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.
Thursday, December 17, 2015
A hole in the sovereign immunity defense in New York
Yet, the 11th Amendment does not contain a bar for citizens of a state to sue their own state, see the text of the 11th Amendment
and its discussion in Alden v Maine, 527 U.S. 706 (1999).
The 11th Amendment clearly bars only lawsuits commenced "by citizens of another state", not of the same state, and courts have no power to change the 11th Amendment by incorrectly reading it.
As to sovereign immunity that courts "found" in the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S.C. 1983, while it is definitely not there, sovereign immunity was WAIVED by the State of New York in 1929 through a statutory enactment, the Court of Claims Act.
Thus, my humble opinion as a legal expert on civil rights law is that neither 11th Amendment, nor sovereign immunity applies on behalf of civil rights defendants in New York.
A follow up on Otsego County DA John Muehl: rehab, impeachment and/or disbarment?
After the blog was posted, a reader has sent to me an old archived article from 2003 about Muehl's leaving the scene of a personal injury accident in 1998 that Muehl has caused.
Here it is from the local newspaper The Daily Star, of Oneonta, NY:
Friday, December 11, 2015
On death penalty, 8th Amendment and judicial corruption
On December 9, 2015 the State of Georgia executed Brian Keith Terrell, after he spent 20 years on death row.
Reportedly, the nurse "had a difficulty" inserting the IV for the lethal injection. And, the executed person, on his death gurney, declared his innocence.
Still, no mercy.
An incompetent nurse was assigned to make even insertion of the needle unnecessarily painful, and it was reported that for an hour the person who professed his innocence, was wincing in pain.
And, while the civilized world abolished the death penalty long time ago, this country's judiciary continue to stubbornly refuse to declare it unconstitutional as a violation of the 8th Amendment.
That is the same court that considered it more important to decide the issue of constitutional validity of same sex marriage - I have nothing against the right of anybody to marry, but I assert most strongly that the right to life is more important, and with a system of criminal injustice as rigged as it is in the U.S. of America, with police witnesses lying on the stand, evidence forged, prosecutors advancing false evidence with impunity, defense counsel ineffective and dependent on handouts by the judiciary that is always siding with the prosecution... With all of that, it is cruel and unusual punishment to put a person to death, an irreversible punishment.
And - how many judges knowingly sent an innocent man to his death. Isn't that murder? Shouldn't those judges investigated, prosecuted, convicted, put on death row and put to death, too?
And, how many judges send people to death, like they sent Brian Keith Terrell when there were significant issues regarding his innocence or lack of guilt amounting to the point of imposition of the death penalty?
After all, Terrell was tried 3 TIMES.
A prior mistrial. So, one jury could not find Terrell guilty - the prosecution chose another.
Another jury found him guilty - the case was reversed because of a mistake in jury selection.
The prosecution indicted Terrell again.
Shouldn't there be just one shot at an indictment in death penalty cases.
In Terell's case, the prosecution got what they wanted only on the third try.
Then, changes of venue.
Claims that Terrell was provided ineffective assistance of counsel, specifically, that his counsel did not hire a forensic pathologist to assist the defense counsel to cross-examine the prosecution's forensic pathologist and to testify in Terrell's defense.
Claims that Terrell did not actually murder anybody, that there was a reasonable suspicion that somebody else did it.
You know what kind of statute was used by the court to block Terrell's claims of innocence and his reasonable claims of ineffective assistance of counsel? The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.
Think about this word combination. "Effective death penalty". Of a person claiming innocence. In a rigged system of justice. Given one mistrial and one reversal.
No? Why? Doesn't the law equally apply to all? I am talking about legal process, not terrorism. I am talking about a judge who knowingly sent an innocent to his death-by-the-government, or who knowingly colluded with prosecution to block evidence that would have saved that defendant from being introduced, to be investigated and tried for murder and, if convicted, put to death by the means of the same "legal process".
I bet the death penalty will be found unconstitutional before any such sentence is carried out.
Judges will not allow a judge to be subject to a death penalty. There will be mercy then.
Coincidentally, I recently watched an extraordinarily funny Ukranian comedy, "The Public Servant". The pace, the pranks, the actors, the dialogue.... Unforgettable. Highly recommend to those who know Russian - I do not know when or if it will be available with English subtitles.
There, the subject of judicial corruption came up at a talk show with the president of the Ukraine (the movie president, not the real president) talking to his people live, as well as his prime-minister, minister of foreign affairs and majority leader of the parliament.
In answer to the host's question as to how to fight judicial corruption, the minister of health recalled a piece of wisdom that one of the leaders of Asian countries shared with him: against, it's a movie, a fantasy.
When, in that fantastical Asian country, a judge was caught for briberies, they skinned him, upholstered a chair with his skin, made his son a judge and made him sit and make decisions in that chair, sitting on his father's skin.
Cruel and unusual punishment? What is cruel and unusual punishment? Our judges do not consider it a cruel and unusual punishment to slowly put a person to death like so many people were, with drugs that are not meant for that purpose and do not work for that purpose "well".
Here is an execution list for just 2015, in the XXIst century, in the land of the free.
The last execution took place 2 days ago.
Shouldn't we all be ashamed of what is done by the government in our name?
Shouldn't we stop at least the atrocious corruption in the judicial system to prevent innocent lives from being ruined by that corruption, life and property taken, families split and reduced to poverty?
Should we try then to introduce the Effective Anti-Corruption (Upholstered Chair) Act?
Might work.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
British press reports that the U.S. does not have effective mechanisms to fight judicial corruption, U.S. press keeps mum
I recently posted a list of some lawyers who were reported to be sanctioned for critisim of judicial misconduct.
For purposes of disclosure, I am one of those lawyers. My law license was suspended as of November 13, 2015 for what the disciplinary court modestly called my role in "3 client matters", which in reality were sanctions for motions to recuse a judge who sanctioned me after I sued him.
I found another name today, attorney Lori Laird, of Texas.
Here is what reportedly occurred. "Attorney Lori Laird asked that [Judge]Dupuy bow out in 2013 because she’d represented Dupuy’s ex-wife in the couple’s custody battle in Galveston. The judge responded by slapping her with 37 counts of contempt, demanding that she “explain, defend or apologize” for her motion. He later sentenced her to 220 days in jail, although she didn’t serve any time."
In my case, it was thousands of dollars of sanctions that Judge Carl Becker extracted from me for suing him and exposing his misconduct in motions to recuse and the loss of a law license.
What the Louisiana judge did in the case reported in the same article was no different than what Governor Cuomo did by providing a similar "incentive" to Appellate Division 3rd Department (NY) judge Leslie Stein by elevating her to the position of a judge of New York State Court of Appeals, which was a huge promotion in terms of more money and more prestige.
The article reports that a New York attorney Raoul Felder who "served" on the New York State Judicial Conduct Commission, recalls "perplexing" experience from the Commission's decision-making.
The article reports that unreported and unaddressed judicial conflicts of interest go all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court:
"Justice Steven Breyer owned $215,000 in health-care stocks when deciding on the legality of the Affordable Care Act in 2012. Justice Samuel Alito’s portfolio included $2,000 in stock in The Walt Disney Co. in 2008, the year the court heard Disney, FCC v. Fox Television Stations. And perhaps most famously, justice Antonin Scalia has participated in the Bush v. Gore case, even though his son Eugene’s law firm represented one of the parties. In another case, Scalia remained in the panel despite having gone on a duck hunting trip with former Vice-President Dick Cheney while he was being sued to reveal the details of secret meetings he held with oil company executives in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq",
and that judges refuse to step off conflicted cases by claiming that their impartiality cannot be reasonably questioned.
The question is - by whom? - by them certainly, since their moral compass seems to become permanently askew as soon as they take the oath of office that brings them their money, power and prestige. But by a reasonable objective observer - sure.
Not the least of questions is - why it is a British newspaper that is so vigorously investigating judicial corruption and not American.
Why whistle-blowing attorneys, time and again, get their stories turned down by American mass media that is simply afraid to touch the subject?
Where is the famous fearless journalism on the burning issue of public concern in this country, judicial corruption?
Is Ghana ahead of us in fighting judicial corruption?
That's going on at the very same time as in the United States, American lawyers wholeheartedly support judicial corruption and get rid of those white sheep among them who oppose it.
And, we, the land of the free and of the brave, will remain behind Ghana, in our sorry state of human rights we are in now, unless and until we remove dependence of attorneys for their livelihood on the corrupt judiciary.
The sagging pants and the butt display by (very) social worker Meghan Barnes, Delaware County, New York
In June of 2011, a man was arrested for refusing to pull up his sagging pants when boarding a plane in San Francisco, California. Charges against him reportedly included "suspicion of trespassing, battery and resisting arrest".
In November of 2013, 38 Ervin Edwards was reportedly jailed and tasered to death in Louisiana after the police started to pick on him about, among other things, his sagging pants.
In May of 2014 two men were reportedly arrested in South Carolina and charged with disorderly conduct for refusal to pull up their sagging pants that showed - no, not their butts, only their boxers.
In 2014, several municipalities in Florida made prohibited saggy pants in public places in the city.
In September of 2015, students in Mississippi were reportedly arrested for protesting a "sagging pants ban" on campus.
Today, on December 10, 2015 a South Carolina news source Fox 8 reported that several South Carolina high school students were jailed for wearing sagging pants to class.
In 2010, Delaware County (NY) District Attorney Richard Northrup who is elected to become Delaware County Judge since January 1, 2016, for 10 years forward, refused to prosecute Delaware County social worker Meghan Barnes, relative to Delaware County Treasurer Beverly Shields who was at the time reportedly a girlfriend or close personal friend of now-retired Family, Surrogate's and County judge Carl Becker, for showing an eagle tattoo going into "the crack of her butt" (child's statement) to an 8-year-old on school premises during an official social services investigation.
As Delhi Village Police Michael Mills explained Richard Northrup's refusal to charge Meghan Barnes for indecent exposure before a minor and for endangering welfare of a minor, "the standards of female nudity have evolved".
So, for Richard Northrup, it is ok for a government official, while discharging her official duties, in a school full of children, to display the crack of her butt to an 8-year-old boy as part of her investigation.
Think what local teachers can do now that they know that such behavior is allowed!
If anything, those standards are de-volving across the country, where people are actually arrested, jailed and even tasered to death for showing simply their boxers, not tattoos of the country's symbol going into the cracks of their butts.
Think about mentality of a person who puts the symbol of her country into such a place, she really respects her country, doesn't she?
Well, everybody has a 1st Amendment right to freedom of expression, even such a crude one.
Yet, public officials do not have a right to expose little children to their freedom of expression on intimate body parts.
By the way, Delaware County is a legal guardian of foster children on an ongoing basis. Shouldn't parents of children in foster care start wondering whether Meghan Barnes exposes her wards to viewing the eagle that has only grown since 2009, along with the butt?
Meghan Barnes, upon my information, has not been demoted or disciplined for her behavior.
She continues to draw, according to a public records source, seethroughny.net, $49,398 a year of the taxpayers' money, and it is a big concern whether she draws this money while indulging her exhibitionist habits with little children.
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
New York Attorneys Sarah Cowen and Rosemarie Richards - selling out their clients to get assigned again
Once again, this is what Judge Connerton says about the same motion on October 2, 2014 - and Sarah Cowen, attorney for the child who expressed to Sarah Cowen a wish to stay with the MOTHER, says "yup" - even though she knows (or should have known, if she would actually have read the motion, as she was supposed to, as attorney for the child) that what Judge Connerton says is not correct, that a motion to vacate made BY THE MOTHER is also pending.
By her short "yup", Sarah Cowen waived her client's (the child's) right to be returned to the mother since Sarah Cowen did not bring to the court's attention that the motion to vacate pending was BY THE MOTHER - and Sarah Cowen had an opportunity to actually JOIN that motion, because she already ADDRESSED Judge Revoir at the previous hearing and already EXPRESSED her client's wish to stay with the mother, and there already EXISTS in the record an affidavit of Alecia Bracci about abuse of the child in the father's household which Sarah Cowen was served with.
Yet, Sarah Cowen says "yup", not to ruffle Judge Connerton's feathers and to secure future $75/hr assignments by other judges and by Judge Connerton for herself.
That is called "selling her client out" by Sarah Cowen - attorney-champion for the poor in three rural counties in upstate New York.
Now, wait a minute! But, Alecia Bracci's new assigned counsel Rosemarie Richards is present at the proceeding.
Did she say anything to Judge Connerton? Did she inform Judge Connerton of what Judge Connerton later acknowledged in her January 9, 2015 order?
That the MOTHER's motion to vacate ALL orders of custody remains pending?
Here is the real chance to have custody returned to Rosemarie Richard's client.
So what does this champion for the poor does?
Here is Rosemarie Richard's reaction to Judge Connerton's incorrect claim that the only outstanding motion is concerning me only and not Alecia Bracci:
Rosemarie Richards, attorney for the mother says that SHE DID NOT SEE the motion that the judge discusses. Well, she was supposed to, to be ready for the conference.
Sarah Cowen bleats something incoherent and does not pursue the subject any further.
Rosemarie Richards did not say at the beginning of the conference she is not ready to proceed because she did not have the opportunity to review the pending motions and verify her client's position in litigation (the motion was supported by affidavit of Alecia Bracci, affidavit of her mother Barbara O'Sullivan and adjudications from other courts and from an administrative court revealing Judge Becker's misconduct and his role as a witness and fabricator of evidence against Alecia Bracci's mother for his own private financial reasons as an attorney for Alecia Bracci's aunt, evidence that was not discoverable and was discovered by a freak accident in 2012, long after Becker made his decisions in Alecia Bracci's custody case).
Rosemarie Richards simply said that she did not read the motion the judge was discussing, and did not proceed asking for more time to actually read that motion in order to ascertain her own and her client's position regarding the motion.
Rosemarie Richards simply agreed with whatever the judge said.
After all, the judge assigned Rosemarie Richards to the case, which will pay Rosemarie Richards $75/hr for doing nothing and for selling her client out.
Next, Judge Connerton decides to express her opinion about MY motion, in my absence and behind my back.
This paragraph shows that Judge Connerton's headache prevented her from reading the motion, and she resorted to the easy solution of not giving the reasons, but claiming that "relief requested" is not supported in fact or law.
How it is not supported, she does not say.
Why it is not supported, on each of raised constitutional issues, and as to each of documentary exhibits AND adjudications from other courts, she also does not say.
A very convenient approach.
AND, the WHOLE order denying relief and denying motion to recuse, as we know now, was based on a lie.
So, did attorneys Sarah Cowen and Rosemarie Richards who were served with this court order speak out for their clients? Did they file appeals on behalf of their clients? Of course, not. I know because I would have to be served with such appeals, and I wasn't.
Both Cowen and Richards would have been paid, up to $4,700 for those appeals. They were afraid to do their duty by their clients.
They were afraid to expose the judge's lie that was burying their colleague, unfairly burying, and they knew it.
Both Cowen and Richards took an oath to support the U.S. and the State Constitutions.
They betrayed their oath of office.
They betrayed their clients and committed acts of malpractice in order to keep themselves in judical favors and get assigned again.
They betrayed their duty of candor to the tribunal and to the parties and colleagues, including me.
They did that to be able to stay on the payroll of assigned cases.
Those unfortunate people to whom these attorneys are assigned - beware.
There is a potential that you will be sold, too, in all of Sarah Cowen's assigned cases listed above, as well as past and future cases, and in all of Rosemarie Richards' cases listed below, and in all past and future cases.
These two attorneys know how to keep their law license: they do not lie to the court in Judge Revoir's understanding (in other words, they will not fight for you and will not make constitutional arguments on your behalf), and they will bleat something incoherent like "I did not read it yet", "okay" or "yup" where such constitutional arguments must be made.
And you can kiss your constitutional rights, your parental rights, and, in child neglect cases, possibly, your employment rights, goodbye.
Yet, they will continue to get assigned and paid for doing nothing, for saying nothing and for selling their clients out outright.
Because that is better for judges than actually doing their jobs - if their jobs involve exposure of judicial misconduct.
Here are assignments of Rosemarie Richards as of today.
Remember, for Richards and Cowen, $75/hr and the right to receive that money for doing nothing on your behalf is more important than anything else.