Referee Sirkin admits in a recording that his duties were to "hear and report" to the court, but instead grants the motion to the prosecution without any hearing

Here is the audio recording of my conference with Referee Sirkin today.

See my previous posts today for the details of what was supposed to occur today in my scheduling conference and what instead occurred.

See also that I posted on Facebook and on this blog an invitation to the public to come to my proceedings that Referee Sirkin cut off by denying me a hearing that the court ordered him to do (without any authority, but he does not seem to care).

Apparently, the 4th Department was alerted of the invitation and reacted the following day by a letter that the court alleged it has faxed to my unplugged fax machine that gets switched on only when I am SENDING something myself.

I say the disciplinary referee Sirkin once in my life - in October of 2014 when he invited me for another "scheduling conference", to wake up at 5:00 am and get to Syracuse, NY by 9:00 am only to hear that Referee Sirkin adjourned the proceedings because of the motion that I filed with the court 2 weeks prior, while he knew about the motion ahead of time.

Apparently, Referee Sirkin had a pleasure of having the power to bring me before him to tell me that he cannot proceed, instead of sending ahead a letter or having his assistant call me and notify of the adjournment.

The same, only worse, trick Referee Sirkin played on me today.

Today, in the view of Referee Sirkin, I had to risk my life and travel over icy and yet uncleared morning mountain roads, under "winter weather advisory" conditions to get in time from Delhi, NY to the conference in Syracuse NY by 9:00 am, so that Referee Sirkin would have an opportunity to tell me that he will not give me a hearing that the court ordered him to conduct.

I was ready to actually come to that conference, and the only thing that interfered with my plans is inclement weather this morning.

Below is the letter I sent to Referee Sirkin early in the morning when we could not get out of Delaware County because of inclement weather and bad weather advisory.

 I sent to Referee Sirkin this morning a letter advising him that I cannot get through the local roads because of the inclement weather and provided as proof of bad weather (because I suspected that Referee Sirkin will not believe anything I say) two things:

(1) the inclement weather warning;
(2) the school delays warning

Yet, when I called at 9:00 am to appear by phone, Referee Sirkin stated in our conversation that he allegedly drove 60 miles from Rochester, that the roads are clear, the temperature is above freezing, and thus hinted that I was not telling him the truth about the weather in Delaware County.

The logic of the Referee is staggering - because the weather is above freezing 100 miles from Delaware County, there cannot be snow or ice on the roads in Delaware County, even if the weather advisory and a witness who is the resident in the area says the opposite.

The Referee also acknowledged on the recording that his duty was to "hear and report" to the court the factual findings, yet, failed to explain why, instead of scheduling a hearing, as the court ordered him to do, the Referee instead made a finding in favor of the prosecution without any hearing.

There will be a long pause in the recording while the secretary is calling the judge to the phone.  The length of the recording is 21 minutes 29 seconds.

Close to the end of the recording, around the end of the 20th minute and further on, you can hear that Referee Sirkin ended the conference with me, but did not disconnect the phone and continued to discuss me, behind my back, in an ex parte manner, with the prosecutors.

Unfortunately, my dogs who came back from their walk and where exuberant, apparently alerted Referee Sirkin and Mary Gasparini that they still did not disconnect the phone and that I can still listen to what they are discussing, and disconnected the call.

Yet, what was recorded was enough to be used as an evidence of an ex parte communication between Referee Sirkin and Mary Gasparini, and who knows how many of those ex partes occurred in the past, without any opportunity for me to prove them.

Here is my conversation with Referee Sirkin (with Mary Gasparini present in Syracuse and me appearing by phone).  When you click the link, it will bring you to the web page where the voice file is uploaded.  You can either download the file to your computer and listen to it this way, or click the "play" button (it does not say "play", it shows a symbol "play" - a triangle in the middle of the bottom of the page) and you can play the voice file this way right there on the webpage.

For the information of those who would like to complain about me to various authorities for "surreptitiously" recording my conversation with Referee Sirkin, I would like to disappoint you by stating that:

(1) it is legal to record a conversation by the party to the conversation without seeking permission from other parties;

(2) it is not illegal to make an audio recording of court proceedings, only a video recording, and I did not and could not do a video recording on the phone today.

I had absolutely no faith that the stenographer will take the record correctly, and my own previous experience with this stenographer, as well as People v. Walker and Walker v. Sirkin that I described in my earlier posts confirm my fears, that Referee Sirkin and stenographers he hires is not to be trusted with preserving the record correctly.