The bashing of civil rights attorneys continues

It has been reported that the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania has just sanctioned a civil rights attorney for filing and litigating a civil rights lawsuit against a corporation and a labor union.

The sanctions have definite 1st and 14th Amendment implications, as well as put a further chill upon ability of individuals to find a civil rights attorney who would agree to represent them in federal court, something that Rule 11 was not meant to do, and something that the U.S. Senate Democrats were recently cautioning about.

The fees that the civil rights attorney was ordered to pay are hefty, over $115,000.

The judge who imposed the sanctions is the same judge who bashed civil rights attorney Andy Ostrowski for criticizing federal judges and refused to allow him to practice law in federal court on that basis, so apparently this judge has a certain bend to punish civil rights attorneys.

I downloaded materials from that case from Pacer and will provide analysis of the case later on.

One thing I can state right away though.

The court that imposed sanctions did not apply the required strict scrutiny test before imposing sanctions for contents of a civil rights attorney's protected speech, which, in my opinion as an expert, makes sanctions unconstitutional and void.

Senate Democrats were urged by their leader to Vote no to changes to Rule 11 because there were concerns that Rule 11, as changed, will be disproportionately used against civil rights attorney, as it happened before.

I do not know whether Senate Democrats are aware of it or not, but Rule 11, and its shadows, 28 U.S.C. 1927 and the alleged "inherent power of the court" are already used to disproportionately sanction civil rights attorneys and thus chill civil rights litigation and deprive indigent civil rights plaintiffs of an ability to find a civil rights attorney who would agree to represent them, given the threat of sanctions such as imposed upon attorney Donald P. Russo in the elderly electrician Ernest Keister's civil rights case of age discrimination.

The case No. is 4:13-cv-118-MWB in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylavnia.

As I said above, I will post analysis of the case as soon as I have an opportunity to review the records I just downloaded from Pacer.gov.

Stay tuned.

Albany Law School professors - "all good Americans are saddened" at #AntoninScalia's death, while #AntoninScalia's court hurt America

While Albany Law School is not involved in a clear clash of opinions on whether to mourn #AntoninScalia, as the Georgetown School of Law is, there is a "silent clash" eminently present.

Albany Law School advertised on its front web-page achievement of its faculty.

Among those achievements, ALS advertised, at the same time, the "influential" legal blog of its professor Vin Bonventre

and the recent book of its professor Stephen Gottlieb.

In his recent blog post, Professor Bonventre states this:

Obviously, not all decent people with any sense of humanity think that way, many decent people with any sense of humanity think the opposite way.

Professor Bonventre also stated this:

Apparently, all Americans who are not saddened by the news of #AntoninScalia, are "bad Americans", whatever that means.

"Good Americans" and "bad Americans".  What exactly is this "influential" law professor teaching?  Religion?  Oh now, he is teaching this:

Judicial process!  Legal Profession!  Criminal Law! Criminal procedure!

And, with all that, this good Professor is claiming that all "good Americans" "are saddened" (he checked, obviously) with the passing of a person who claimed that it is ok to execute an innocent - and who rejected requests to overturn death sentences for 30 years based on that belief, thus murdering how many people?

On the other hand, Professor Gottlieb, of the same Albany Law School, who teaches these courses:

shortly before the death of #AntoninScalia published his book "Unfit For Democracy: The Roberts Court and the Breakdown of American Politics" which ALS is also proud of.

The book is available on Amazon.com.

Here is what the foreword to the book says:

 Once again: Roberts and #AntoninScalia's court, in professor Gottlieb's view:

• have hurt ordinary Americans economically, politically and in the criminal process;
• damaged the historic American melting pot;
• increased the risk of anti-democratic paramilitaries, and
• clouded the democratic future.

 Now, all "good Americans" are and really must be saddened on the passing of one of the most conservative judge of that court that was making the above happen.

Right, Professor Bonventre?




 

Albany Law School is planning to offer programs aimed at non-lawyers, bracing up for likely sagging enrollment and potential deregulation of the legal profession

In the past 10 years, Albany Law School has changed its presidents about 4 times.  Apparently, presidents do not live up to the enrollment goals.

Albany Law School is a private law school with a per-year estimated costs each student would invest into his or her education, close to $60,000 PER YEAR:

Under the guidance of its newest president, Professor Ouelette, the school is about to start offering education to "non-JD students" (as in "JD = Juris Doctor", a degree qualifying graduates to sit for the bar examination and obtain a license to practice law).

The declared intent of such "non-JD" programs is "that we would like to make available to a broader audience what we believe is a high-quality and incredibly valuable legal education," Haynes said. "We want to make it so that non-lawyers and non-JD students can get a quality legal education."


Why did it happen so that ALS was inspired to bring legal education into broader masses just when the legal profession is suffering a push for deregulation, losing paying clients not only to bad economy, but also to legal information portals such as Nolo and LegalZoom, and when law school enrollments are ever dwindling?

It was a marketing move to survive, not a move to educate masses out of generosity of ALS faculty's kind hearts.

I would love to be able to fast-forward time about 10-15 years into the future and see how ALS and legal licensing will fare then.  It is not a betting game and I do not want to make predictions, but it appears that the legal profession is coming towards deregulation faster and faster.
 

The sign of changing times for the legal profession - constitutional law professors fighting against mourning the death of a U.S. Supreme Court justice

When professors of constitutional law publicly oppose the statement of their law school "mourning" the passing of a U.S. Supreme Court justice (see reports here and here), that is a sign that times are changing for the legal profession and for the judicial establishment - which is long overdue.

#VideoRecordingCourtProceedings and bodily carrying attorneys in and out of courtrooms, the Russian and the American way

I wrote a lot on this blog about the necessity to video-record court proceedings in order to create a truthful record, about court transcripts being falsified and the challengers, rather than the falsifiers, being disciplined for that.

I've wrote about the necessity of the "YouTube" court reform - where a lot of court problems can be eliminated or at least better addressed when judicial and prosecutorial misconduct are at least shown to the worldwide public.

I also wrote (yesterday, in fact), about two diametrically opposite criminal statutes in New York where one statute makes it a crime punishable for up to 1 year in jail to "knowingly publish false or grossly inaccurate report of a court's proceeding", while the other makes it a crime, also punishable for up to 1 year in jail to video-record those same public court proceedings and thus create the truest possible record of those proceedings.

The point of existence of both statutes is clear - only courts have the right to create a "truthful" record of the court proceedings, even, if that record is falsified, it is the challenger who will be prosecuted for claiming it is falsified, because it is the challenger's account, in the absence of video-taping, that will be claimed to be "false or grossly inaccurate" and not the cooked court transcript.

For example, after the audio recording of a court conference - which differed greatly from the transcript of the same conference - was published on this blog, I was charged with criminal contempt of court (a charge that was quietly dropped by the court later, but the disciplinary prosecutor Mary Gasparini who took offense with being caught red-handed in cooking court transcripts and who brought a criminal charge against me, not only as a criminal prosecutor (which she had no authority to do), but also as the sole witness of criminal prosecution, thus disqualifying herself from both the criminal proceeding she illegally brought, and from my disciplinary proceeding, was still allowed to remain on the case - and was given a gift of my suspension, as a reward for dismissing her fabricated criminal charges against me).

By the way, Mary Gasparini, as far as I know, was promoted after my suspension.  So, bringing fraudulent charges and committing fraud on the court by cooking court transcripts pays off career-wise for attorneys working for the government in New York.

That was just an audiotape.

A videotape, showing the body language and the sign interaction between the judge, the prosecutor, the witnesses and the jury, is a priceless piece of record, where appellate courts routinely "defer" on appeal to determinations of trial courts precisely because the trial court can see the body language of witnesses, and the appellate court cannot - because it was not reflected in the record, AND it is a crime to reflect that in the record.  Makes no sense, but that's what the "law" in New York as to preservation of the record of court proceedings is at this time.

Recently, I had a chance to compare the impact of publishing a videotaped record of a judicial misconduct committed during a court proceeding in Russian and in the U.S.

As to the U.S. story, I recently wrote (here, here and here) about a female attorney who was strapped to her wheelchair, her shoes, glasses, notes, pens and pencils were taken away from her, and she was wheeled into the courtroom, in the absence of her client, and was forced by a judge to conduct the hearing this way, or forfeit her client's rights.

Hers and her client's lawsuit against the judge was tossed on judicial immunity grounds, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari - while generously granting such certioraries to governmental parties, labor unions and corporations, likely in exchange of hunting trips or such-like pleasures for judges of the court.

So, there is a most definite injury - videotaped and published on YouTube, see here - which, in this country, remained without a remedy.

In New York, even videotaping what is occurring in the courtroom would be a crime, so a judge can commit any outrage against you and do absolutely anything to you in a New York courtroom and it will be your witness account (subject to a criminal contempt punishment for providing a "grossly inaccurate report of a court proceeding") against accounts of court employees afraid for their job security.

Don't count on courtroom security videotapes - they usually disappear in New York when you ask for them through Freedom of Information requests.  I tried.  One of my readers is fighting New York State Court Administration and Delhi Town Court right now to get security camera footage.  New York State Court administration reportedly tells her that the footage is in the hands of the Delhi Town Court, and the Delhi Town Court reportedly cannot provide any coherent explanation as to what happened to the footage or if it ever existed.

So, the only video footage that you can reliably get of court proceedings is the footage that you create yourself, and it is a crime in New York to create such footage, but also a crime in New York to misrepresent contents of a court proceeding, and without such a footage showing that you are telling the truth, nobody will believe you, and court transcripts will be cooked.

Of course, on the other hand, security cameras, and videos from those cameras, are available for judges to watch what is happening in the interview rooms, thus monitoring privileged communications between attorneys and clients, but remember - judges can do anything to you, and they are absolutely immune from any liability.

A friend has recently alerted me of a story in Russia where a criminal defense attorney was bodily carried out of the courtroom, with a piece of the desk he was sitting at and was holding on to.

The attorney was a privately retained lawyer representing a defendant in a criminal proceeding.  Apparently, the court and the prosecution wanted to squeeze the private and independent attorney out of the criminal case (happens in the U.S. also, all the time, courts and prosecutors invented many tricks to reach that "goal"), but the court and the prosecutor could not do that under the Russian law by any legal means, and the attorney Denis Viatkin was a stickler of legal ethics and insisted on following his duty to his client.  

So, here is how the situation developed.

An attorney was sitting with his client in a courtroom, the prosecutor is sitting at his desk, the judge is not in the courtroom yet.

The court security officer approaches the attorney and tells him that the judge ordered him to leave the courtroom (the whole situation is being secretly videotaped).

The attorney tells him, repeatedly, that he is not allowed to abandon his client without a written court order.

The attorney is told repeatedly by the court officer that it was the judge's oral order ordering the attorney to leave the courtroom.

The prosecutor tells the security officer finally to use force.  Force is used and the attorney is bodily carried out of the courtroom.  Since the attorney was holding on to his desk, part of the desk was carried out of the courtroom, too.

All of that is being videotaped.

After the attorney is carried out of the courtroom, a judge enters the courtroom and brazenly claims that on his way to the courtroom he say that the attorney left the courthouse for reasons unknown to the judge, and thus the attorney made the court proceedings impossible, and the judge will refer him to his professional association for punishment.

Both stories - in the U.S. and in Russia - were published on YouTube, see also a video and audio account of what how representative of the American female attorney was seeking public records from the County about what occurred in that court, in the holding cell and in the jail.

Both stories caused considerable outrage in the respective press and social media, here is one of the articles in Russian media, with a transcript of what occurred in the tape.

There is a distinct difference though as to what happened in Russia to the judge who was caught on videotape ordering an attorney to be cast out of the courtroom without a written order, and then misrepresenting on record that the attorney voluntarily left the courtroom for unknown reasons and thus made it impossible for court proceedings to go forward and to an American judge who ordered strapping the female attorney to a wheelchair for making a photograph of a court proceeding.

And there is a distinct difference as to what has happened to the attorneys abused by judicial misconduct.

Attorney Michele McDonald was not provided with any remedy.  Judge Knutson was not ordered even to extend to her a public apology.  It is as if what was done to her was ok.  And, since it was "ok", it can be done to her, and to any of us, again.

In Russia, the Russian judge Alexander Shur had the audacity to file a complaint against attorney Denis Viatkin whom he first orally ordered to leave the courtroom, and when Attorney Viatkin refused to do so without a written court order and was bodily carried out of the courtroom by security officers instigated to do so by the prosecutor, the judge walked into the courtroom, claimed that Attorney Viatkin just left the courtroom and courthouse without the court's permission.  Attorney Viatkin was initially stripped of his attorney status based on Judge Shur's complaint.

But-for the videotape that was published on YouTube and caused resignation of Judge Shur, Attorney Viatkin would have remained disbarred.

Now, Attorney Viatkin is a celebrity in Russia - unlike attorneys disbarred or suspended in the U.S. based on fraudulent complaints and fraudulent sanctions of American judges.  There is no right to appeal, and courts universally refuse to review disciplinary action against attorneys who dared to criticize judges.  Such attorneys are blacklisted and remain unemployed and unemployable.

As to the fate of the Russian judge and the American Judge.

Judge David Knutson happily remains on the bench, without any discipline.

Here is our bright and sunny Judge Knutson, the gross and disgusting abuser of women in the courtroom.  The "honorable" family man.  The mysoginist and domestic terrorist who turned the courthouse into a torture chamber, and who is fully protected by our glorious Elder Council, the U.S. Supreme Court, the court that has better things to do, like book-writing, book tours, lectures and hunting trips, than to review the lawsuit about a judge's torture of an attorney in the courtroom and to protect her and all of us from the likes of Knutson (see the petition for a writ of certiorari here, order denying review of the petition without an explanation here).  

I guess, Attorney Michele McDonald had no clout with the court and could not invite Scalia to a hunting party, ghost-write books for any other judges, or invite them to luxury resorts, all expenses paid, and have them meet rich sponsors.

Our bright and sunny Judge Knutson remains on the bench and is thus allowed to continue to do what he did to attorney Michele McDonald and her clients and to other lawyers and their clients.  Good luck expecting justice in his court.

The Russian judge Alexander Shur responsible for the videotaped misconduct was forced to resign, and his request for reinstatement was denied.

Attorney Viatkin's attorney status was restored and he is celebrated in Russia as a hero that he truly is.

When we claim that Russia is a dictatorship under Putin and democratic freedoms in Russia are being grossly and increasingly violated (and I agree with that), we appear to be worse, and Judge Knutson's criminal order to assault, commit battery and abuse attorney Michele McDonald, with complete impunity, is only one of many examples, the situation that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review, is only one of examples that 

(1) judicial misconduct in this country is out of control; 

(2) anything can be done to you in the courthouse and in court proceedings, 

(3) there is no rule of law in court proceedings in this country,  

(4) there is no remedy for victims of judicial misconduct in the U.S.

*   *   *

Today and tomorrow, when the United States, or at least its official establishment, is "honoring" the dishonorable and disgusting executioner of the innocent, the racist and mysoginist #AntoninScalia (see a great piece about mourning Scalia by Katie Halper "In Defense of grave dancing: it's true that Scalia was a human being, but I still refuse to mourn a-holes like him politely")  we need to rethink our priorities in what we allow to do to ourselves in the courtroom, who we put on the bench and how we keep our heads in the sand even when we have irrefutable proof that those who are on the bench must be off that bench and behind bars.

500,000 views and counting

Before turning 2 years this coming March, this blog was viewed over 500,000 times, and I am discussing sometimes very theoretical legal topics here, which can be considered boring by many people.

The blog gathered 100,000 views in its first year, and 4 times that much, 400,000 in the 11 months of its second year.

Considering that "influential" legal blogs are proud of 10,500 views per month, 

I am happy and thankful that 30,363 people were interested in viewing my blog every month this past year.

The blog, as I see from my administrator's side, is being read around the world.

I appreciate your readership and will continue to inform the public on issues that I believe are of public concern.

Thank you for your time and interest.

It appears that Apple opposed, but did not defy the court order - contrary to the press coverage

A lot of discussions are raging in the press and social media about the recent court order directing Apple to cooperate with the FBI.

Here is the order.

I would like to diffuse some of the misconceptions created by the coverage of Tim Cook's statement, or rather, how that statement was portrayed by the press.

The order allows Apple to make an application to the court "within 5 business days" from February 16, 2016, or, since there is an indication that Apple immediately received the order, by February 23, 2016.

In that application to the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Apple, Inc. can argue that "compliance with this Order would be unreasonably burdensome".  

The court does not allow Apple any other grounds to contest the order, other than that it will be "unreasonably burdensome" for Apple to comply with the order.

Apple's CEO Tim Cook responded with a statement to Apple's customers announcing that Apple is opposing the order, is planning to fight it and believes that the order creates a dangerous precedent jeoparizing security of personal data of Apple's customers.

Contrary to the press coverage claiming that Tim Cook "has refused to breach privacy" of the iPhone or "won't comply" with the court order (which would be contempt of court and could expose Apple nothing of the kind, at least according to his own statement available on Apple's website. 

In his carefully worded statement, Tim Cook only said he opposed it and will fight it - which can mean, without more, that he will do it by legal means (such as an application to the court that issued it, if it doesn't help, to the higher court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, and if that doesn't help, to the U.S. Supreme Court).





What it means for all of us is that if Tim Cook and Apple lose their fight in courts, there is a possibility that they will comply with the order and create the breach in security of iPhones that the government is asking them to create.

Which would be bad news for all iPhone users, and a defeat of our right to be free from government's spying on us. 

Let's wait and see what happens.