More on access to justice in the United States - Wolff v McDonnell, punishment for helping people access the court, and the judicial lobbying to make that pesky civil rights litigation go away

Wolff v McDonnell.

In 1974, an inmate was 

• stripped of good time credits, 
• put into solitary confinement, 
• a record of disciplinary misconduct was created against him - 

for what?

"In 1974, Robert O. McDonnell, an inmate at the Nebraska Penal and Correctional Complex, filed a class action lawsuit against Warden Charles Wolff Jr., charging, among other complaints, that the disciplinary proceedings hearings at the prison were biased and violated due process, that the inspection of all incoming and outbound mail (including mail to and from attorneys) was unreasonable, and that the legal assistance available to inmates was lacking. At the time, the process for disciplinary proceedings involved the prisoner being orally informed of the nature of the charges against them, a report being written by a committee, and the report being read to the inmate. If the inmate denied the charge, they could inquire as to the charging party, but could not cross-examine or present any witnesses. Penalties imposed by the hearings could include loss of good-time credits".

So - an inmate helped other inmates in suing prison authorities for civil rights violations, to draft and file a CLASS civil rights lawsuit against the Nebraska prison system.

The prison system retaliated - which was obviously a political, content-of-speech retaliation otherwise prohibited by the U.S. Supreme Court under the 1st Amendment.

But not in this case.

While the U.S. Supreme Court magnanimously reaffirmed its earlier decision in Johnson v Avery (of 1969) - that if the state does not provide a "reasonable alternative" to proceeding pro se in litigation to indigent/poor inmates, they "may" use a "lay" inmate to draft their litigation documents for them,

the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the lower court's decisions that good credits stripped from the inmate for doing just that cannot be restored, and his misconduct record created against him in retaliation for that help by prison authorities - for helping other inmates sue the prison authorities, cannot be expunged.

In other words, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld punishment of that particular inmate with the loss of good time - which means in everyday language prolonging the time he was to spend in prison.

For what? 

For encroaching on the judicial monopoly - usurped monopoly, nobody gave it to the judiciary - to control access to court by the American poor.

In fact, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court at the time of the "sharp rise" of civil rights litigation, the Chief Justice Warren Burgher - practically openly considered civil rights litigation a breach of attorney ethics for attorneys and called upon the "organized bar" to "remedy" the situation - to discipline "uncivil" civil rights attorneys (which the organized bar started to do happily):

"Warren Burger, in his pleas for civility,90 gave substantial blame for the impending downfall of the profession to lawyers in political trials, or as Burger called them, the “new litigation.” He encouraged the legal profession to apply “rigorous powers of discipline” to the misbehaving lawyers by either the judicial or bar enforcement systems. Failure to do so, he warned, would allow “the jungle [to] clos[e] in on us.”91 Bar leaders and commentators followed the Chief Justice’s lead.92"

Moliterno, James E.. The American Legal Profession in Crisis: Resistance and Responses to Change (pp. 81-82). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition. 

"In a wide variety of contexts, civil rights lawyers and activists, and early federally supported legal aid lawyers disrupted the calm social professional serenity of the late 1950s. Their collective fault in the eyes of the organized, traditional strength center of the bar was the disruption to the legal, social, and cultural status quo that their work promised. The organized bar treated the civil rights movement itself as a crisis and targeted lawyers who disrupted the legal profession’s settled norms. The profession saw the civil rights lawyers as introducing a new form of lawyering with social engineering as its goal. Thought inappropriate and unprofessional, the bar sought to dampen this reform-minded lawyering. When civil rights activist lawyers began stirring the pot, the profession was still reeling from its anticommunist fervor. Some saw the civil rights lawyer as no different from the communist. Eventually, Warren Burger decried the work of activist lawyers as a key element of the emerging “civility crisis,” warning that “the jungle [was] closing in.”1"

Moliterno, James E.. The American Legal Profession in Crisis: Resistance and Responses to Change (p. 63). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

That speech, about the "jungle closing in", by the SCOTUS Chief Justice Warren Burgher, was made in 1971, 3 years before the decision in Wolff v McDonnell:

Warren E. Burger, Address Before the American Law Institute: The Necessity for Civility (May 18, 1971), in 52 F.R.D. 211 (1971). 

In his furtherance of the need for "civility" - in the peculiar way Chief Justice Burger understood it, he proceeded to mastermind a series of various behind-the-scenes organizations - like

• the American Inns of Court (providing for free travel of SCOTUS law clerks who de facto decide cases while judges of the court travel for speeches, write books and otherwise entertain themselves);

• State-Federal Judicial Councils, a secret-membership quasi-judicial organization that was designed to "relieve tension" between state and federal courts brought, obviously, by civil rights litigation (where state judges appeared as defendants in civil rights lawsuits in front of federal judges - in other words, the organization serves to fix federal civil rights cases behind closed doors, in secret consultations between state and federal judges - which, on retirement, one of state participants in such "Council", the retired (attorney licensing) judge Thomas Mercure freely admitted:

Both of these Burger-inspired organizations are funded by attorneys and attended, for free, by judges, behind closed doors, where the wining-and-dining of judges occurs, ex parte communications with judges occur (all for promoting civility and excellence in the legal profession, no doubt),  "sponsoring" of national and international "learning" trips for judges and members of their families, as well as hiring judicial clerks, relatives and friends in order to make certain law firms impenetrable for claims of attorney ethics violations, occur - all under the guise of promoting "civility".

Note that Judge Mercure mentions his participation in the State-Federal Judicial Council, this way:

"...for 10 years (2003-2013) on the Federal-State Judicial Council as one of five state judges meeting regularly with five federal judges to facilitate the disposition of cases in both court systems" 

(talking about ex parte communications of defendants in federal court and presiding federal judges, and about independence of state and federal government from one another, checks and balances and all)

as part of his ATTORNEY ADVERTISING - for himself and for the law firm Carter and Conboy where Judge Mercure now toils, for money, as an "of counsel" attorney.

He is asking you "Why Judge Mercure" - why should you hire Judge Mercure?

In this capacity:

• appellate advocacy;
• ethics and complex civil litigation;
• alternative dispute resolution services, including mediation and arbitration.

Why hire Judge Mercure?

Because he knows everybody, has a history of having had every finger in every pie and already has a history (for 10 years, 2003 to 2013) of fixing cases with federal judges who he, naturally, knows personally - not to mention that he regulated the federal judges' law licenses while fixing cases against himself and against other judges on his court in "facilitating resolutions" of civil rights lawsuits with federal judges during that time.

Why not hire Judge Mercure?

He has proven that corruption works - and it will work for you, too, if you pay him the established fee.

By the way, in 1996, when the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court was William Rehnquist (the one who promoted women's rights by putting on the same court his former lover, Sandra Day O'Connor - and she accepted that position from the hands of her lover, with no qualms), Chief Justice Rehnquist continued in the shameful footsteps of his predecessor Warren Burger in lobbying yet another blow to civil rights litigation of the predominantly minority/black prison population in the United States.

Federal courts then helped the states lobby obtaining from the U.S. Congress yet another "helping legislation" - the Prison Litigation Reform Act, requiring prisoners to first "exhaust administrative remedies" before suing for horrible conditions, including guard brutality, in prisons.

In real language that meant that prisoners, in order to file a civil rights lawsuit challenging human rights violations by prison authorities, should first humbly file a complaint with those same prison authorities - and wait for retaliation (loss of good time, being beaten up by guards with the claim next that it is the inmate who beat up the guards - outside of the reach of security cameras, of course, and put for years into solitary confinement and starved with "the loaf"). 

The statute of limitations on filing such administrative complaints varies in different state prison systems and is, in some, as short as 3 days - making it impossible for prisoners to file a complaint.

Without an attorney, a prisoner cannot navigate the complex quagmire of precedents, judicial amendments to the Civil Rights Act, the various abstentions, deferences, comities, additional pleading requirements etc. 

Yet, at federal courts' request to reduce their workload and not to have to deal with the pesky civil rights litigation of the predominantly minority/black prisoners, 

the U.S. Congress (overwhelmed by licensed attorneys controlled by the judiciary) allowed trial courts, 

when seeing that an illiterate pro se prisoner who cannot afford an attorney (because of attorney monopoly regulated by those same courts that made attorneys not affordable for the majority of the population in the U.S. and to practically all inmates in the U.S.) 

did not satisfy jumping through all the hoops/judicial amendments to the Civil Rights Act that the judiciary made without constitutional authority to legislate, 

to also 

• dismiss such pro se civil rights lawsuits of inmates (convicted of a crime) and pretrial detainees (presumed innocent) for human rights violations during incarceration/detention;
• certify for the appellate court that the appeal from their own decision will be frivolous; and
• impose an anti-filing injunction if the inmate dared to file such a "frivolous" lawsuit three times.

In other words, if an inmate's civil rights were violated by prison authorities 3 times (which can happen every day), but an inmate cannot plead to the court's specification (as an expert civil rights attorney), which is also a given - after three lawsuits shot by courts without even allowing their service upon opponents, perpetrators of civil rights violations, his access to court will be simply blocked by courts.

"The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), 42 U.S.C. § 1997e, is a U.S. federal law that was enacted in 1996. Congress enacted PLRA in response to a significant increase in prisoner litigation in the federal courts."


The U.S. Supreme Court, in 2006, openly admitted that the PLRA was designed to decrease prisoners' civil rights litigation in  Woodford v Ngo:

" Congress enacted the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA), 110 Stat. 1321–71, as amended, 42 U. S. C. §1997e et seq., in 1996 in the wake of a sharp rise in prisoner litigation in the federal courts, see, e.g., Alexander v. Hawk, 159 F. 3d 1321, 1324–1325 (CA11 1998) (citing statistics). The PLRA contains a variety of provisions designed to bring this litigation under control. See, e.g., §1997e(c) (requiring district courts to weed out prisoner claims that clearly lack merit); §1997e(e) (prohibiting claims for emotional injury without prior showing of physical injury); §1997e(d) (restricting attorney’s fees)."


Notice that the top court of the country, the final destination for Americans to review their human rights violations 

(because of the provision in human rights treaties ratified by the U.S. that they are not "self-executing", Americans cannot go outside their country to international judicial forums, like the United Nations Human Rights Council or the European Court of Human Rights)

 required the states not to look into WHAT CAUSES the "sharp rise in prisoner litigation in federal courts" as to the reasons for the sharp rise of prison population in the U.S. (which is the highest among civilized nations), the prison conditions and human rights violations in American prisons - but simply to suppress that litigation, "bring it under control".

The district courts were instead charged by the U.S. Congress to act practically as advocates for the state and federal executive branch of the government in such litigation in their task of "weeding out prisoner claims that clearly lack merit" - that, for courts who are mostly populated by judges/former prosecutors, would include every single prisoner lawsuit.

I have written here about the details of that particular statute and how it cuts off human rights complaints by prisoners completely, as well as about is unconstitutionality (that holds up only because no attorney would dare to challenge it, for fear to lose his/her license and livelihood).

That was not the first "cut my workload, there are too many civil rights cases" legislature federal courts asked from the U.S. Congress which the U.S. Congress obliged to give them.

In 1925 it granted such a request of the U.S. Supreme Court and changed its review of all incoming petitions from mandatory to discretionary, thus making the U.S. Constitution discretionary for application by the states:

" The Judiciary Act of 1925 (43 Stat. 936), also known as the Judge's Bill^[1] or Certiorari Act,^[2] was an act of the United States Congress that sought to reduce the workload of the Supreme Court of the United States."

See - an easy solution to the rise of human rights violations in the country (because of increased population - the freed slaves and the incoming immigrants fleeing the 1st World War in Europe and the Russian revolution):  just cut the oxygen, refuse to review the majority of petitions, and the "sharp rise in litigation" will just die.

A great solution, especially considering that "ministers of justice", judges, asked for it, isn't it?

A recently retired federal appellate judge Richard Posner has published a whole book describing how federal courts discriminate against pro se civil rights litigants - including a mention that pro se appeals in federal courts reviewed not by judges, but by law clerks, and judges give only a several-minute overview of their clerks' recommendations as to how to decide this or that case (of the entire massive appellate records, which is impossible to read in that span of time).

Moreover, Judge Posner portrayed the procedure of review by  federal appellate court as considering any pro se litigant as practically feeble-minded, illiterate, low-status person not worthy of a real and full judicial review, but only by review of judicial assistants, clerks.

By the way, going back to Wolff v McDonnell , the start of this article - courts now require all class actions to be represented by a licensed attorney, thus foreclosing any class actions by inmates like those helped by Robert McDonnel to file a class action against the Nebraska prison system.

This is the true state of access to justice in America.

I did not see fighting against attorney monopoly and against the position of the judiciary as the regulator of people's access to justice in the yesterday's Women's March.

I understand, the main cause of preclusion of access to justice to all Americans, including women, including people of color, including members of LGBTQI, binary and non-conforming gender communities - attorney monopoly and judicial regulation on court representation - is not of much concern to organizers of such marchers.

We just march.

We just yell.

We just post asinine slogans.

But, we do not want to look into the actual core of what is hurting us the most.

The God-like power of people who control our access to justice - and do that in a way to make their job much easier, by inventing ways to just "reduce the sharp rise" of civil rights litigation - the God-like power that Brutus has warned about 231 years ago in his Anti-Federalist letters:

"

I do not object to the judges holding their commissions during good behaviour. I suppose it a proper provision provided they were made properly responsible. But I say, this system has followed the English government in this, while it has departed from almost every other principle of their jurisprudence, under the idea, of rendering the judges independent; which, in the British constitution, means no more than that they hold their places during good behaviour, and have fixed salaries, they have made the judges independent, in the fullest sense of the word. There is no power above them, to controul any of their decisions. There is no authority that can remove them, and they cannot be controuled by the laws of the legislature. In short, they are independent of the people, of the legislature, and of every power under heaven. Men placed in this situation will generally soon feel themselves independent of heaven itself. "

It happened, didn't it?

Now people who feel themselves "independent of heaven itself" rule our access to court, control all three branches of the government - do not fool yourself that we have three branches of the government in the U.S., with "checks and balances" upon one another, when one of them fully, and the other two overwhelmingly consist of "officers of the court".

We have these people, who block all information about their misconduct (complaints about judges are secret), block their accountability by giving their potential prosecutors immunity (in 1976, also by Justice Burger as part of his establishment of "civility" in attorney regulation), but yank their licenses if they criticize or investigate them them (PA AG, Kathleen Kane).

We have people who, at the same time, give themselves absolute immunity for corruption, and demand from the profession they control,

• belong to, 
• incorporate into themselves (as "organized bars" - I wonder, why the history of such incorporation is not taught in law schools, eh?), 
• get money from for their elections and otherwise (see Inns of Court, Judicial Councils and other "exercises in civility") and control speech of - about themselves, the 1st Amendment be damned,
• demand that all candidates into that branch of the government must necessarily have several years of good grace from the current corrupt members of that branch - being "attorneys in good standing";

to presume their integrity and brainwash the public about that presumed integrity, so that the public would vote for the same corrupt people again and again.

Do you want still to once again assert that we have an "independent court system" and "the best access to justice system in the world".

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. day, fellow Americans.

People v Terrence Truitt: an interesting timeline of deaths/murders and fires in the area, as well as visits of high officials. Is Terrence Truitt a fall guy for the cover up of some local official's involvement in a global child pornography ring?

Update: Terence Triutt has been released from prison as innocent, charges dropped.

This is the 4th article in a series of articles about the case People v Terrence Truitt, pending in Oneonta, New York, Otsego County.

Part I of the series is here.

Part II - here.

Part III - here.


Here is an interesting timeline of some events in Otsego County and the neighboring Delaware and Broome Counties that can help add some perspectives to analysis of this undoubtedly criminal case - but with a likely wrong defendant.

In creating this timeline, I used documents about federal criminal cases against Christian Maire and Justin Hobbie that I personally obtained from Pacer.gov, information from the New York State Department of Education (regarding teaching certificates of Justin Hobbie), a press-release of the New York State Governor's office (about the visit of Lt Governor to Oneonta, NY, on December 19, 2018), from Senator Seward's Facebook page, and open-access materials of mass media sources.

1-Feb-02	Provisional certificate in Physical Education issued by the New York State Department of Education to Justin Hobbie, 41, expired 1/31/2007
1-Jan-05	Justin Hobbie's wife finds child pornography on her husband's computer and tells him to delete it
1-Jan-05	Justin Hobbie starts working in Cooperstown School District - according to press reports: "Justin Hobbie, 41, taught gym and health classes at the school for 13 years and coached girls soccer and track. "
1-Feb-07	Permanent certificate in Physical Education issued by the New York State Department of Education to Justin Hobbie
1-Jan-08	The first date listed on seethroughny.net when Justin Hobbie worked for Cooperstown Central School, no prior data is available on the cite, possibly, Justin Hobbie started working in the Cooperstown Central School in 2002, when his provisional certificate was issued
1-Sep-12	Health Education Professional Certificate issued by the New York State Department of Education to Justin Hobbie
21-Mar-16	The Superintendent of Justin Hobbie's school, Clifton J. Hebert, is found dead in the woods, allegedly after an ATV "accident".  No homicide investigation occurs.
23-Oct-17	A criminal complaint is filed against Christian Maire, of Binghamton, NY, of being a ringleader of a global child pornography production, possession and distribution ring
23-May-18	Christian Maire, 40, of Binghamton, NY, pleads guilty in a federal court in Massachussets, to charges of production, possession and distribution of child pornography in a global child pornography ring. "Nine men, who formed a porn posse dubbed the “Bored Group,” posed online as teenage boys for years to manipulate teen girls into performing sex acts while they watched for their perverse pleasure.
	More than 100 girls across the country, ranging in age from 10 to 17, were victimized and sexually exploited by the group, which operated from 2012 to 2017, according to the Detroit Free Press. " The group's members divided themselves into three groups, each with a specific role in manipulating their teen victims: “talkers,” “hunters,” and “loopers,” according to court records cited by the paper.
	The "talkers" were responsible for finding young victims; The “hunters" were in charge of luring those very same girls to unmonitored chat rooms where they were coerced into on-camera sexual acts (in one particularly grotesque case, a girl was manipulated into having sex with her dog); Then, there were the "loopers,” whose role was to intervene if a victim became suspicious or didn’t want to perform sexually, figuring out a way to force victims to do so, even if that meant blackmail.
	Some girls were even coerced into cutting themselves.
12-Oct-18	Otsego County Judge John F. Lambert, 45-46 (admitted to practice in January, 1999), is given an award by a large local business, the Clark Foundation, for working as a coach in Cooperstown School District where his three children - Jack, a senior in that high school, a Anna, a sophomore in that high school, and Charlie, a middle schooler (7th grader) in that school, are studying
5-Dec-18	A federal judge accepts Christian Maire's plea agreement
5-Dec-18	At Christian Maire's sentencing, one of the victims of Christian Maire's ring explained to the court that she submitted to the ring's desires because of threats to her own and her family members' lives.  "She said she thought the members of the group were her friends.
	“I was blackmailed into doing things I didn't want to do,” she said. "They would threaten to come to my house and hurt my family and I. They even named everyone in my house, so I knew that these threats were serious. They would tell me to take off my clothes and touch myself in sexual ways. So, I would try to accommodate their desires because I was scared."
6-Dec-18	Justin Hobbie is arrested after federal law enforcement executes a search warrant at his home issued by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York and, according to the criminal complaint, allegedly find child pornography and evidence of its distribution, on Justin Hobbie's gaming home computer and on his personal cell phone, ages of children in the images are allegedly 3 to 12.
7-Dec-18	A criminal complaint for possession and distribution of child pornography is filed in federal court against Justin Hobbie.  On the same day, he resigned as a coach of the Cooperstown School District.
11-Dec-18	Superintendent of the Cooperstown School District Bill Crankshaw disclosed that he talked to 7th graders to seniors in high school about their "level of concern" and that he created a "response team" to talk to students (potential witnesses).  "Superintendent William Crankshaw sent audio messages to the school community on Sunday and Monday nights to inform parents of the meeting and ensure to them crisis response teams will have a plan and “the necessary staff is in place to discuss students’ feelings during this most unsettling time.”
12-Dec-18	A U.S. Assistant Attorney talks to 175 parents of Cooperstown School District and tells them that the arrest of Justin Hobbie is only the "top of the iceberg", and that the investigation will continue, mentions that the teacher will remain in federal custody until at least December 19, 2018, his detention hearing
13-Dec-18	New York State Senator James Seward visits Oneonta, NY, ostensibly to read to his granddaughter's Kindergarten class at a Christian school
19-Dec-18	New York State Lt Governor Hochul visits Oneonta, NY, ostensibly to visit some local businesses.
28-Dec-18	A house in the teacher's hometown burns to ashes
29-Dec-18	The former East Meredith firefighter John Heller dies, according to the coronoer's report, of smoke inhalation, after he succeeded in saving his 4 young nephews and his fiancee, also a firefighter, from a fire on the 3rd floor of the apartment building
31-Dec-18	Terrence Truitt was arrested and charged with arson that supposedly resulted in John Heller's death.
3-Jan-19	A GoFundMe campaign for the legal defence of Terrence Truitt was shut down after it collected $225 towards the $5,500 retainer of a private attorney.  Timothy Truitt, one of the brothers of Terrence Truitt, who has filed the GoFundMe petition, mentioned in the petition, with details, that his brother, a man of color, was racially profiled and framed.  Oneonta, NY and Otsego County, NY, indeed, have a long history of racial profiling in criminal cases.
4-Jan-19	Christian Maire is murdered in federal detention while waiting to be assigned a federal prison for his sentence
4-Jan-19	John Heller is buried, with New York State Senator Seward present. "At the service, state Sen. James Seward, R-Milford, presented the Heller family with a New York State Liberty Medal and said a commendation would be made on the Senate floor so Heller would be “a permanent part of New York state’s record and history.”"
4-Jan-19	A felony hearing is held for Terrence Truitt, with an assigned attorney James Hartmann, who is married to Nancy Deming, law clerk of a local criminal court judge Gary Rosa.  Hartmann, instead of moving to dismiss the case because the prosecution's main witness did not have the necessary documents to base the charges upon, agreed to adjournment of the felony hearing and to continuiation of his client's detention in the Otsego County Jail.
9-Jan-19	Autopsy of Christian Maire's body shows he was stabbed repeatedly, according to the investigation, by 7 inmates
10-Jan-19	Truitt is held for the action of the grand jury by Judge Lucy Bernier (a former board member of the Oneonta performing arts center previously sued for racial profiling of renters and denying available rental spaces to minority-owned businesses)

What can we take from this timeline combining events from several events, occurrences and criminal cases centered in Otsego and the neighboring Broome County?

Here it is.

On December 5, 2018 a local (Binghamton, NY) man is sentenced in federal court as a ringleader of a global ring creating, possessing and distributing child pornography.

At the sentencing, one of the victims mentions that she was coerced into participating in creation of child pornography because members of the ring enumerated for her members of her family and threatened their, and her own, lives, if she does not comply with their demands.

At the same sentencing, the victim also predicted that Christian Maire will be beaten severely in prison.

The sentencing information has been sealed, Christian Maire was placed into a federal detention center awaiting assignment of prison as his permanent incarceration destination, but what is mentioned in the open records is that the court "accepted the plea" - obviously in return for giving the court and the prosecution valuable information about the ring.

The very next day, a health class and physical education teacher of 13 years (and a girls' coach) of a local school where, by mere coincidence, three children of one of the local criminal court judges go and where that criminal court judge is volunteering as the porn-creator's colleague, another coach, is arrested for creation, possession and distribution of child pornography.

The judge (John F. Lambert) and his three children become at least witnesses in a child pornography investigation.  The children - as potential victims.  The judge - as a parent of potential victims and at the very least as a witness of a crime, if he knew of his colleagues activities in the child pornography ring, or as a co-participant, if he knew and participated in the ring.

The teacher's wife, a kind woman, told the federal law enforcement when they found child pornography on her husband's computer and cell phone that it was not accidental or first time, or "a virus brought it", but that she has found child pornography on his computer 13 years prior - back in 2005, when he had still a provisional teaching certificate, and told him to erase that child pornography from his computer.

"Coincidentally", 2 years prior to the arrest, the Superintendent of that same school district was found in the woods dead, supposedly because of an "ATV accident", and the case was not investigated as a homicide.

The new superintendent of the Cooperstown School District, likely, knowing how his predecessor ended up dead in the woods, immediately after arrest of the teacher, engaged in tainting memories of children, potential witnesses and/or victims of a crime of creation, possession and distribution of child pornography, on a global scale, under the guise of creating a "crisis team" that absolutely needs to talk to child witnesses to "help them cope" with "what occurred".

Then, parents, riled up by the arrest, were gathered by a federal prosecutor and told that the investigation into the child porn ring continues and that the arrest is just "the top of the iceberg".  The prosecutor also hinted that the teacher may be released after his detention hearing.

The very next day, the teacher, through his attorney, notified the court that he is just fine in federal detention and does not want to be released from there (obviously considering federal detention safer).

On the same day as Justin Hobbie waived his detention hearing, Senator James Seward shows up in Oneonta, NY, publicizing his visit as an opportunity to read to his granddaughter's Kindergarten class in an Oneonta Christian School.

On the supposed day of federal detention hearing (now waived) Lt Governor of the State of New York happened to visit the area and talk to local officials.

Within 8 days of her visit, Christian Maire, the likely source of information about the teacher, files a notice of appeal, appealing his conviction and sentence.

The next day, a house in the town where the arrested teacher lived burnt to ashes.

The next day after that, the apartment building of the local former firefighter (about the same age as the local teacher) burns, and the former local firefighter dies - supposedly of "smoke inhalation", supposedly while saving his four young nephews and his fiancée who herself happens to be an able bodied and fully trained firefighter who could participate in saving the boys rather than waiting to be saved by her former colleague and present fiancé.

"Smoke inhalation" is a very convenient cause of death - it does not show whether a person has lost consciousness prior to inhaling the smoke, and whether anybody, using the chaos of the fire in an apartment building, caused John Heller to lose consciousness, either by knocking him out, or by simply holding his neck artery for a couple of minutes.

Within several more days, on January 4, 2019, a week after Christian Maire filed a notice of appeal, Christian Maire was exposed in federal detention to a mob of 7 inmates, ages 34 to 47, according to the press, where at least 1 had a knife (prohibited by prison rules).  As a result of severe beating and stabbing, Christian Maire died - in a completely preventable death, since prison authorities knew what kind of risk an inmate with such a conviction and sentence is exposed to, and especially with a threat that he will be beaten up that came from his victim at sentencing.

Now, what makes me smell a rat here? Or several rats?

What makes me think that the Superintendent's "crisis team" is a concerted effort of damage control in a school where a judge worked, for years, as a coach, elbow by elbow with an accused child pornographer, and where the judge's three children go?

What makes me think that the visit of the State Lt. Governor to Oneonta, NY was not to tour local businesses - but to talk to local officials about this particular case and how to deflect attention of the public from the child pornography scandal?

But, what would deflect public interest from such a child pornography scandal?  A murder, of course.

And, a murder of a likeable local person, a hero.

By a dislikeable person, preferably, a person of color - in this particular area, that is important, given its history of racial profiling in criminal cases.

What makes me think that the fire in the town where the arrested teacher lives was a warning to him to keep his lips tight?

What makes me think that John Heller may have been a witness in that same investigation - and was sacrificed, with an honorable and lavish funeral and a medal for heroism?

What makes me think that the teacher was shown:

• by the fire in his hometown that destroyed a house completely;
• by the death of a local person under interesting circumstances;
• by the murder of the likely source of information that has led to the teacher's arrest - a murder in federal detention, no less, where the teacher thought it is safer for him to remain, and not to be released 

that he is not safe even in federal detention, and that he should not repeat the fate of Christian Maire and should keep his lips shut?

What makes me think that there are more people in high places involved in that child pornography ring if such forces are deployed in quashing the case and intimidating or brainwashing potential witnesses?

And, what makes me think that Terrence Pruitt was simply chosen as yet another sacrifice, a fall guy in that cover up?

And what makes me think that there was a concerted effort of those behind the cover up to make it impossible for the indigent Terrence Truitt to hire a qualified private criminal defense attorney and instead to be stuck with Judge Lucy Bernier's interesting "choice" of an assigned attorney - a husband of a law clerk of one of the few criminal judges in the area (who all talk to one another and, if necessary, arrange the necessary cover-ups)?

Now, who, under these circumstances, will preside over the criminal case of the fall guy, Terrence Truitt?

Judge John Lambert, well-known for coverups in favor of local police committing misconduct, and a witness (at the very least) in the likely connected child pornography case?

Judge Brian Burns whose nonprofit A.O. Fox Hospital receives, every year, tens of thousands of dollars from the nonprofit of the prosecutor assigned to the Truitt case, Michael Getman (himself a son of a judge who was caught by NY Attorney General in defrauding nonprofits by hundreds of thousands of dollars, but who escaped unscathed because of his blue blood as a son of a judge) (the source is tax returns of both nonprofits on guidestar.org)?

Judge Gary Rosa whose law clerks' husband represents the defendant in the case?

Or, will they bring in a clean judge from outside the area - if such a thing is possible in the State of New York, a clean judge?

Time flies, but what remains unchangeable in upstate New York, Otsego and Delaware Counties - is corruption of local public officials.

Stable as a rock.

On the value of reputation

Update: Terence Triutt has been released from prison as innocent, charges dropped.

This year, I have started the series of articles about the criminal case of Terrence Truitt, pending now in Otsego County, New York, see my previous blog articles about this case here and here.

A man of color is charged with arson that has ALLEGEDLY led to a death of a local former firefighter, a white man.

He was charged by an all-white police, and prosecuted by an all-white prosecution team, in front of all-white judges, and represented by a white attorney married to a white law clerk of a white judge.

In a city and area notorious for its racial bias and racial profiling in criminal cases.

Terence Truitt's reputation at this time - as well as his chances for a fair trial anywhere on this Globe - are destroyed by well-orchestrated pre-trial publicity.

Any mentioning that he is presumed innocent until and UNLESS found guilty by a fair jury of his peers meet with violent personal attacks from local people considering that the family and friends mourning the person who ALLEGEDLY died in a fire have a right to mourn by presuming guilt of whoever the police publicly points their collective fingers at.

My next blog is going to be dedicated to the bigger timeline of events in that same area, well documented, 

that may show that Terrence Truitt was no more than a fall guy carefully chosen by the police to cover up for the likely murder of the former local firefighter John Heller - for reasons having nothing to do with family feuds which is what insinuations at this time are about, that Terrence Truitt's brother Gavin lived with is girlfriend in the same building and was abusing his girlfriend (how the police jumped from that to the conclusion that Terrence Truitt set fire to the building with a lot of people, including his own brother, and for what motives, is still a mystery).

But, this blog I want to dedicate entirely to the value of reputation.

Those in power have valued their reputation from the time immemorial - above all else.

Innumerable people were tortured and executed in horrible ways because they dared to criticize authority - religious or secular.

Criticism of those in power was deemed, for millenia and centuries, heresy, treason, "seditious libel".

People who dared to do that, against all odds, were cast out of societies, cast out of churches (anathemized), and declared outlaws, which meant in earlier times that anybody had a right to kill them (or rob them of what they have) with impunity.

If you think that times have changed, democratic societies embedded freedom of speech, including and especially permission for members of those society to criticize their government officials, into their Constitutions and strictly enforce this principles, think again.

Let's take my favorite state of New York, the United States of America.

Every public official there, state and local, executive, legislative or judicial, is sworn to uphold and protect the U.S. Constitution and the New York State Constitution.

Both of these Constitutions contain guarantees of freedom of speech - and that includes, by implication, freedom of criticizing the government.

But, let's look how information criticizing the government, especially the people who can wreak the most havoc in people's lives - judges, prosecutors and the police - is made available to the people.

Or, not available.

Recently, the top New York State Court

(headed by a career prosecutor Janet DiFiore who was saved from criminal prosecution by her position as a criminal prosecutor herself, and her connections to NYS Governor Cuomo whose ass she has saved from federal prison - and who paid her and her husband with positions of super-power in return)

confirmed in a court case that the public does not have a right of access to evidence of police misconduct on Freedom of Information Requests, citing a state law.

That the state law she has cited is blatantly unconstitutional, being invented specifically to impair cross-examination/impeachment of police officers by criminal defense attorneys, and thus state law was meant to undermine federal constitutional confrontation rights under the 6th Amendment - did not bother Janet DiFiore, a former prosecutor, one bit.

So, as it is now, in New York, evidence of police misconduct is secret.

Because it is important for the government to keep their dirty secrets away from people.

And, even when such dirty secrets spill over into lawsuits when those same police officers, let's say, beat some women or try to run them down with cars - those cases are quickly shooed away, by settlements, or by corrupt judges like Otsego County Judge John F. Lambert who first

• reopened default of the former Delaware County Deputy Sheriff Derek Bowie, nephew to the then-DA's office investigator of many years in the lawsuit filed against him by Barbara O'Sullivan for trying to run her over with a police car to destroy evidence of his misconduct, the tablet she has held in her hand,
• reopened it on the idiotic claim that the same Sheriff's Department that served Derek Bowie, for money, with lawsuit papers, was not notified of the lawsuit against Derek Bowie in order to defend him in the lawsuit - which the Sheriff's Department did not need to do anyway because Bowie was sued for intentional misconduct only, and that conduct was within insurance exclusion of the County's liability policy; and
• dismissed it because Barbara O'Sullivan could not comply with discovery claimed by Derek Bowie's taxpayer-paid attorneys - why? - because her house was burned down (which she, her daughter, her unborn grandchild and 2 of 3 of their dogs narrowly escaped alive), and burned down likely by the same Derek Bowie, while the DA's office employing his uncle refused to investigate the vehicular assault of Bowie upon O'Sullivan, or the arson of O'Sullivan's house likely by Bowie, because it was busy prosecuting O'Sullivan on behalf of Bowie because Bowie was allegedly bitten by O'Sullivan's dog (who Bowie tasered) when Bowie came to O'Sullivan's house at night with a forged search warrant (to get that same tablet that he did not manage to smash and destroy the evidence of his misconduct during vehicular assault with police car on O'Sullivan).
• Judge Lambert dismissed the lawsuit of O'Sullivan against Bowie after Judge Lambert also dismissed the criminal case of DA's office employing Bowie's uncle against O'Sullivan, as based on a forged search warrant, after recognizing that testimony of Delhi Town Judge Gumo about issuing such a warrant was perjured because during the supposed issuance of the warrant Gumo was testifying about his misconduct before the Commission of Judicial Conduct and could not possibly sign the search warrant - his court clerk stamped his facsimile on it instead (that Judge Lambert did not admit in his order, but the clerk had to be ordered removed from the courtroom as a potential witness, while ardently trying to get there - knowing that she may be next).  Neither Judge Gumo, nor his clerk were charged criminally for forging (the clerk) and aiding and abetting in forging (Gumo) the search warrant.  My complaint to the Judicial Conduct Commission about Gumo, based on a COURT ORDER dismissing a criminal case based on his perjury, was tossed without anybody every contacting me or Barbara O'Sullivan about it.  Of course, how can a DA's office employing Bowie's uncle charge Gumo criminally for aiding and abetting in forging a search warrant giving Bowie power over his own victim - in arresting her and her daughter, tasing their dog, thus removing them from the house, and searching it for the tablet containing evidence of his misconduct?  The DA then became a criminal court judge, the "Honorable" Richard (Dick, which is a more appropriate name for him) Northrup, and the prosecuting Chief Assistant District Attorney John Hubbard, who is also up to his ears in this case, is now the DA in his boss's former place.

So, Judge John Lambert, the former prosecutor, made the lawsuit against Bowie to go away, and Bowie, while being quietly fired by the Delaware County Sheriff's department in 2016,

and despite two lawsuits of two look-alike women who he assaulted, see also here,

is employed as a valuable police officer some place else now.

So, thank you, Judge John F. Lambert, for helping the police keeping a violent predator on the police force, since he escaped unscathed, he will next time not just beat women up, break their ribs, traser them, put fire to their houses, taser their dogs and assault them with police vehicles, but kill them outright - with such massive support, at public expense, that has already allowed him to escape accountability, he can do nothing less to oblige impress his benefactors.

But, you will never be able to obtain evidence of misconduct of Derek Bowie through a Freedom of Information Law.

Only on Pacer.gov, materials of deposition.

Only in Delaware County Supreme Court (if they did not block the public from those materials, hide them and then destroy court materials of this case, as this particular court has a history of doing, at judges' request), when he was sued by Barbara O'Sullivan who he assaulted.

The same with judges - you won't ever have access to complaints against them, no matter how supported by verifiable documentation.

The same with prosecutors.

Yet, for judges and prosecutors, judges invented for themselves "absolute judicial/prosecutorial immunity for malicious and corrupt conduct" (!), so those lawsuits, without review on the merits, are tossed directly into the garbage bin.

So, there is, on the one hand, freedom of speech protected by the federal and state Constitutions.

On the other hand, the government, aware of the fact that reputation may be destroyed by saying several words about the person publicly - which can never be "unsaid" - devised ways to:

• pretend to create various "public bodies" (where the public is not allowed to directly participate), various "Commissions" on conduct of public officials:
• The useless Judicial Conduct Commission;
• The killed-by-its-father Moreland Commission - disbanded by New York Governor Cuomo when it started to investigate Cuomo and his buddies (the "fighter for human rights" Preet Bharara refused to prosecute him claiming everything is hunky-dory, and this presidential candidate did not commit any crimes in killing an ethics commission because it was reviewing his own ethics;
• The stillborn Prosecutorial Conduct Commission modeled on the useless Judicial Conduct Commission, see the series of my articles about it and the lawsuit interlinked in those articles, where prosecutors, among other things, are very worried about whether the Commission will upset their reputation with the public (a path to the ultimate goal, judgeships);
• The just-suggested Commission for Public Ethics, also to be modeled on the useless Judicial Conduct Commission.

At the same time, the government:

• made those proceedings, and the records of those proceedings, secret from the public;
• blocked the public from directly participating in these proceedings as a jury or grand jury, even when the issue is criminal behavior of public officials;
• populated those "public bodies" with public officials having irreconcilable conflicts of interest in investigating, prosecuting and adjudicating those cases, where, as in Judicial Conduct Commission, the overwhelming majority of the Commission is either judges or people whose livelihood depends on judges, attorneys;
• gave such Commissions insufficient budgets to investigate every complaint, so that they can explain away non-investigation of the absolute majority of complaints by lack of funds;
• blocked the public from having a right to appeal dismissals of meritorious complaints without investigation;
• invented immunities for government officials from civil lawsuits; and
• put criminal prosecution of such government officials into the hands of people whose livelihood and career depends on NOT filing those criminal charges, judicially licensed criminal prosecutors whose case often rests on suborning perjury from the police and on the judge (most often a former prosecutor) turning a blind eye to that misconduct.

Which brings me back to the issue of the value of reputation.

So, let's get it straight.

There is a constitutional guarantee of the freedom of speech, and criticism of the government - on the one hand.

On the other hand, the government has invented ways to block the flow of that information to the public, immunize government officials who engage in misconduct, and make it impossible for the public to obtain effective legal remedies against those government officials for such misconduct.

Yet, when reputation of a member of the public is involved (and, let's not forget that it is the members of the public that are also members of a public sovereign, employers of the government, and those who are, in their position of power, by the U.S. and State Constitutions, higher than the government, and not the other way around), a completely different thing happens.

• The person is first very publicly charged with a heinous crime;
• Information about it is immediately spread - by the government, by those same police officers who treasure their reputation and protect evidence of their misconduct by lobbied unconstitutional laws and clan connections - on the Internet, in a police press-conference then quoted by people as irrefutable evidence of the accused's guilt (over 70+ leads, imagine, the police excluded accidental causes for the fire, they found a can of fire accelerant - with Terrence Truitt's name on it?);

• The lynch mob is immediately in power demanding on the Internet that the accused must be slowly burnt, because the family of a person who died under suspicious circumstances wants somebody's, anybody's (preferably, a colored man's) blood as a part of their grieving process - and those who remind the public of his presumption of innocence should be tarred and feathered.

Why is it so?

Wasn't the right to an open TRIAL given TO THE ACCUSED, as a guarantee of the right to a FAIR trial?

And the public's "right to know" will be satisfied all right during and after that trial, not before?

Isn't pretrial publicity considered a form of police and prosecutorial misconduct?

Don't those same police officers, prosecutors and judges HIDE complaints of their own misconduct from the public - because they know, once a word besmirching a person's reputation gets out on the World Wide Web, the damage to the person's reputation cannot be undone?

So, if the "right to an open public trial" is turned by the government on its head and is turned to besmirching the accused's reputation BEFORE that public trial, and into destroying his presumption of innocence and his chance to get that open FAIR trial from an UNTAINTED jury pool - what is the remedy?

Shouldn't we at least equalize the reputational damage visited upon people accused of criminal conduct - whether they are members of the government or not?

Shouldn't we put down the secrecy/privacy walls of 

• police misconduct;
• prosecutorial misconduct;
• judicial misconduct

proceedings - just as police and prosecutors splurge the information about the accused long before that open public trial, so that any potential jurors who would be picked for the trial, would come well brainwashed by prosecutors?

And, shouldn't the police and prosecutors PROHIBITED, BY LAW, strictly enforceable by grand juries operated only by the public, without any input from prosecutors, to publicize charges, evidence and identity of the accused in the media, newspapers, Internet, press-conferences, to make sure than, when that OPEN PUBLIC TRIAL comes, the jury gets that evidence FOR THE FIRST TIME, not after it was discussed and speculated about by the media and people in the area for months before that trial even began?

As to the interesting timeline of events not included into police press-release on the Terrence Truitt's case, but that may be relevant to the case, my next article.

When people are corrupt and drunk with power, they do not hide their ends very well.

So, as to the interesting ends in People v Terrence Truitt that the local media is afraid to cover - 

Stay tuned.