THE EVOLUTION OF JUDICIAL TYRANNY IN THE UNITED STATES:

"If the judges interpret the laws themselves, and suffer none else to interpret, they may easily make, of the laws, [a shredded] shipman's hose!" - King James I of England, around 1616.

“No class of the community ought to be allowed freer scope in the expression or publication of opinions as to the capacity, impartiality or integrity of judges than members of the bar. They have the best opportunities of observing and forming a correct judgment. They are in constant attendance on the courts. Hundreds of those who are called on to vote never enter a court-house, or if they do, it is only at intervals as jurors, witnesses or parties. To say that an attorney can only act or speak on this subject under liability to be called to account and to be deprived of his profession and livelihood by the very judge or judges whom he may consider it his duty to attack and expose, is a position too monstrous to be entertained for a moment under our present system,” Justice Sharwood in Ex Parte Steinman and Hensel, 95 Pa 220, 238-39 (1880).

“This case illustrates to me the serious consequences to the Bar itself of not affording the full protections of the First Amendment to its applicants for admission. For this record shows that [the rejected attorney candidate] has many of the qualities that are needed in the American Bar. It shows not only that [the rejected attorney candidate] has followed a high moral, ethical and patriotic course in all of the activities of his life, but also that he combines these more common virtues with the uncommon virtue of courage to stand by his principles at any cost.

It is such men as these who have most greatly honored the profession of the law. The legal profession will lose much of its nobility and its glory if it is not constantly replenished with lawyers like these. To force the Bar to become a group of thoroughly orthodox, time-serving, government-fearing individuals is to humiliate and degrade it.” In Re Anastaplo, 18 Ill. 2d 182, 163 N.E.2d 429 (1959), cert. granted, 362 U.S. 968 (1960), affirmed over strong dissent, 366 U.S. 82 (1961), Justice Black, Chief Justice Douglas and Justice Brennan, dissenting.

" I do not believe that the practice of law is a "privilege" which empowers Government to deny lawyers their constitutional rights. The mere fact that a lawyer has important responsibilities in society does not require or even permit the State to deprive him of those protections of freedom set out in the Bill of Rights for the precise purpose of insuring the independence of the individual against the Government and those acting for the Government”. Lathrop v Donohue, 367 US 820 (1961), Justice Black, dissenting.

"The legal profession must take great care not to emulate the many occupational groups that have managed to convert licensure from a sharp weapon of public defense into blunt instrument of self-enrichment". Walter Gellhorn, "The Abuse of Occupational Licensing", University of Chicago Law Review, Volume 44 Issue 1, September of 1976.

“Because the law requires that judges no matter how corrupt, who do not act in the clear absence of jurisdiction while performing a judicial act, are immune from suit, former Judge Ciavarella will escape liability for the vast majority of his conduct in this action. This is, to be sure, against the popular will, but it is the very oath which he is alleged to have so indecently, cavalierly, baselessly and willfully violated for personal gain that requires this Court to find him immune from suit”, District Judge A. Richard Caputo in H.T., et al, v. Ciavarella, Jr, et al, Case No. 3:09-cv-00286-ARC in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Document 336, page 18, November 20, 2009. This is about judges who were sentencing kids to juvenile detention for kickbacks.

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

#TheCrimeToBeNamedMelania. The case of City of Oneonta v Melania and Nicolae Pervu, Part 4. How the City of Oneonta tried to stamp out "a Russian crime family" supporting Trump

I am continuing to publish articles about the case of Melania and Nicolae Pervu.

 This is Part IV.





Part II, #TheCrimeOfBeingNamedMelania. How to steal a lucrative business from an immigrant with the help of a New York court. A tutorial. Part II. The politics of motions to withdraw in Judge John F. Lambert's court - can be read here.

Part III, #TheCrimeOfBeingNamedMelania. How to steal a lucrative business from an immigrant with the help of a New York court. A tutorial. Part III. The burden of proof is on the Respondents - when a judge's and a city attorney's wives are involved in the mess. But, of course! - can be read here.
Melania and Nicolae Pervu are a Romanian American couple whose hotel has been evicted - supposedly - by the government.

  • By - supposedly - the Board of Public Works of the City of Oneonta,
  • by - supposedly - the City of Oneonta attorney, 
  • by - supposedly - the New York State Supreme Court, and 
  • by - supposedly - the Otsego County Sheriff.
All public servants in taxpayers employment and pay.

All doing what is good for the people.

Right?

Not so fast.

Let's look at what neither the City of Oneonta Attorney David Merzig who has filed the petition where he swears under the penalty of perjury that the petition is truthful, did not tell anybody about.

Let's look at the story of how Melania and Nicolae Pervu purchased the Oneonta Hotel and what came out of it.

On May 22, 2015 a Romanian American couple - American citizens by naturalization who escaped communism and came to the U.S. for the better life in a supposedly more just society - bought a large historic building in the middle of the business district in downtown Oneonta, New York, 195 Main Street, the former "Oneonta Hotel".

The local rumors immediately branded them "Russians" and claimed that Russian criminals bought the place.

While a Romanian accent is close to a Russian accent, and while Melania Pervu looks close to how the American public would stereotype a Russian woman - light hair, round pretty face - the couple was definitely not Russian.

Yet, that did not really matter for the locals.

For many of the local people a person with an accent is presumptively a criminal.  

People are completely dense as to various accents and various alphabets and various cultures.

I remember how the clerk in the town where I came to live for 16 years refused to issue a marriage license for my then-would-be-husband and myself because my divorce certificate issued by the Russian Federation - surprise! - was in Russian, in Cyrillic alphabet.  She demanded to see an ORIGINAL divorce certificate in English.  

I also remember how my husband, a criminal defense attorney, won a criminal case because a local police officer stopped a Polish woman and considered her lisping Polish accent as proof of her being drunk.  On cross-examination, the cop revealed that he had no idea how Polish language sounds and that it has a lot of sounds that an English-speaking person can perceive as a lisp.

So, for the locals, the Romanian American couple was as Russian as Russian can be, and, if they were Russians, they had to be criminals, and, later on, if they were Russian criminals and supported Trump - they had to be ousted out of town.

I have written on this blog before, with a lot of documentary evidence showing how being Russian American, and especially being a Russian who does not even support Trump, but who would simply point out where Trump may be right and his opponents wrong - invites violent and vulgar personal attacks.

As it will be shown further in this article series, the rumors that Melania and Nicolae Pervu are Russian criminals that overtook a large hotel in the middle of the Oneonta business district will play a significant role in the fate of the couple's new business.

Having had a hard time rising to financial stability in the U.S., the couple decided to help those less fortunate with their business.

With that in mind, the couple turned the hotel into a place where they welcomed low income tenants subsidized by the government and called their place (unofficially) The St. Ekaterina Hotel, in the name of Melania's mother.

Yet, it is not that simple to help the poor in Oneonta, New York.

The moment the couple has bought the hotel, a reassessment happened, and the city has doubled the taxes on it.

In order to get some additional income, Melania Pervu decided to operate a hotdog stand - since there was no place to buy a hotdog on the Main Street, Oneonta, and there were a lot of students around, potential customers.  Oneonta is a student town, with two colleges - the private Hartwick College, and SUNY Oneonta, with nearly 6,000 students all in all, and students give a lot of business to the local community.

Reportedly, Melania Pervu duly applied for the health permit, tax number and city permit, and invested $7,200, on credit, for a hotdog cart.

The permits were given to her, but not for long.

Because Melania Pervu did not just sell hotdogs.

She sold hotdogs while proudly supporting Donald Trump for President in his elections, had a message like that in her hotdog cart window and flew a flag like that on the cart.

Moreover, Melania Pervu, a survivor of a communist state, talked to students who were buying hotdogs and discussing her support of Trump with her - and telling them what communism is like, and why does she support Donald Trump, in whom Melania Pervu saw protection from the onslaught of communism upon the country.

Within 5 days of her operating the hotdog cart, the City of Oneonta has sent its police to yank her hotdog permit and shut down her hotdog business, telling her that the permits were supposedly given to her "by mistake".

It took a complaint to the New York State Senator James Seward, who also has an office in Oneonta, New York, and a local influence, to have her hotdog license restored.

The City of Oneonta did not relent, though, in its efforts to oust the Pervus, for three reasons.

  1. Not only the Pervus were "Russian criminals" supporting Trump and upsetting students (and their parents) with explanations as to why Trump is good for the country, between selling them hotdogs, but 
  2. the Pervus upset their neighbors from 189 Main Street by housing the poor and thus dropping prestige of the business district, and
  3. they owned a lucrative business downtown that many people "better than them", more influential, craved.
And the onslaught has begun.

As to the details of the onslaught, stay tuned for more articles in this series.

I will publish documents, as I always do, describing the case.









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