I've written on this blog that I know of three cases where the Chenango County Family Court blocks people's access to their own court records and digital recordings of proceedings, especially when judicial misconduct is a potential issue.
Now I know about four such cases, and in all of them the litigants were indigent, issues of judicial misconduct were involved, in 1 case out of 4 the person was not entitled to an attorney, in 1 out of 4 a person was denied assigned counsel and in 2 out of 4 assigned counsel refused to do discovery in a pending case or to communicate with their clients, thus, jeopardizing the case and refusing to provide any assistance of counsel, yet the Family Court continued in one case and continues in another case to use the fact that the person had or has an assigned counsel to deny them access to the court records.
Based on the facts reported to me, which I have no reason to doubt, it appears that the Chenango County Family Court (NY) has a policy to block litigants from raising issues of judicial misconduct in order to protect judges.
Such issues were already raised against the Chenango County Family Court in a federal lawsuit, Davis v Campbell, 3:13-cv-0693-LEK-ATB filed by a pro se indigent plaintiff, but the lawsuit was dismissed by Judge Lawrence Kahn of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York before it was even served, on "immunity" grounds, even though the person asked for declaratory relief (to declare that what the court did was a violation of the U.S. Constitution).
I provided an analysis of how the dismissals and discrimination against pro se indigent plaintiffs occurs in cases like this in an earlier blog post here.
Declaratory relief is not subject to any judicially created immunities, nor is a request for prospective injunctive relief of an ongoing constitutional violation, and the indigent plaintiff was intimidated against appealing the case because the federal district court "certified" the case as frivolous (made in bad faith) and thus chilled the indigent litigant from appealing the case.
So, next time when you read in a scholarly article or book that most of the judges are allegedly honorable and only very few engage in judicial misconduct - think again.
If that is true, why the judicial machine on both state and federal sides is so active in stalling claims of judicial misconduct on all levels - from assigning the "right" counsel who does not want to work for the indigents, to intimidation of attorneys by sanctions and revocation of licenses for criticism of the judiciary, so that attorneys would be terrified and would refuse to make motions to recuse.
Why would a district federal court be "certifying" that a pro se federal lawsuit that is clearly claiming multiple constitutional violations was brought in "bad faith" by an indigent plaintiff before that plaintiff had the benefit of consulting an attorney or serving the lawsuit?
It appears that in such "sua sponte" dismissals courts act on behalf of judges, in completely violation of court-advocate rule.
And this will remain how things are done in courts until and unless victims of this misconduct come forward and start speaking out.
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