 26, 1992. Served as chief judge, 1999-2004. Assumed senior status on December 1, 2011".

It is not clear why Judge Kopf who assumed his senior status only in 2011, lost his chief judgeship in in 2005, but I suspect that it may have happened because of his "wildly unpopular decision" in 2002, after 4 years of litigation (I checked on Pacer.gov) where the judge retaliated against a whole state forcing it to accept nuclear waste because a reporter from the state dared to make a legal request for the judge's financial disclosure reports from the court administration.  Usually chief judges, once appointed, continue until the end of days.

Yet, only in 2015 Judge Kopf decided to announce to the public, through his blog, the circumstances of how he awarded against the State of Nebraska a 151 million dollar judgment.

In a blog that Judge Kopf named "Ralph Waldo Emerson: When you strike at a king you must kill him" the judge gives insights as to what may have lead him to make that "wildly unpopular" decision.  The judge even provides a citation to the decision, which I will reproduce here - Entergy Arkansas Nebraska v. Nebraska, 226 F.Supp.2d 1047 (D. Neb. 2002), aff’d 358 F.3d 528 (2004).

This is what happened during litigation in the case cited by Judge Kopf, in Judge Kopf's own words:

                        

Since Judge Kopf is still obviously reeling in 2015 from the fact that in 2004 or earlier "some one /sic/ closely related to Nebraska" dared to ask for the judge's financial disclosure reports (pursuant to a legal right established by statute, Freedom of Information Act), and the judge expressed his displeasure in a blog quoting, as a headline, a phrase "When you strike at a king you must kill him", it is obvious that there is an appearance that Judge Kopf may have awarded his "wildly unpopular" decision against the State of Nebraska in retaliation for the reporter asking Judge Kopf's financial disclosure reports.

Look how Judge Kopf assesses an attempt to even obtain financial disclosure reports about a judge or investigate the background of the judge or the judge's relatives, which is a matter of public concern and is not illegal:

And look what triggered the judge's "old wound" to write about the 10-year-old case:

The judge who was obviously irate because somebody dared to request his financial disclosures - even though he pretends to be neutral and magnanimous and claims that he kept that same report at his clerk's office and allowed it to be disclosed without reporting to the judge who asked for it (right!) - has the audacity not to step off the case because he became irate when he learnt that the reporter from the "organ of the state government" requested the judge's financial disclosure reports, but to "give advice" to litigants:

(1) that if the litigants "strike against the king" they "must kill him" - meaning that Judge Kopf 
     (a) considers himself the king, 
     (b) issues a direct threat to the litigants, that if litigants "strike, but do not kill" "the king", they will be - what? - killed themselves, as Judge Kopf did in the nuclear waste dump case?
     (c) perceived a simple - and perfectly legal - request for information about him which was not part of litigation as a personal attempt to strike against him, which perception would clearly have required his recusal from the case, 
      (d) since the perceived "strike" was not successful, the judge perceived what he thought was an attempt at a strike (requesting the judge's financial disclosure reports) as "slimy and ham-handed", and

as an obvious resulting retaliation from "the king", the judge slammed the State of Nebraska with a 151 million dollar lawsuit.  I wonder what happened after that with the reporter.

I do not know why the State of Nebraska did not (1) require a jury trial and allowed Judge Kopf to proceed to a bench trial where he made his own "findings of fact" against the State of Nebraska, nor did the State of Neraska (2) move to recuse the judge immediately after he notified the litigants that he is aware that a reporter from the Nebraska public television asked for his financial disclosure, because it was completely unrelated to litigation.  I checked the case out on Pacer.gov, a motion to recuse or demand for a jury trial were not made, which, in my opinion, was a disservice to Nebraska taxpayers.

I do not know whether the State of Nebraska will dare to challenge the judgment now, after 10 years, based on the judge's yesterday's blog, but I did report what judge Kopf said on Facebook, with a link to the judge's blog, and tagged the Nebraska Attorney General to read the post.

And I am sure that the judge will not be disciplined for his behavior because the policy of federal courts is not to even accept complaints about judge's behavior during litigation (while at the same time giving judges absolute immunity for malicious and corrupt acts committed during litigation).

And, I am sure that federal prosecutors who regularly appear in front of that judge and that court, will not dare to touch him with a criminal investigation either.  That's why the judge feels safe to expound himself in the blog.

Yet, I do intend to inform through this blog post taxpayers of the State of Nebraska who may want to apply pressure to their State Attorney General to move to vacate the judgment that was paid out of their collective pockets.

As compared to Judge Kopf monumental retaliation against the people of the entire state for something legal that a TV reporter of that state did (and which is presumed by law to be done in public interest), my case involving retaliation for the very same act appears to be small.

In 2011 Delaware County Family Court judge Carl F. Becker (the anti-hero of my most popular blog post) punished me, my client (and, apparently, her child since Judge Becker denied my client perfectly legal and meritorious request to restore her custody of a minor child) for filing a Freedom of Information Request with the New York Court administration , same as in Judge Kopf's case, for the financial disclosure reports that judges in New York must file semi-annually with the court administration.

Judge Becker was so irate that he issued against both me and my client a sua sponte Order to Show cause demanding me to answer why I and my client should not be punished for frivolous conduct.

In that Order to Show Cause he mentioned that he considers it inappropriate when an attorney "investigates a judge while frequently appearing in front of him".

When I pointed it out in opposition that New York law considers Freedom of Information Requests as presumed to be in the public interest, Judge Becker issued a decision where he:

(1) agreed with me on that point; but
(2) punished me and my client anyway by granting his own Order to Show Cause in its entirety, meaning to include the punishment for the FOIL investigation anyway.

Of course, the sanction was also issued 3 days after my client and I sued the judge, based on his actions ON and OFF the bench (what we learnt as a result of the necessary background investigation, because Judge Becker did not disclose his conflicts of interest).

Of course, both in state and in federal courts, lawsuits against Judge Becker were dismissed on "jurisdictional" grounds, because of absolute judicial immunity that is supposed to cover only acts ON the bench, but not OFF the bench.

Of course, in 2013 we discovered that Judge Becker failed to disclose a conflict of interest that arose before he even ascended to the bench in 2002, yet, the federal court rejected that claim.

Of course the judge assigned to Judge Becker's case in the state court, Judge Tormey, failed to disclose his own conflict of interest, that the New York State Attorney General representing Judge Becker was Judge Tormey's own judge in a federal case against Judge Tormey personally that lasted 4.5 years, for retaliation against an employee, and concluded just a month before Judge Tormey was assigned to Judge Becker's case with a $600 000.00 settlement that somehow New York taxpayers had to pay for Judge Tormey's misbehavior that had nothing to do with his judicial duties.

Of course, Judge Tormey also engaged in an ex parte communication with Judge Becker's attorney and, possibly, with Judge Becker himself since Judge Becker was on the 2nd floor of the Delaware County courthouse when the motion was argued, and, on conclusion of the argument, I and my client left the floor, as is required by policies in that courthouse, and Judge Becker's counsel remained on the floor for another 40 minutes.

Of course, evidence of which the New York State court administration refused to give to me claiming that video tapes of what occurred in the courthouse that day are unavailable because the videotaping equipment allegedly broke (while no documents pertaining to payment for repairs of the same equipment were provided to me on a separate FOIL request).

Once again, what my client suffered, what I suffered and continue to be suffering from Judge Becker's retaliation (because Judge Becker's retaliative sanctions imposed after we sued him and after we investigated him under Freedom of Information Law are currently used as the only grounds in a disciplinary proceedings against me) is not comparable with what people of the State of Nebraska have been suffering when Judge Kopf forced their state to pay 151 million dollars and accept nuclear waste from other states on their territory.

Yet, Judge Kopf's beliefs are the same as Judge Becker's - that it is inappropriate for anyone who is appearing before a judge to legitimately ask for copies of the judge's financial disclosures.  It is "a strike against the king", it is slimy and ham-handed, and, if the strike does not kill the king, the king will kill the striker.

And kings like that should be taken off the bench to prevent further abuse of power and harm to the very people such "kings" are supposed to be serving.

Education is no help when there is no integrity

Recently I blogged about judges in upstate New York justice courts who do not have to have legal education or, in fact, any level of formal education.

I raised that issue as a denial of equal protection and due process of law to criminal defendants prosecuted in front of such judges, as compared to criminal defendants prosecuted in front of County Judges, where, to be elected, a judge has to be an attorney with 10 years of experience.

Yet, all such educational requirements for any public official or licensed professional presuppose one thing - integrity.

Without integrity, one can be super-educated, and yet commit atrociously unfair, unjust and unlawful acts.

Like my disciplinary prosecutor Mary Gasparini, of the Attorney Grievance Committee, Appellate Division 4th Judicial Department, 5th judicial district.

First of all, existence of attorney disciplinary committees is not supported by statute, and thus what Mary Gasparini is doing she may be doing completely without any authority - and I pointed that out recently to the United States Federal Trade Commission in a separate petition.

Yet, even without such a jurisdictional problem, people who are put in charge of protecting public safety while dealing with such fragile issues as people's livelihoods and reputations and investment of a lifetime into a profession, such people should be carefully chosen and must possess highest degree of competent in the applicable law and a highest degree of integrity.

And what must be included into the concept of integrity for a public prosecutor is - number one - ability to recognize, admit and correct mistakes, especially those mistakes that can do injustice and destroy livelihoods of the whole families.

And, competence may be considered part of integrity - if the public prosecutor simply does not know the record, does not know the applicable law, he or she must either research and learn both the facts and the applicable law BEFORE the prosecutor brings any charges, or not bring them at all.

Or, if obvious mistakes in the charges are pointed out to the prosecutor in the course of proceedings, civil or criminal, the prosecutor's ethical obligations, as well as constitutional obligations under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Federal Constitution upon which the prosecutor took an oath of office when he or she was elected (for criminal prosecutors) or appointed (for disciplinary prosecutors) to the job absolutely require him or her to correct the mistakes before the injustice is done.

What Mary Gasparini is doing in my case is the opposite.  In full knowledge of several grievous and obvious errors making charges impossible, fraudulent or unconstitutional, knowing full well that several significant procedural steps were skipped in my disciplinary proceedings so far, Mary Gasparini did not correct her mistakes at all, or, as to one charge that she withdrew after she was sued and after the referee made a "decision" covering several charges on the basis of that charge that was perched as the first and most important one.

On the very opposite, Mary Gasparini tried to make sure that my proceedings, fraud, skipped procedural steps and all, should be held in secret until the very end when there will be no opportunity to change anything, even though I waived my privacy several times, and my waiver is all that is needed under New York State law to open attorney disciplinary proceedings to the public. 

To ensure that no misconduct, her own or of the court who favors her at every turn and bulldozes toward a pre-judgment made months ago, judging by the court's conduct, be disclosed to the public, Mary Gaspraini had the audacity to try to intimidate me with now several filed criminal charges for "criminal contempt of court" - for exposing her own and the court's misconduct in such proceedings on this blog.

The most interesting part is that Mary Gasparini appears in these criminal charges as BOTH the only complaining witness, complaining about harm done to her personally, and a purported public prosecutor of the case - which stinks already, not that Mary Gasparini cares that what she is doing is absolutely illegal.

Mary Gasparini, apparently, does not care that criminal contempt of court has, as an element to be proven beyond the reasonable doubt, that the court order that I allegedly violated, must be lawful.  A statute, Judiciary law 4, a New York State Court of Appeals precedent on point, and several U.S. Supreme Court precedents clearly state that as soon as I waive my own privacy and confidentiality, my proceedings are open to the public.  The law gives me control of whether proceedings that can potentially take my law license be open to the public or not.

The court, without any explanation as to its reasoning, took that statutory and constitutional right away from me, which, based on applicable law, is not a "lawful order of the court" and cannot possibly be proven beyond the reasonable doubt, or even by preponderance of the evidence.

Yet, for Mary Gasparini, the law is not important.  The result is.  So, Gasparini is pushing to win her case, and the law be damned.  And she is doing that allegedly to protect the public from me, while all she is doing is depriving the public of the only attorney in a large rural area who is willing and capable to sue the government on behalf of people whose constitutional rights are violated.  That is a clear disservice to the public.

To conceal that Mary Gasparini is actually hurting the public under the guise of protecting it, Mary Gasparini insisted to the court that the very public she is allegedly seeking to protect should not be allowed into my court proceedings to observe the "protection process".

Moreover, Mary Gasparini aggressively asks the court, repeatedly, and despite knowledge that her arguments have no basis in the law or fact, that I should be criminally punished (by jail time and high fines no less) for making my own proceedings public, which the law allows me to do by a simple waiver of privacy, without any motions, and especially for exposing her misconduct and misconduct of other public officials involved in my disciplinary proceedings, to the point of fabricating of court transcripts, proven by audio recordings that do not match such court transcripts.

"Kill the messenger" is a very old principle of those in power.

Only when those in power kill the messenger of the inconvenient truth about themselves, and they make sure the public should not be able to be the witness of how the murder occurred, they lose their legitimacy and their right to claim that they are actually killing the messenger to protect the public from that messenger instead of protecting their own backside from the public's legitimate rage as a reaction to the message.

And that backside stinks.

Ready to ask for mercy? Not before you find me guilty...

Well, how about - nothing?

There are certain procedural steps to be observed in court, and observing such procedural steps is called constitutionally protected procedural due process of law.

That is something that many courts in the state of New York (and federal courts, too) are struggling to comprehend or accept.

In my disciplinary case, as explained in my letter to the court, the court skipped not one, not two, but SIX procedural steps in order to schedule a deadline for "mitigation" for me and require me to submit whatever I have "in mitigation" before the court ever make a decision that I committed misconduct and there is actually something to mitigate.

And my answer to the court - in full compliance with procedural due process - is: first go through the required procedural steps and only then you will have a right to ask that question.

My question is - if the court knows that it will not allow me to use any laws in my favor, if it knows that no procedural steps that I am constitutionally entitled to will be observed, if the court pre-judged my disciplinary proceedings long in advance, and if the court is determined, as shown by the record of my disciplinary proceedings, to create new laws and rules on the go for the benefit of the disciplinary committee (the creation of that same court), why even call it a court proceeding? 

It is a backyard bullying session and nothing else.

A report of antitrust violations by regulators of the legal profession in New York was made to the United States Federal Trade Commission

On February 25, 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court has made a seminal decision stripping of immunity members of state boards regulating professions if:

(1) they are acting without authority;
(2) market participants control the regulating board;
(3) there is no state oversight over actions of market participants.

The name of the case is North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners v. FTC.

I just reported, in a petition with 25 exhibits and with a proposed complaint, antitrust violations and anti-competitive activities of New York regulators of the legal profession who are overwhelmingly market participants.

Not only their violations fit exactly all three of the prongs of the U.S. Supreme Court test that I descrdibed above, but, as everybody knows, lawyers control every nook and cranny of every governmental body in every state, and the State of New York is no difference, so there is no independent state body that can be found (in my opinion) in New York to oversee anti-competitive activities of regulators of the law market.

For that reason, I asked the FTC not only to stop the described anti-competitive activities of the law market regulators in New York, but also to appoint a Federal Monitor to oversee compliance and investigate how far back in time and how deeply such practices went.

The petition with 25 exhibits and the draft of the proposed complaint of the Federal Trade Commission that I forwarded to FTC today are available for review on my public Facebook group page "Independence of Human Rights Defenders".

Your comments are welcome.

A week after I filed a complaint and blogged about incompetency judges of justice courts who are not attorneys, the Sixth Judicial District in Binghamton NY started to react - somewhat?

On April 15, 2015 I have filed a complaint with the New York State Commission of Judicial Conduct against the "acting" judge of the Greene Village Court Alta R. Martin raising the issue that her lack of known formal training and lack of legal training present a competency problem of constitutional dimension where my client, a defendant in a criminal case, is concerned.

I also reported the fact that I made the complaint and the summary of its contents on my blog.

On April 22, 2015 a local newspaper, The Walton Reporter reported that, according to Walton Village attorney David Mertzig who consulted, as I understand, with the Chief Administrator of the Sixth Judicial District in New York (in Binghamton), "because there are no judge training classes currently being offered in the district, an appointee to the position must have judicial and legal experience".

Of course, that was a reaction to my complaint to the Commission of Judicial Conduct, and especially a reaction to my motion to recuse and disqualify a judge that was made on constitutional grounds in a criminal case and that may be appealed directly to the New York State Court of Appeals (if denied).

The concern, I understand, is that the motion may set the law for the entire State of New York, and possibly, finally toppling the perversion of justice happening in justice courts where people with no formal education decide the fate of criminal defendants, sending them to jail for, in case of consecutive sentences, many years.

In anticipation of the outcome, "there are no judge training classes currently being offered in the district" and "an appointee to the [judicial] position must have judicial and legal experience".

The question then remains - what does it mean, "judicial and legal EXPERIENCE"?

A judge in a County Court (an argument that was part of my motion to disqualify a judge in the justice court, on equal protection and due process grounds) must have, as a pre-requisite of even being considered for that position, have the following experience, education and training:

1) Graduation from high school - 13 years, K-12;
2) Graduation from a 4 year college with at least 45 credit hours in liberal arts;
3) A good rate on the Law School Admission Test;
4) Graduation from an American Bar Association-accredited 3-year law school;
5) passing the multi-state professional responsibility test;
6) passing the 2-day 12-hour (total) New York State bar examination testing knowledge of state and federal law and performance skills in reading, analysis and drafting legal documents;
7) passing the character and fitness commission of the Board of Regents;
8) obtaining and maintaining a license to practice law;
9) have 10 years of experience as a lawyer.

ALL of those requirements - ALL OF THEM - are scrapped for judges of justice courts.  When you appear in front of a judge of a justice court, they do not have ANY required formal education.

The shortest time in prison that a County Judge can convict to, on a lowest level felony (E-felony) is 1 1/3 years.

That is a judge who has fulfilled the education, experience and training requirement in points 1) through 9) above.

A judge in the justice court who has authority to sentence people to up to 1 year in jail, and more than 1 year if there are several charges running consecutively, does not have to comply with ANY of those requirements in 1) through 9) and instead now has to have a vague "judicial and legal 'experience'" to be appointed - not elected - to the bench of a village court?

Why the difference in educational and training requirements then?

Why?

Because an emergency election, conducted in accordance with existing laws, may provide a judge without a formal education who will immediately be challenged for incompetency?

Maybe, there is time to scrap village courts altogether if benches there cannot be populated with judges who know what they are doing when they lock people up?

And - a one million dollar question - if a judge without ANY formal education may preside over criminal trials that have a potential to deprive a criminal defendant of his or her liberty for years and, let's say, in the case of sex offenders, impose a lifelong deprivation of civil rights, why do we need attorney licensing and requirements to such licensing at all?

If a person without even a kindergarten education can preside over a criminal trial, a person with similar education must be able to represent people in court.

There is simply no rational explanation as to why a person representing people in court must have higher educational requirements than a judge presiding over the case.

The writing on the wall for the legal profession, the way it exists now, becomes clearer and clearer, doesn't it?

Body cameras for members of the public entering public places, including courthouses, as a measure of public safety from the government

For me there is no question that public places are unsafe without people being able to videotape what is happening there, to prevent abuse by the government.

During several proceedings I have been a target of clear verbal abuse and harassment by male attorneys.  Those proceedings were held off record (even though in courts that are supposedly courts "of record" which requires record of proceedings to be kept - but it isn't), and it is just my word, a word of an immigrant female attorney, against the well-connected male attorneys and judges and judicial personnel favoring them.

Whenever I asked for copies of videotapes documenting judicial misconduct in a proceeding, such videotapes were never provided to me, either under the guise that such videotapes could only be shown to me when the courthouse was closed (meaning - never), or that the video equipment suddenly became broken on that particular day, while no records of its repairs existed, or that the records were "accidentally" taped over, even though they were not supposed to because I asked for copies of videotapes well within the period of time when the court administration claimed it stored such video records.

I know for a fact that if anything happens to me in the courtroom healthwise (and it already happened), nobody will render me help, there will be no evidence of wrongdoing or failure to give help, and nobody will answer, so if I feel unwell I prefer to have my illness documented and to stay home on an official medical leave.

Yet, what I am describing in how I was harassed or how people refused to give me help when I needed it in the courthouse, or how people refused to give me recordings of judicial misconduct that occurred on the premises of the courthouse (3 times) - that is still very mild, as compared to what happened recently to a female attorney in Philadelphia who was beaten up when 6 court officers were overpowering - unnecessarily - her mentally ill client a criminal defendant.

The result?

The female public defender was hospitalized, the officers are not charged, the officers claimed she "fell" to her own doom while she claims she was pummeled, everything occurred - surprise! - off the range of video surveillance in the courthouse, and the local district attorney - another surprise! - is not charging the court officers for their action.

The court officer who reportedly pummeled the female public defender - yet another surprise! - first refused to be identified and, when the officer was identified, threatened the public defender that he will get to "talk" to her if she keeps digging more.

And yet another "big surprise" is that the pummeled criminal defendant was black, and that he was not given any medical attention - obviously, because giving him medical attention will be the same as documenting his injuries immediately after they were inflicted, something that the "honorable" court employees did not want to do.  And, of course, the victim of court officers' brutality was charged with new crimes (same as they do in prisons in the state of New York - pummel inmates outside of the range of video cameras and then put them in solitary confinement for a couple of YEARS, claiming that it is the inmate who has beaten up the guards and not the other way around).

The public defender is lucky that she was not charged with something - to pack her away to jail and prevent her from documenting her own injuries inflicted by court personnel.

So, ladies and gentlemen, members of the public, you need to be VERY afraid when entering courthouses in this country.

You may be beaten up there, by court employees, to the point requiring hospitalization, and no records will be kept, court personnel will present a wall of silence and of denial, out of fear for their jobs, no video records will be available and it will be your word against many "trained witnesses", court employees who will be presumed credible by the court system.

And - given that court employees are given extended quasi-judicial immunity for their actions - they may be untouchable no matter what they do, and, in the absence of video evidence, you may be out of luck proving that what they did to you did not occur as part of a court proceeding. 

Members of the public are in danger if they are the target of an unlawful arrest, as well as they are filming that unlawful arrest.  While a police officer in South Carolina was charged with murder based on a citizen's cell phone video footage, while police officers in other parts of the U.S. are suspended or fired because of documented video evidence of beating suspects, the reaction of law enforcement is often not to conduct themselves as they are supposed to, but to destroy evidence of their misconduct.

As an example, recently there was a report of a U.S. Marshal who was so disgruntled that a witness videotaped on her cell phone law enforcement brutality during an arrest that he grabbed the witness's cell phone, smashed it on the ground and kicked it.

What do I suggest to start solving the problem of the government getting out of hand and preventing its victims from proving that wrongs were committed against them?

The same as I have been suggesting for a long time.

If a person, a member of the public, enters a "public place", a person must be able to carry on him or her a body camera that provides video-recording of what is going on in that public place, and a law ensuring such a right for body cameras must cover courthouses, too.

So, ladies and gentlemen - let's press our representatives in the legislatures to introduce laws prohibiting any restrictions on video cameras in all public places, including courthouses.