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.

Disciplinary prosecutor Mary Gasparini rewrote state and federal law to help herself

My disciplinary prosecutor outdid herself in her own stupidity.

In addition to the previously filed criminal charges for contempt of court - for violating my own privacy - Mary Gasparini filed additional purported criminal charges, of course, without following any formalities required for that by the criminal law.

Now Mary Gasparini wants the court to additionally punish me for criminal contempt of court for the following:

1) because criminal charges against me appeared on this blog (criminal proceedings in New York are public and there was no sealing orders in criminal proceedings);

2) because the "Decision" of Referee Sirkin appeared on this blog (decisions that are without authority to make may not be deemed part of court proceedings, and Referee Sirkin had not authority to make decisions in my disciplinary case);

3) because Mary Gasparini's own conduct prosecutable as a state crime (attempted fraud upon the court and conspiracy to commit such fraud upon the court) and as a federal crime (RICO, wire fraud, theft of honest services of a public official) was reported on this blog.

Actions of a public official which are outside of his or her authority and which are criminal (which is per se outside of his or her authority) may not be officially deemed part of any proceedings.

To crown it all, Mary Gasparini acts as the main complaining witness in the same criminal proceedings proceedings which she purports to bring as a prosecutor, violating all possible rules of prosecutorial ethics, as well as constitutional law requiring public prosecutors to be impartial - and how much impartiality can you expect from a complaining witness trying to avenge exposure of her own criminal misconduct?

Well, I did know that attorneys who are part of or represent attorney disciplinary committees in New York are so drunk of their own power and the feeling of impunity that they completely forget that they are not immune from criminal prosecution - and Mary Gasparini is simply asking to be criminally prosecuted and put behind bars, hopefully federal bars, where she belongs as the criminal that she is.  

Unless, of course, committing fraud upon the court and submitting to the court falsified transcripts have suddenly become legal.

How Stephen R. Sirkin changed the New York State Constitution

I do not believe New Yorkers are aware or even noticed that in December of 2014 Stephen Sirkin, a retired Wayne County judge, unilaterally changed the New York State Constitution, specifically, its Article VI paragraph 4 subsection b that provides:

"The appellate divisions of the supreme court are continued, and shall consist of seven justices of the supreme court in each of the first and second departments, and five justices in each of the other departments. In each appellate division, four justices shall constitute a quorum, and the concurrence of three shall be necessary to a decision. No more than five justices shall sit in any case."

Once again, for any decision of an appellate court, the following conditions should be satisfied:

(1) a maximum of 5 and a minimum of 4 appellate court justices must make a decision;
(2) a minimum of three appellate court justices must agree to make the decision valid.

In my disciplinary case, Stephen Sirkin, a court-appointed referee who is not an appellate court justice and who was not appointed to make any decisions in my case, still made that decisions without any permissions - and the court rolled over and refuses to recognize that the referee is out of control and defies the court order.

New York State Constitution does not allow appellate judges to delegate their authority to non-judges to make decisions in court cases.

Yet, Sirkin has now scrapped the provision of the New York State Constitution about the quorum and concurrence requirements - without New Yorkers' knowledge.

Remember how much Judge Lippman wanted to change the New York State Constitution to allow him to be a judge until he is 80?

New Yorkers did not allow it - they voted against it, to the great regret of Judge Lippman who leaves the New York State Court of Appeals pretty soon.

Judge Lippman should have asked Stephen Sirkin to make a "Decision" to change judges' mandatory retirement age instead.

Sirkin would have obliged.