When a prosecutor reportedly published an election flyer that he is "proudly overcrowding" prisons - with people like William Russel who reportedly was convicted for 40 years for breaking into a house to steal $52.
Apparently, the state of Indiana considered 40 years in prison an adequate punishment for the crime.
And prosecutor Bradley Cooper is proud of that conviction and is boasting of it.
That's the same prosecutor who, reportedly, was engaged in unlawful surveillance of a deputy sheriff's home to spy on a woman the prosecutor allegedly had a romantic interest in.
The prosecutor was allegedly spying on the sheriff's deputy's house sitting in a car with a beer in hand - which is enough to charge him with violation of the law prohibiting having open alcoholic beverages in a vehicle, and, if he drank that beer, for driving while intoxicated.
There is a question - how many convictions were drummed up by prosecutor Bradley Cooper out of revenge, retaliation, based on personal grudges or based on evidence obtained by illegal means.
Yet, the prosecutor proudly remains a licensed attorney and continues to brag that he is "proudly overcrowding (!!) the prison system".
Cooper thinks, obviously, that people he puts away are the scum of the earth.
Yet, people who abuse their power and public trust as Cooper does are the real monsters.
Let's see whether any attorney discipline will follow against Cooper for his shenanigans.
Stay tuned.
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
The public was "protected" by denying a taxicab license to a disbarred 67-year-old attorney with no history of violence. Really?
I wrote on this blog about restrictions imposed on employment of suspended and disbarred attorneys. If you are suspended or disbarred (by your own competitors), those same competitors hold a death grip upon your future employment.
That is what happened to ex-attorney Joseph C Levine.
According to the February 24, 2016 decision of the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division 2nd Department, Joseph C Levine cannot even be a licensed cab driver (of course, nothing prevents him from working for Uber, to look on the bright side).
By the way, for some God-forsaken reason, the New York State Court administration has published denial of a TAXI license as ATTORNEY discipline for Mr. Levine:
Moreover, the links to prior alleged two orders of suspension of Mr. Levine (2000 and 2001)
lead to the above screen with the 2007 resignation decision and the denial of a taxi license.
Since both prior orders of suspension are accompanied with links, and all three links lead to just one screen, where orders of suspension of 2000 and 2001 are not available, it appears that there is something in those orders of suspension that the Court Administration does not want the public to see?
It is peculiar when on attorney discipline page, attorney disciplinary decisions are not published, but denial of a taxi cab license is.
The decision to deny the taxicab license to Mr. Levine claims that Mr. Levine, "a former attorney, was suspended from the practice of law for two years, based upon his conviction in federal court of the federal felony of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, in violation of 18 USC § 371 (see Matter of Levine, 287 A.D.2d 230), arising from a scheme involving the bribery of insurance adjusters".
The statute of conviction is here, and, since it was a plea bargain, it is not entirely clear, what it was that Mr. Levine has committed that was criminal. Allegedly it is fraud against the U.S. Government, but "conspiracy to commit mail fraud" without the actual "mail fraud" (which is in itself a statute so vague that it is bordering on unconstitutional)
The referenced order of suspension of 2001 mentions conviction ON A PLEA BARGAIN (there was no trial) for a D felony, "conspiracy to commit mail fraud", in exchange for no jail time.
As a criminal defense attorney, I know many innocent people who would plead guilty in exchange for being allowed to be free and continue to earn some living for their families. Conviction on a plea bargain does not have as much value as conviction after a jury trial - even though it is being treated the same way by law.
Moreover, while suspending Mr. Levine for 2 years in 2001, the 2nd Department stated:
"In sum, the respondent submits that he is concededly guilty of serious professional misconduct but emphasizes that his crime involved a single transaction which was not initiated by him, did not compromise the administration of justice, and was not motivated by venality, greed or self-interest."
The court did not punish Mr. Levine for his above position as "not accepting responsibility" or "not expressing remorse", and the court did not disbar Mr. Levine, even though he was convicted of a felony, and felony convictions trigger automatic disbarment in New York, without even disciplinary proceedings.
So, overall, the order of suspension was, I might say, favorable to Mr. Levine.
Within 4 years, despite the felony conviction, Mr. Levine was allowed to be reinstated as an attorney. So, even after Mr. Levine was convicted of a D felony, the 2nd Department considered him fit to hold a position of trust and be an attorney.
Ok, Mr. Levine allegedly violated that position of trust - again - and allegedly stole from his escrow (trust) accounts, allegedly to satisfy his gambling debts.
The order denying him the right to drive a taxicab as a licensed driver mentions his conviction - again upon a plea bargain - for grand larceny, for allegedly stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his escrow accounts.
Mr. Levine did his time in state prison for that conviction:
Note Mr. Levine's date of birth - 04/09/1948. He is soon to turn 68.
Now, let's see why was Mr. Levine denied a TAXICAB license? He is not seeking a reinstatement as an attorney - he is seeking a license to earn his living as a licensed taxicab driver, and the trial court thought the reasoning of the taxicab commission to deny him his license was not good.
Yet, the appellate court (also the attorney licensing court) thought that the reasoning of the taxicab commission was good - and even posted that decision as a decision on Mr. Levine's ATTORNEY discipline.
The appellate court upheld the denial of a taxicab license to Mr. Levine, because granting such a license, in the court's opinion, "would create an unreasonable risk to the public by permitting the petitioner to engage in 'unsupervised financial transactions' with customers."
But, based on this consideration, Mr. Levine should be then blocked from ANY "unsupervised financial transactions with customers", yet, many businesses and professions in the United States still remained outside of the gripping reach of occupational licensing.
For example, Mr. Levine can be an unlicensed sales clerk, an unlicensed contractor (in some states they started licensing contractors, too, but in others, they don't), an unlicensed driver for Uber, or - guess what - an unlicensed driver for a licensed taxicab company.
New York allowed in 2015 an undocumented (illegal) immigrant to become a licensed attorney.
New York announced that it will be issuing teacher and other professional licenses to undocumented immigrants.
When immigrants are undocumented, even if they were granted President Obama's "executive amnesty", there is no way of ensuring their background, and that is a rational public safety issue.
Maybe, just maybe, the state is then issuing licenses to people with a history of violence.
As to Mr. Levine, he was checked through and through and obviously does not have a history of violence, otherwise he would not have been released early on parole, and released early from parole.
Mr. Levine's background was checked out by the attorney disciplinary committee, and there are no findings of violence in his order of suspension or resignation/disbarment.
Mr. Levine's behavior was under constant supervision by his federal probation, for three years after his first conviction on a plea bargain, for a non-violent crime.
Mr. Levine's behavior was under constant supervision by prison authorities where he served his time for non-violent crimes that he has pled to, and then, after an early release, by his parole officer who also released him from parole early.
The bottom line is - he was never convicted of a VIOLENT crime, which would be the major concern for consideration of a candidate for a taxicab driver license.
Since a taxicab driver is not paid in advance, Mr. Levine was not going to be involved, as a taxicab driver, in a "unsupervised financial transaction" jeopardizing his customers.
When paid at the end of the trip, Mr. Levine would only be receiving already earned money, his own money, and the only danger in that financial transaction would be that the customer would actually cheat on Mr. Levine by leaving without paying him.
The only thing Mr. Levine was seeking, at his nearly 68 years of age, is his due process right to earn a living, to openly have a lawful business.
As I said above, any business involves "unsupervised financial transactions with customers", when you are simply paid for the job you are doing.
And, being convicted of a crime, even for a crime of grand larceny (a theft from an escrow account) does not mean that you should not be working in your own business which does not deal with any advance payments (which would then trigger the relation to the conviction).
In other words, there is nothing to steal when you are paid in advance. I am wondering, what are the backgrounds of judges who ruled against Mr. Levine, and whether those judges can imaging earning a living in any way and not be involved in financial transactions with customers. In effect, the court foreclosed to Mr. Levine any opportunity to earn a living in a licensed occupation - no matter what the state policy and the state statute the court cited says about state law encouraging issuance of license to people with a criminal record.
Apparently, in New York, the only place where you can work, if you have a criminal record - and if you are not Dean Skelos or Sheldon Silver - is underground, off the books.
Apparently, Mr. Levine did not have political connections, otherwise, no matter which crimes he would commit, he would remain an attorney with "no record of public discipline".
Even if he had a federal criminal conviction like Dean Skelos and Sheldon Skelos.
Even if he was involved in a public scandal and caught after pilfering hundreds of thousands of dollars from public coffers, like the spouse of the Chief Judge of New York State Court of Claims M. Cornelia Cahill was (she now changed her official registration name and is now Mary C. Cahill instead of M. Cornelia Cahill, as she appeared in the scandalous news reports, and manages an Albany law office of a prominent law firm employing judges and recent judicial law clerks - but she retained her original "M. Cornelia Cahill" name on the website of her law firm, in violation of attorney registration rules).
Even if he was a judge and was taken off the bench for commission of a violent crime of child molestation, as Judge Bryan Hedges was.
The only reason why Mr. Levine was denied even a taxicab license is because he did not have political clout as people above did. There was no "rational basis" to deny him that license.
Mr. Levine was not convicted of robbing people at gunpoint, or of stealing purses left behind in a grocery store. There is no indication that he cannot be trusted to drive people from place to place, for a fee.
And, it appears that it is not driving without a license, but enforcing of driving with a license that has recently become a public safety problem in New York City - where people's vehicles are seized and they are thrown out of their vehicles in all types of weather by the taxicab commission (TLC) inspectors for:
People have their cars seized by TLC officers, have to stay without their personal vehicles for days, suffer inconvenience, humiliation and even life-threatening situation, like the pregnant woman suffered whose husband picked her up at the airport, but then their car was seized and they had to walk home in freezing weather.
The most disgusting of all, not having committing a crime, it is not the TLC officers who had to prove that people whose vehicles they've seized, are operating as unlicensed cab drivers, but people at the wheel of their personal vehicles had to prove that those in their vehicles are friends or spouses or live-in boyfriends and girlfriends.
People have to prove to courts - as an explanation of WHY THEY WERE IN A VEHICLE TOGETHER that they are raising children together.
Yet, how do you prove friendship on site? We do not have "certificates of friendship" issued by the state yet.
So, while the Appellate Division allegedly protected the public from the dangers of having a senior disbarred attorney with no history of violence drive them around town as a cab driver, without an advance payment, the Nazis from TLC are allowed to jeopardize safety and even lives of people in order to ensure that only licensed drivers are allowed on their turf.
It is disgusting.
The workings of the TLC Nazis also shows that it is high time to review the whole idea that licensing taxicab drivers protects public safety. Apparently, in NYC it jeopardizes public safety.
That is what happened to ex-attorney Joseph C Levine.
According to the February 24, 2016 decision of the New York State Supreme Court, Appellate Division 2nd Department, Joseph C Levine cannot even be a licensed cab driver (of course, nothing prevents him from working for Uber, to look on the bright side).
By the way, for some God-forsaken reason, the New York State Court administration has published denial of a TAXI license as ATTORNEY discipline for Mr. Levine:
Moreover, the links to prior alleged two orders of suspension of Mr. Levine (2000 and 2001)
lead to the above screen with the 2007 resignation decision and the denial of a taxi license.
Since both prior orders of suspension are accompanied with links, and all three links lead to just one screen, where orders of suspension of 2000 and 2001 are not available, it appears that there is something in those orders of suspension that the Court Administration does not want the public to see?
It is peculiar when on attorney discipline page, attorney disciplinary decisions are not published, but denial of a taxi cab license is.
The decision to deny the taxicab license to Mr. Levine claims that Mr. Levine, "a former attorney, was suspended from the practice of law for two years, based upon his conviction in federal court of the federal felony of conspiracy to commit mail fraud, in violation of 18 USC § 371 (see Matter of Levine, 287 A.D.2d 230), arising from a scheme involving the bribery of insurance adjusters".
The statute of conviction is here, and, since it was a plea bargain, it is not entirely clear, what it was that Mr. Levine has committed that was criminal. Allegedly it is fraud against the U.S. Government, but "conspiracy to commit mail fraud" without the actual "mail fraud" (which is in itself a statute so vague that it is bordering on unconstitutional)
The referenced order of suspension of 2001 mentions conviction ON A PLEA BARGAIN (there was no trial) for a D felony, "conspiracy to commit mail fraud", in exchange for no jail time.
As a criminal defense attorney, I know many innocent people who would plead guilty in exchange for being allowed to be free and continue to earn some living for their families. Conviction on a plea bargain does not have as much value as conviction after a jury trial - even though it is being treated the same way by law.
Moreover, while suspending Mr. Levine for 2 years in 2001, the 2nd Department stated:
"In sum, the respondent submits that he is concededly guilty of serious professional misconduct but emphasizes that his crime involved a single transaction which was not initiated by him, did not compromise the administration of justice, and was not motivated by venality, greed or self-interest."
The court did not punish Mr. Levine for his above position as "not accepting responsibility" or "not expressing remorse", and the court did not disbar Mr. Levine, even though he was convicted of a felony, and felony convictions trigger automatic disbarment in New York, without even disciplinary proceedings.
So, overall, the order of suspension was, I might say, favorable to Mr. Levine.
Within 4 years, despite the felony conviction, Mr. Levine was allowed to be reinstated as an attorney. So, even after Mr. Levine was convicted of a D felony, the 2nd Department considered him fit to hold a position of trust and be an attorney.
Ok, Mr. Levine allegedly violated that position of trust - again - and allegedly stole from his escrow (trust) accounts, allegedly to satisfy his gambling debts.
The order denying him the right to drive a taxicab as a licensed driver mentions his conviction - again upon a plea bargain - for grand larceny, for allegedly stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his escrow accounts.
Mr. Levine did his time in state prison for that conviction:
Note Mr. Levine's date of birth - 04/09/1948. He is soon to turn 68.
Now, let's see why was Mr. Levine denied a TAXICAB license? He is not seeking a reinstatement as an attorney - he is seeking a license to earn his living as a licensed taxicab driver, and the trial court thought the reasoning of the taxicab commission to deny him his license was not good.
Yet, the appellate court (also the attorney licensing court) thought that the reasoning of the taxicab commission was good - and even posted that decision as a decision on Mr. Levine's ATTORNEY discipline.
The appellate court upheld the denial of a taxicab license to Mr. Levine, because granting such a license, in the court's opinion, "would create an unreasonable risk to the public by permitting the petitioner to engage in 'unsupervised financial transactions' with customers."
But, based on this consideration, Mr. Levine should be then blocked from ANY "unsupervised financial transactions with customers", yet, many businesses and professions in the United States still remained outside of the gripping reach of occupational licensing.
For example, Mr. Levine can be an unlicensed sales clerk, an unlicensed contractor (in some states they started licensing contractors, too, but in others, they don't), an unlicensed driver for Uber, or - guess what - an unlicensed driver for a licensed taxicab company.
New York allowed in 2015 an undocumented (illegal) immigrant to become a licensed attorney.
New York announced that it will be issuing teacher and other professional licenses to undocumented immigrants.
When immigrants are undocumented, even if they were granted President Obama's "executive amnesty", there is no way of ensuring their background, and that is a rational public safety issue.
Maybe, just maybe, the state is then issuing licenses to people with a history of violence.
As to Mr. Levine, he was checked through and through and obviously does not have a history of violence, otherwise he would not have been released early on parole, and released early from parole.
Mr. Levine's background was checked out by the attorney disciplinary committee, and there are no findings of violence in his order of suspension or resignation/disbarment.
Mr. Levine's behavior was under constant supervision by his federal probation, for three years after his first conviction on a plea bargain, for a non-violent crime.
Mr. Levine's behavior was under constant supervision by prison authorities where he served his time for non-violent crimes that he has pled to, and then, after an early release, by his parole officer who also released him from parole early.
The bottom line is - he was never convicted of a VIOLENT crime, which would be the major concern for consideration of a candidate for a taxicab driver license.
Since a taxicab driver is not paid in advance, Mr. Levine was not going to be involved, as a taxicab driver, in a "unsupervised financial transaction" jeopardizing his customers.
When paid at the end of the trip, Mr. Levine would only be receiving already earned money, his own money, and the only danger in that financial transaction would be that the customer would actually cheat on Mr. Levine by leaving without paying him.
The only thing Mr. Levine was seeking, at his nearly 68 years of age, is his due process right to earn a living, to openly have a lawful business.
As I said above, any business involves "unsupervised financial transactions with customers", when you are simply paid for the job you are doing.
And, being convicted of a crime, even for a crime of grand larceny (a theft from an escrow account) does not mean that you should not be working in your own business which does not deal with any advance payments (which would then trigger the relation to the conviction).
In other words, there is nothing to steal when you are paid in advance. I am wondering, what are the backgrounds of judges who ruled against Mr. Levine, and whether those judges can imaging earning a living in any way and not be involved in financial transactions with customers. In effect, the court foreclosed to Mr. Levine any opportunity to earn a living in a licensed occupation - no matter what the state policy and the state statute the court cited says about state law encouraging issuance of license to people with a criminal record.
Apparently, in New York, the only place where you can work, if you have a criminal record - and if you are not Dean Skelos or Sheldon Silver - is underground, off the books.
Apparently, Mr. Levine did not have political connections, otherwise, no matter which crimes he would commit, he would remain an attorney with "no record of public discipline".
Even if he had a federal criminal conviction like Dean Skelos and Sheldon Skelos.
Even if he was involved in a public scandal and caught after pilfering hundreds of thousands of dollars from public coffers, like the spouse of the Chief Judge of New York State Court of Claims M. Cornelia Cahill was (she now changed her official registration name and is now Mary C. Cahill instead of M. Cornelia Cahill, as she appeared in the scandalous news reports, and manages an Albany law office of a prominent law firm employing judges and recent judicial law clerks - but she retained her original "M. Cornelia Cahill" name on the website of her law firm, in violation of attorney registration rules).
Even if he was a judge and was taken off the bench for commission of a violent crime of child molestation, as Judge Bryan Hedges was.
The only reason why Mr. Levine was denied even a taxicab license is because he did not have political clout as people above did. There was no "rational basis" to deny him that license.
Mr. Levine was not convicted of robbing people at gunpoint, or of stealing purses left behind in a grocery store. There is no indication that he cannot be trusted to drive people from place to place, for a fee.
And, it appears that it is not driving without a license, but enforcing of driving with a license that has recently become a public safety problem in New York City - where people's vehicles are seized and they are thrown out of their vehicles in all types of weather by the taxicab commission (TLC) inspectors for:
- picking up a pregnant wife from an airport;
- giving a lift to nuns of a local convent, as a volunteer;
- driving around non-English-speaking friends to show them the city;
- bringing their own child and the child's friend to school etc.
People have their cars seized by TLC officers, have to stay without their personal vehicles for days, suffer inconvenience, humiliation and even life-threatening situation, like the pregnant woman suffered whose husband picked her up at the airport, but then their car was seized and they had to walk home in freezing weather.
The most disgusting of all, not having committing a crime, it is not the TLC officers who had to prove that people whose vehicles they've seized, are operating as unlicensed cab drivers, but people at the wheel of their personal vehicles had to prove that those in their vehicles are friends or spouses or live-in boyfriends and girlfriends.
People have to prove to courts - as an explanation of WHY THEY WERE IN A VEHICLE TOGETHER that they are raising children together.
Yet, how do you prove friendship on site? We do not have "certificates of friendship" issued by the state yet.
So, while the Appellate Division allegedly protected the public from the dangers of having a senior disbarred attorney with no history of violence drive them around town as a cab driver, without an advance payment, the Nazis from TLC are allowed to jeopardize safety and even lives of people in order to ensure that only licensed drivers are allowed on their turf.
It is disgusting.
The workings of the TLC Nazis also shows that it is high time to review the whole idea that licensing taxicab drivers protects public safety. Apparently, in NYC it jeopardizes public safety.
Monday, February 29, 2016
On the need of independently created records of court proceedings
I dedicated a lot of time on this blog to covering issues of preservation of records of court proceedings, not only as to what was said, but also the body language of participants.
I wrote about the fact that my own disciplinary proceedings were adamantly secret, even when it was illegal to close the courtroom after I opened it, by operation of law, through a written waiver of my privacy.
I wrote that I was criminally charged practically for violation of my own privacy, for blogging about judicial and prosecutorial misconduct in cooking the transcripts of my disciplinary proceedings, specifically, for posting both the transcripts and the audio-recordings of the same conferences that did not match the transcripts, including material issues (whether the proceeding was a hearing or a conference, who were the parties present, whether I waived any issues, whether I testified or not).
Judging by my own experience as an attorney, on what my clients and readers reported to me and on my research for this blog, preservation of the record of court proceedings is a problem across the United States.
Of course, fabrication of transcripts is a crime, and not only in New York.
Here is a question of a legal consumer asked on Avvo about fabrication of transcripts, and an answer by a California criminal defense attorney.
Thank you, attorney Marshall, even though I wonder whether the attorney and the court reporter will be prosecuted criminally if the opposing counsel is himself the state Attorney General, like it already happened in California - recently its Attorney General was criticized by a court for fabricating a transcript of confession in a criminal case.
Yet, I completely agree with Attorney Marshall's determination above. It is a crime to cook court transcripts, no matter how you look at it.
I will definitely ask disciplinary attorney Mary Gasparini to be disbarred - when the new attorney disciplinary rules will kick in in July of 2016.
I will also ask the New York court system to yank certifications of court reporters who cooked the transcripts, but I doubt that any of what you say will happen to the perpetrators of such fraud will happen.
Because the very court that such attorney Gasparini and two court reporters were defrauding for cooking the transcripts are aware of the fraud and refused to address it or sanction the fraudsters. After all, that fraud was "for the benefit of the public" - brought in order to bring to heel the much-hated critic of judicial misconduct, so it is totally forgivable.
Here is a petition filed online at change.org 2 months ago by a New York litigant. The New Yorker is asserting that certain transcripts of a divorce proceedings were inaccurate, in order to protect misconduct of a judge:
I wonder if the alleged serious misconduct of the judge involved (there are two judges in New York by the last name of Cooper, so I do not know which one is meant here), was investigated and addressed.
If allegations are not investigated simply because they are not put together in a refined way, as an attorney would, that is not a good reason to deny investigation, because what is asserted is serious misconduct, that includes condoning fabrication of transcripts.
Reports of alterations of court transcripts were made recently in Pennsylvania (see also here, and see that the reporter in question sued the lawyer for even alleging the alteration of transcripts) and in New York, where, apparently, a whole code language exists indicating that the record should be "cleaned" and what needs to be done with it.
In the same Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court has removed a judge for alteration of transcripts (but did not take her off the bench, disbar her, nor was she criminally prosecuted) for alteration of a transcript in a death penalty case and removing her own disparaging remark from the transcript.
In Ohio, a judge would stop recording of a proceeding because - as the judge claimed - the recording equipment would, coincidentally, "not pick up", and - as the attorney claimed, because the judge wanted to fix the transcript as he saw fit (you will soon see a separate blog about how Delhi Town Court, NY judge Richard Gumo was doing the same - for years).
In Texas, an individual asked a question on Avvo, an attorney rating system where attorneys also answer questions of individuals in exchange for an increase for their rating.
The question was pretty staight-forward:
Even federal judges were reported to have ordered alteration of transcripts, and retaliation against whistle-blowers who reported such misconduct.
Since in many jurisdictions, audio and video recordings of court proceedings are not allowed, or, to make an audio recording or a video recording of proceedings (security tapes) is made the exclusive right of the court, it is the court and its personnel who can do anything it wants with the transcripts and even with digital files.
See how #JudgePhyllisKeaty of Louisiana handled the issue of court recordings in which she did (her version) or did not (the attorney's version) disclose having a property interest in a real estate firm that handled the sale of the litigants' property.
Note that while what Judge Keaty did reads like a disciplinary or criminal proceeding against her, it is in fact a successful disciplinary proceeding against the attorney whistle-blower Christine Mire who found out and reported Judge Keaty's misconduct:
So, the attorney did what she is supposed to do - due diligence. She asked for the audio recording.
By the way, I myself and many of my former clients and of readers of my blogs asked for audio CDs of court proceedings from New York courts, with an invariable answer - NO. That is not "our procedure". Our procedure is that you pick a stenographer from an "approved list", agree with the stenographer on the price, tell the court the name of your "chosen" (or, rather, coerced) stenographer, and then the court will send the stenographer the audio-recording (possibly, with instruction of how to "fix" whatever "problems" in that audio tape).
As you see above and below, the stenographer in Chistine Mire's case became initially just "very defensive", and then sued to enjoin disclosure of the audiotape, but Respondent still obtained the tapes and was actually able to prove that the recordings were actually altered.
So, in other words, Judge Keaty lied as to what was cut out of those court tapes.
While Christine Mire was charged with making "unfounded motions to recuse", thus "delaying litigation", "disrupting the tribunal" and making accusations against a judge that were "false or made with reckless disregard to truth or falsity",
I do not believe that any of this circus would be possible if one simple thing was done - if proceedings were public, and if any member of the public present at such proceedings, including parties and their attorneys, could videotape proceedings themselves or order videotaping from others.
Then, there could be multiple videotaped versions of the same events and a very good possibility to compare who doctored what, without fighting "very defensive" court reporters to see what exactly is in the record of the court proceeding where the attorney and her client was attorneys of record, and thus had an absolute right to the record of proceeding, in all forms, paper, audio and video, if those records existed.
And, while one of the dissenters in Christine Mires disciplinary case, Judge Weimer, said this:
I applaud to Judge Hughes.
That one paragraph of Judge Hughes' dissent was all that was needed to dismiss the case against Attorney Mire.
The record of attorney Mire's disciplinary proceedings would serve wonderfully as evidence before the grand jury to indict Judge Phyllis Keaty and whoever else was participating in doctoring transcripts and court tapes.
I guess, the feds need to step in there, as state system, the system of the "honorables" who do not want to see misconduct of their own "brothers and sisters" even when facing evidence of it, will only continue to do more of the same - pursuing not the perpetrators of court corruption, but the whistleblowers, and destroying their lives.
For that reason, I am all for the YouTube revolution.
Allowing any member of the public to video-record court proceedings will be a large step forward to clean up the courts.
It should be done now. And people, through grass roots movements and through aggressively petitioning their legislators, or voting out of office those who are not responsive to requests for such legislation, can do it.
I wrote about the fact that my own disciplinary proceedings were adamantly secret, even when it was illegal to close the courtroom after I opened it, by operation of law, through a written waiver of my privacy.
I wrote that I was criminally charged practically for violation of my own privacy, for blogging about judicial and prosecutorial misconduct in cooking the transcripts of my disciplinary proceedings, specifically, for posting both the transcripts and the audio-recordings of the same conferences that did not match the transcripts, including material issues (whether the proceeding was a hearing or a conference, who were the parties present, whether I waived any issues, whether I testified or not).
Judging by my own experience as an attorney, on what my clients and readers reported to me and on my research for this blog, preservation of the record of court proceedings is a problem across the United States.
Of course, fabrication of transcripts is a crime, and not only in New York.
Here is a question of a legal consumer asked on Avvo about fabrication of transcripts, and an answer by a California criminal defense attorney.
Thank you, attorney Marshall, even though I wonder whether the attorney and the court reporter will be prosecuted criminally if the opposing counsel is himself the state Attorney General, like it already happened in California - recently its Attorney General was criticized by a court for fabricating a transcript of confession in a criminal case.
Yet, I completely agree with Attorney Marshall's determination above. It is a crime to cook court transcripts, no matter how you look at it.
I will definitely ask disciplinary attorney Mary Gasparini to be disbarred - when the new attorney disciplinary rules will kick in in July of 2016.
I will also ask the New York court system to yank certifications of court reporters who cooked the transcripts, but I doubt that any of what you say will happen to the perpetrators of such fraud will happen.
Because the very court that such attorney Gasparini and two court reporters were defrauding for cooking the transcripts are aware of the fraud and refused to address it or sanction the fraudsters. After all, that fraud was "for the benefit of the public" - brought in order to bring to heel the much-hated critic of judicial misconduct, so it is totally forgivable.
Here is a petition filed online at change.org 2 months ago by a New York litigant. The New Yorker is asserting that certain transcripts of a divorce proceedings were inaccurate, in order to protect misconduct of a judge:
I wonder if the alleged serious misconduct of the judge involved (there are two judges in New York by the last name of Cooper, so I do not know which one is meant here), was investigated and addressed.
If allegations are not investigated simply because they are not put together in a refined way, as an attorney would, that is not a good reason to deny investigation, because what is asserted is serious misconduct, that includes condoning fabrication of transcripts.
Reports of alterations of court transcripts were made recently in Pennsylvania (see also here, and see that the reporter in question sued the lawyer for even alleging the alteration of transcripts) and in New York, where, apparently, a whole code language exists indicating that the record should be "cleaned" and what needs to be done with it.
In the same Pennsylvania, the Supreme Court has removed a judge for alteration of transcripts (but did not take her off the bench, disbar her, nor was she criminally prosecuted) for alteration of a transcript in a death penalty case and removing her own disparaging remark from the transcript.
In Ohio, a judge would stop recording of a proceeding because - as the judge claimed - the recording equipment would, coincidentally, "not pick up", and - as the attorney claimed, because the judge wanted to fix the transcript as he saw fit (you will soon see a separate blog about how Delhi Town Court, NY judge Richard Gumo was doing the same - for years).
In Texas, an individual asked a question on Avvo, an attorney rating system where attorneys also answer questions of individuals in exchange for an increase for their rating.
The question was pretty staight-forward:
Yet, the answers given by two Texas attorneys were anything but straightforward.
First, none of them were civil rights attorneys - one announced himself as a "criminal defense attorney" and the other as a "personal injury lawyer".
Yet, the question required an answer from a civil rights attorney, because it involved potential issues of quasi-judicial immunity.
And the answer is - no, there is no judicial immunity given to court reporters, there is, among others, a case on the subject, Antoine v Byers, decided in 1992 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Yet, one of the answerers concentrated on whether the person would be able to prove the alteration and "declined to comment" beyond that point, obviously fearing retaliation for giving a potential advice that the person can, in fact, sue a court reporter for alteration of records, and can even seek that the reporter's certification be yanked and that the reporter be criminally prosecuted (as the California attorney above suggested).
The second attorney who answered acknowledged that a "serious injustice" may have been committed against the asker, but tried to channel the asker's efforts first into an appeal.
Yet, such an approach has two problems.
First, it did not answer the question whether a person can sue the court reporter or not - which is he can, for common law fraud and, possibly, for more. Suing a court reporter and appealing a case where the court reporter committed a crime are two different things.
Second, appealing based on an altered transcript may make the problem worse and irreversible for the asker, making the advice truly bad and counter-productive.
I did appeal a lot, and I know that, at least in New York and in federal courts (and, I am sure, in any other court), a record on appeal must include a certified transcript of proceedings.
In this case, the certified transcript will have to be the altered transcript perjurously certified by the court reporter.
After the appellant submits such a transcript that the appellant him/herself obtained, while knowing the transcripts were altered, there is a distinct possibility that the appellant will have waived the issue that the transcript was altered. After all, the appellant him/herself has submitted that altered transcript certified as good, to the court, thus committing the appellant's very own crime.
Even federal judges were reported to have ordered alteration of transcripts, and retaliation against whistle-blowers who reported such misconduct.
Since in many jurisdictions, audio and video recordings of court proceedings are not allowed, or, to make an audio recording or a video recording of proceedings (security tapes) is made the exclusive right of the court, it is the court and its personnel who can do anything it wants with the transcripts and even with digital files.
See how #JudgePhyllisKeaty of Louisiana handled the issue of court recordings in which she did (her version) or did not (the attorney's version) disclose having a property interest in a real estate firm that handled the sale of the litigants' property.
Note that while what Judge Keaty did reads like a disciplinary or criminal proceeding against her, it is in fact a successful disciplinary proceeding against the attorney whistle-blower Christine Mire who found out and reported Judge Keaty's misconduct:
So, the attorney did what she is supposed to do - due diligence. She asked for the audio recording.
By the way, I myself and many of my former clients and of readers of my blogs asked for audio CDs of court proceedings from New York courts, with an invariable answer - NO. That is not "our procedure". Our procedure is that you pick a stenographer from an "approved list", agree with the stenographer on the price, tell the court the name of your "chosen" (or, rather, coerced) stenographer, and then the court will send the stenographer the audio-recording (possibly, with instruction of how to "fix" whatever "problems" in that audio tape).
As you see above and below, the stenographer in Chistine Mire's case became initially just "very defensive", and then sued to enjoin disclosure of the audiotape, but Respondent still obtained the tapes and was actually able to prove that the recordings were actually altered.
So, did #ChristineMire get a Citizen of the Year award for her courage, perseverence and due diligence in looking for evidence BEFORE accusing the judge of any appearance of impropriety?
No, she was stripped of her ability to earn a living for a "year and a day", with 2 years "unsupervised probation" during which she should be a good girl and never try to do the same as what she did for which she lost her law license - never to try again to do a thorough job for her client and never again try to seek existing evidence of judicial misconduct and corruption.
And, the judge who should be stripped of her black robe, disbarred and put behind another kind of bars, testified against attorney Mire in her disciplinary hearing.
#JudgePhyllisKeaty testified like that:
So, in other words, Judge Keaty lied as to what was cut out of those court tapes.
While Christine Mire was charged with making "unfounded motions to recuse", thus "delaying litigation", "disrupting the tribunal" and making accusations against a judge that were "false or made with reckless disregard to truth or falsity",
- Christine Mire was right that the tapes were altered;
- Christine Mire as right that Judge Keaty lied as to disclosure of her interest in the real estate firm;
- Judge Keaty changed her disclosure firm after and as a direct result of Christine Mire's investigation;
- Judge Keaty was ordered off the case, so Christine Mire's motions to recuse were not unfounded, after all.
I do not believe that any of this circus would be possible if one simple thing was done - if proceedings were public, and if any member of the public present at such proceedings, including parties and their attorneys, could videotape proceedings themselves or order videotaping from others.
Then, there could be multiple videotaped versions of the same events and a very good possibility to compare who doctored what, without fighting "very defensive" court reporters to see what exactly is in the record of the court proceeding where the attorney and her client was attorneys of record, and thus had an absolute right to the record of proceeding, in all forms, paper, audio and video, if those records existed.
And, while one of the dissenters in Christine Mires disciplinary case, Judge Weimer, said this:
So, for an attorney and a sitting appellate judge, what he just listed above (most scans above were from his dissenting opinion), was enough for a criminal investigation and charges against Judge Phyllis, he refuses to see the facts for what they were and insists that "the standard of review" "does not require [him] to question [his] assumption (he still cherishes assumptions, after reading that record! - TN) that all judiciary members involved are honest, eminently competent and motivated by the noblest intentions, an assumption applicable to each of the judges in this matter".
Judge Weiner (whose own law license, and thus judgeship and livelihood) was in the hands of the same "disciplinary council" that went after Christine Mire, stressed his solidarity with his own brothers and sisters, judges involved in using attorney disciplinary proceedings, designed to protect consumers of attorneys' services, into an institutional vendetta against a whistleblower of judicial misconduct.
Judge Weiner, even as he dissented and thus, tried to do "the right thing" for Christine Mire, stressed twice - at the beginning and end of phrase, I highlighted it in yellow, that he still cherished assumptions of honesty, eminent competency and noble motivations for all judges "involved" in the case, including the one likely engaged in criminal conduct and the ones who were covering her up and going after the whistle-blower.
There was a more honest dissent in Christine Mire's disciplinary case - short and to the point, by judge Hughes.
I applaud to Judge Hughes.
That one paragraph of Judge Hughes' dissent was all that was needed to dismiss the case against Attorney Mire.
The record of attorney Mire's disciplinary proceedings would serve wonderfully as evidence before the grand jury to indict Judge Phyllis Keaty and whoever else was participating in doctoring transcripts and court tapes.
I guess, the feds need to step in there, as state system, the system of the "honorables" who do not want to see misconduct of their own "brothers and sisters" even when facing evidence of it, will only continue to do more of the same - pursuing not the perpetrators of court corruption, but the whistleblowers, and destroying their lives.
For that reason, I am all for the YouTube revolution.
Allowing any member of the public to video-record court proceedings will be a large step forward to clean up the courts.
It should be done now. And people, through grass roots movements and through aggressively petitioning their legislators, or voting out of office those who are not responsive to requests for such legislation, can do it.
Sunday, February 28, 2016
When an attorney is criticizing judicial misconduct, truth is falsity and disruption of the tribunal
Yesterday, I ran the first blog covering the case of Louisiana female attorney Christine M. Mire who was suspended this month for a year and a day, with a 2-year probation and a directive to pay all costs of extensive disciplinary proceedings - for legitimate criticism of judicial misconduct and corruption, based on documentary evidence.
I continue coverage of Christine Mire's litmus-test case showing how the government uses attorney discipline as a tool that is contrary to the purpose of attorney regulation, protection of consumers. Here, a skillful and fearless advocate was stripped of her ability to practice and earn a living as a result of her skillful, fearless and legitimate advocacy on behalf of her clients, and in retaliation of exposure of judicial corruption.
The more I read the materials of Christine Mire's disciplinary case available online, the more I feel that the State of Louisiana (same as what other states disciplining attorneys for criticism of judges are doing) created some kind of distorted reality in order to arrive to their conclusions against Ms. Mire and in order to sanction her.
The rules Ms. Mire was sanctioned for violating were for "disrupting the tribunal", "delaying litigation" and "making statements about competence or integrity of a judicial officer which are false or with reckless disregard to truth or falsity" of those statements.
Yet, as I will show through posted scans from materials of Ms. Mire's disciplinary case in the blogs to come, Ms. Mire was punished for (1) making motions to recuse and for (2) not backing down after motions to recuse were rejected by a biased court, for filing a writ that challenged integrity of that court that would disregard obvious evidence of judicial misconduct and personal FINANCIAL of the judge interest in litigation.
Earlier in this blog, I wrote a lot about the concept that lawyers who even dare to touch upon the subject, call "intellectual dishonesty" of judges (see articles here, here, here /specifically about the problem for non-reporting judicial misconduct, as well as intellectual dishonest of judges/, and in some more blogs, you can just type "intellectual dishonesty", "judicial immunity" and "judicial misconduct" in the search window of this blog on the right).
This type of dishonesty occurs when judges ignore relevant portions of the record or relevant mandatory law in order to arrive to a conclusion that would benefit some high-ranking member of the government (especially, a judge) or some well-connected party or attorney.
In Ms. Mire's case, the orwellian disciplinary proceedings established that there was circumstantial evidence indicating that Judge Phyllis Keaty may have been involved in fabrication of court transcripts and in redaction and amplifying of court audio-files, and that Judge Keaty had a financial interest in litigation through having an interest in a real estate firm that was selling the property that Judge Keaty was about to split in litigation, as a factfinder.
Yet, attorney Mire's motions to recuse Judge Keaty were called a disruption of the tribunal, unnecessary, unfounded and meant to delay litigation, and the statements of Ms Mire in those motions to recuse, and in her writ, were branded as either false (despite unrefuted evidence to the contrary in the record), or made with "reckless disregard of truth or falsity".
In this regard, before I start publishing the actual scans from Ms. Mire's proceedings, I wanted to make some references that reading of Ms. Mire's disciplinary case sparked.
There is a form of mental abuse called gaslighting, named after a 1944 Oscar-awarded movie describing this type of abuse, "Gaslight", where the reality of a witness of some event compromising the abuser is being intentionally distorted. Gaslighting, as a technique, was often used by the Soviets against political dissenters. Both the dissenters or critics of the government were portrayed as nuts, and the reality of what they were asserting was distorted by the government.
Here, when the government was saying -
In 2014, Indiana attorney Paul Ogden has made a comprehensive analysis of Rule 8.2 which he called "the disciplinary rule of choice for sanctioning attorneys who criticize judges".
Paul Ogden mentioned in his article that when applying the Rule 8.2(a):
By the way, the due process threshold for making a motion to recuse (to ensure constitutional right of a litigant, attorney's client, to have not only justice, but also appearance of justice), is appearance of impropriety.
An appearance of impropriety is a matter of PERCEPTION.
So, attorneys who are punished for making motions to recuse are punished for their PERCEPTION.
They may not even PERCEIVE that something is fishy - even when looking at the evidence that PROVES that something is fishy.
To require an intellectual, a professional, to say that the King has clothes on when the King is naked in a very ugly way is to require attorneys to do a lobotomy on themselves.
Which is what attorneys regularly do, to survive.
For example, in his law review article "Culture of Quiescence" (which I was sanctioned by Judge Becker for quoting and then my license was suspended based on sanctions of Judge Becker for quoting constitutional law and that law review article) Professor Carl T. Bogus states the following:
I continue coverage of Christine Mire's litmus-test case showing how the government uses attorney discipline as a tool that is contrary to the purpose of attorney regulation, protection of consumers. Here, a skillful and fearless advocate was stripped of her ability to practice and earn a living as a result of her skillful, fearless and legitimate advocacy on behalf of her clients, and in retaliation of exposure of judicial corruption.
The more I read the materials of Christine Mire's disciplinary case available online, the more I feel that the State of Louisiana (same as what other states disciplining attorneys for criticism of judges are doing) created some kind of distorted reality in order to arrive to their conclusions against Ms. Mire and in order to sanction her.
The rules Ms. Mire was sanctioned for violating were for "disrupting the tribunal", "delaying litigation" and "making statements about competence or integrity of a judicial officer which are false or with reckless disregard to truth or falsity" of those statements.
Yet, as I will show through posted scans from materials of Ms. Mire's disciplinary case in the blogs to come, Ms. Mire was punished for (1) making motions to recuse and for (2) not backing down after motions to recuse were rejected by a biased court, for filing a writ that challenged integrity of that court that would disregard obvious evidence of judicial misconduct and personal FINANCIAL of the judge interest in litigation.
Earlier in this blog, I wrote a lot about the concept that lawyers who even dare to touch upon the subject, call "intellectual dishonesty" of judges (see articles here, here, here /specifically about the problem for non-reporting judicial misconduct, as well as intellectual dishonest of judges/, and in some more blogs, you can just type "intellectual dishonesty", "judicial immunity" and "judicial misconduct" in the search window of this blog on the right).
This type of dishonesty occurs when judges ignore relevant portions of the record or relevant mandatory law in order to arrive to a conclusion that would benefit some high-ranking member of the government (especially, a judge) or some well-connected party or attorney.
In Ms. Mire's case, the orwellian disciplinary proceedings established that there was circumstantial evidence indicating that Judge Phyllis Keaty may have been involved in fabrication of court transcripts and in redaction and amplifying of court audio-files, and that Judge Keaty had a financial interest in litigation through having an interest in a real estate firm that was selling the property that Judge Keaty was about to split in litigation, as a factfinder.
Yet, attorney Mire's motions to recuse Judge Keaty were called a disruption of the tribunal, unnecessary, unfounded and meant to delay litigation, and the statements of Ms Mire in those motions to recuse, and in her writ, were branded as either false (despite unrefuted evidence to the contrary in the record), or made with "reckless disregard of truth or falsity".
In this regard, before I start publishing the actual scans from Ms. Mire's proceedings, I wanted to make some references that reading of Ms. Mire's disciplinary case sparked.
There is a form of mental abuse called gaslighting, named after a 1944 Oscar-awarded movie describing this type of abuse, "Gaslight", where the reality of a witness of some event compromising the abuser is being intentionally distorted. Gaslighting, as a technique, was often used by the Soviets against political dissenters. Both the dissenters or critics of the government were portrayed as nuts, and the reality of what they were asserting was distorted by the government.
Here, when the government was saying -
- yes, Judge Keaty did have an ownership interest in the Keaty Realty, the real estate firm that handled the sale of the property Judge Keaty, as a fact-finder, was splitting in the family court litigation;
- yes, there is evidence that court tapes were redacted and unknown pieces of those audio files were taken out;
- yes, Judge Keaty did testify under oath in her testimony AGAINST attorney Mires (not in Judge Keaty's own disciplinary or criminal prosecution - which was never brought against her, despite overwhelming evidence of misconduct) that the redacting portions of the audio file was necessary to take out coverage of other court proceedings that happened that same day;
- yes, it was established that no other court proceedings were happening that same day, so Judge Keaty lied as to the reason for redacting the tapes, but acknowledged the fact of redacting the tapes, so nobody knows what exactly was taken out of those tapes at Judge Keaty's direction;
- yes, it was established that Judge Keaty's alleged disclosure as to her interests, that Attorney Mire said was never made by Judge Keaty, was miraculously added to the court audio-files, professionally, by means of third-party equipment and software not in court possession.
Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.
All of that evidence is enough to convict Judge Keaty of state and federal crimes, take her off the bench and disbar (none of which happened)
But, that same established evidence was not enough to protect an attorney from being stripped of her due process right to earn a living, simply because she was doing her job for her clients and was trying to inform voters in an upcoming election campaign of Judge Keaty for a higher court that Judge Keaty is unfit for office.
I would say that Louisiana court and disciplinary council engaged in elaborate gaslighting of Christine Mire, same as Soviets did to political dissenters, same as the Eastern Germany's (a split-off part of Germany dominated by Soviets that is no more in existence) "Stasi" internal spying agency did to critics of governmental misconduct.
I would like to stress to my readers that all this "Stasi"-like forms of mental torture, punishing an attorney for telling the truth, for thorough investigation, for producing evidence of judicial corruption, for making it public - instead of making Christine Mire Citizen of the Year of the State of Louisiana - was done at public expense and for the declared purpose of protection of the public.
Protection from what?
In 2014, Indiana attorney Paul Ogden has made a comprehensive analysis of Rule 8.2 which he called "the disciplinary rule of choice for sanctioning attorneys who criticize judges".
Paul Ogden mentioned in his article that when applying the Rule 8.2(a):
(a) A lawyer shall not make a statement that the lawyer knows to be false or with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge, adjudicatory officer or public legal officer, or of a candidate for election or appointment to judicial or legal office.
courts across the United States reject the reach of the 1st Amendment and applicable U.S. Supreme Court cases interpreting it.
I would add, as a result of my own experience and research, that courts consistently disregard jurisprudence on content-based regulation of speech, including the applicable standards.
In one of his other articles, Paul Ogden raised an issue whether attorney disciplinary rules, specifically, a rule to be honest with the disciplinary court, are obligatory for disciplinary counsel, too, raising the issue of selective non-enforcement of disciplinary rules against disciplinary prosecutors perpetrating fraud upon the disciplinary court by using false evidence.
The principle of fraud upon the court does not go away even if the court (as it usually is in cases of persecution of an attorney for criticism of judicial misconduct) welcomes such fraud with open arms.
In yet another article, Paul Ogden points out that in 98% of cases, disciplinary courts find against attorneys on violations of Rule 8.2(a) (false criticism of judges or criticisms with reckless disregard to the truth or falsity of attorneys' statements).
All of the above is clearly applicable to how Louisiana attorney Christine M. Mire was disciplined and suspended for "a year and a day" this month.
By the way, the due process threshold for making a motion to recuse (to ensure constitutional right of a litigant, attorney's client, to have not only justice, but also appearance of justice), is appearance of impropriety.
An appearance of impropriety is a matter of PERCEPTION.
So, attorneys who are punished for making motions to recuse are punished for their PERCEPTION.
They may not even PERCEIVE that something is fishy - even when looking at the evidence that PROVES that something is fishy.
To require an intellectual, a professional, to say that the King has clothes on when the King is naked in a very ugly way is to require attorneys to do a lobotomy on themselves.
Which is what attorneys regularly do, to survive.
For example, in his law review article "Culture of Quiescence" (which I was sanctioned by Judge Becker for quoting and then my license was suspended based on sanctions of Judge Becker for quoting constitutional law and that law review article) Professor Carl T. Bogus states the following:
Professor Bogus assumes, as many other legal writers, that judges come to the bench predominantly based on lofty and noble motives.
Yet, the reality of such motivation is likely very, as it was recently reflected in a book written by a former judge who disclosed that the motive to assume a judgeship was very simple - to aid his clients and his law firm a confession he made only after he has left the practice of law and shortly before his death.
The ongoing saga of #AntoninScalia, and the havoc his death caused not only politically, but in cases of corporations who cannot now get what they were awaiting from the judge, possibly after some hunting trips or more, as well as more and more evidence of conflicts of interests he ignored and the power he had, stifling the critics, indicates how important, in fact, it is to criticize judicial misconduct at the time it is happening, and not only when the judge is safely dead.
Professor Bogus makes important observations about the impact of impunity of judges and about the unrelenting survival technique of lawyers - unfounded flattery, or "sycophanting", upon judges.
Once again, Professor Bogus tries to play safe even in his very bold article for the industry of legal writing, and assumes without a reasonable evidence (my personal opinion), that judges come to the bench initially with "dedication and humility" - a proposition not supported by evidence, and I refuse to make favorable assumptions for any member of the government, especially the judiciary, based on available evidence refuting reasonableness of this assumption.
Yet, the reality of such motivation is likely very, as it was recently reflected in a book written by a former judge who disclosed that the motive to assume a judgeship was very simple - to aid his clients and his law firm a confession he made only after he has left the practice of law and shortly before his death.
The ongoing saga of #AntoninScalia, and the havoc his death caused not only politically, but in cases of corporations who cannot now get what they were awaiting from the judge, possibly after some hunting trips or more, as well as more and more evidence of conflicts of interests he ignored and the power he had, stifling the critics, indicates how important, in fact, it is to criticize judicial misconduct at the time it is happening, and not only when the judge is safely dead.
Professor Bogus makes important observations about the impact of impunity of judges and about the unrelenting survival technique of lawyers - unfounded flattery, or "sycophanting", upon judges.
Once again, Professor Bogus tries to play safe even in his very bold article for the industry of legal writing, and assumes without a reasonable evidence (my personal opinion), that judges come to the bench initially with "dedication and humility" - a proposition not supported by evidence, and I refuse to make favorable assumptions for any member of the government, especially the judiciary, based on available evidence refuting reasonableness of this assumption.
Christine Mire was guilty of failing to swallow up the knowledge of judicial corruption, sell out her clients, shut up and suck up to the judiciary. Instead of "bowing and scraping" and saying "yes, your Honor, that is what you said, your Honor", she investigated and found that "that was not what her Dishonor said", and that, in fact, #HerDishonorJudgePhyllisKeaty has cooked court transcripts to cover up her personal financial involvement in the case.
THOSE were her "disciplinary violations" that her clients whose rights she was fought to protect, were protected from through suspension of her law license.
I did not see protests in the streets against depriving consumers of legal services of a powerful and skillful advocate, Christine Mire, not because she made false statements about a judge, but because her statements were TRUE, BASED ON DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE, and PRETTY DAMNING, and were made during the judge's election campaign.
Christine Mire was, very simply, made an example of. If you want to keep earning a living, just shut up - that's what the sanctions the 2-year probation requirement - says.
And until the public starts to vigorously protest against being deprived of skillful advocates under the guise of contrived attorney discipline, judicial misconduct will remain unpunished and adamant everyday occurrence in American courtrooms.
THOSE were her "disciplinary violations" that her clients whose rights she was fought to protect, were protected from through suspension of her law license.
I did not see protests in the streets against depriving consumers of legal services of a powerful and skillful advocate, Christine Mire, not because she made false statements about a judge, but because her statements were TRUE, BASED ON DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE, and PRETTY DAMNING, and were made during the judge's election campaign.
Christine Mire was, very simply, made an example of. If you want to keep earning a living, just shut up - that's what the sanctions the 2-year probation requirement - says.
And until the public starts to vigorously protest against being deprived of skillful advocates under the guise of contrived attorney discipline, judicial misconduct will remain unpunished and adamant everyday occurrence in American courtrooms.
A consumer's challenge to occupational regulation has been filed with a court seeking permission to hire an unlicensed service provider
I have written a lot on this blog about occupational regulation (which includes attorney licensing), an elaborate sham by which professions protect their markets from competitors, raise prices and restrict services to consumers - all under the guise of consumer protection.
Even a law professor recently recognized that the so-called regulation of lawyers by the government is a sham that lawyers pulled at the behest of the American Bar Association, in order to avoid "real" regulation by the "watchful and intrusive eye of the state" (meaning - by a neutral state agency, which is exactly what federal antitrust laws require for regulation of markets regulated by market players - attorneys by attorneys, plumbers by plumbers, taxi drivers by taxi drivers, doctors by doctors).
Yet, litigation so far, as far as I know, only concerned clashes between disciplined professionals and professional boards (infested and overpowered by the disciplined professionals' competitors), or between competitors in the same profession.
Now I have information that, in a historical move, a consumer of services that are regulated (it is a crime to practice that particular profession without a license, and the profession is regulated by market players without proper supervision by a neutral governmental agency) filed a challenge in court asking the court to allow the consumer to waive protections extended to him by the government in the form of professional regulation/licensing.
The consumer, reportedly, claimed to the court that, as a competent adult, he has a standing to decide whether to accept or reject help offered by anybody, including the government, and, as a competent adult, he chooses to reject consumer protection given him through occupational regulation.
He has chosen a certain unlicensed provider, and insisted to the court he wants to use that particular provider to provide services for him.
He insisted that he knows the provider's educational background and skills, and is happy to use that provider.
He asks the court to issue a decision declaring that he is allowed to opt-out of occupational regulation, for himself only, and to hire an unlicensed service provider.
He also asked the court to issue a decision absolving the provider from any kind of punishment on behalf of the government for providing services to the consumer without a license, in the consumer's particular case.
I have no doubt somehow that the challenge will be denied by the court, and I will not disclose the name of the case, the name of the consumer, the name of the service provider or the type of services sought to be provided by an unlicensed provider - until a decision on that challenge is issued by the court.
But, I am truly interested to see the answer to this litmus-test challenge.
I am truly interested to see how the court will be twisting around the underlying declared purpose of occupational licensing - protection of consumers, and how the court will justify forcing the government's unwanted help and "protection" (through occupational licensing) upon an unwilling competent consumer.
The challenge may show the way for other consumers to follow the path to under occupational regulation that is taking close to 40% of the American work force, and is responsible for unemployment, raising prices and restricting the range of services, stifling innovation and preventing people's travel across state lines because of lack of reciprocity in occupational licensing between states and smaller localities.
Since all of that is done for the benefit of consumers, a consumer must surely have a right to say "no" to occupational regulation, opt out of it, and choose unlicensed service providers of the consumer's choice.
The court will decide whether consumers in this country, while declared to be beneficiaries of governmental "protection" through occupational licensing, are, in fact, captive cash cows for well-lobbied efforts of professions with the government who have no right of choice at all of their own providers of services in private matters.
Even a law professor recently recognized that the so-called regulation of lawyers by the government is a sham that lawyers pulled at the behest of the American Bar Association, in order to avoid "real" regulation by the "watchful and intrusive eye of the state" (meaning - by a neutral state agency, which is exactly what federal antitrust laws require for regulation of markets regulated by market players - attorneys by attorneys, plumbers by plumbers, taxi drivers by taxi drivers, doctors by doctors).
Yet, litigation so far, as far as I know, only concerned clashes between disciplined professionals and professional boards (infested and overpowered by the disciplined professionals' competitors), or between competitors in the same profession.
Now I have information that, in a historical move, a consumer of services that are regulated (it is a crime to practice that particular profession without a license, and the profession is regulated by market players without proper supervision by a neutral governmental agency) filed a challenge in court asking the court to allow the consumer to waive protections extended to him by the government in the form of professional regulation/licensing.
The consumer, reportedly, claimed to the court that, as a competent adult, he has a standing to decide whether to accept or reject help offered by anybody, including the government, and, as a competent adult, he chooses to reject consumer protection given him through occupational regulation.
He has chosen a certain unlicensed provider, and insisted to the court he wants to use that particular provider to provide services for him.
He insisted that he knows the provider's educational background and skills, and is happy to use that provider.
He asks the court to issue a decision declaring that he is allowed to opt-out of occupational regulation, for himself only, and to hire an unlicensed service provider.
He also asked the court to issue a decision absolving the provider from any kind of punishment on behalf of the government for providing services to the consumer without a license, in the consumer's particular case.
I have no doubt somehow that the challenge will be denied by the court, and I will not disclose the name of the case, the name of the consumer, the name of the service provider or the type of services sought to be provided by an unlicensed provider - until a decision on that challenge is issued by the court.
But, I am truly interested to see the answer to this litmus-test challenge.
I am truly interested to see how the court will be twisting around the underlying declared purpose of occupational licensing - protection of consumers, and how the court will justify forcing the government's unwanted help and "protection" (through occupational licensing) upon an unwilling competent consumer.
The challenge may show the way for other consumers to follow the path to under occupational regulation that is taking close to 40% of the American work force, and is responsible for unemployment, raising prices and restricting the range of services, stifling innovation and preventing people's travel across state lines because of lack of reciprocity in occupational licensing between states and smaller localities.
Since all of that is done for the benefit of consumers, a consumer must surely have a right to say "no" to occupational regulation, opt out of it, and choose unlicensed service providers of the consumer's choice.
The court will decide whether consumers in this country, while declared to be beneficiaries of governmental "protection" through occupational licensing, are, in fact, captive cash cows for well-lobbied efforts of professions with the government who have no right of choice at all of their own providers of services in private matters.
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Yet another (female) attorney suspended for criticizing confirmed judicial corruption - now in Louisiana
When you see something like this:
you invariably think that an attorney must have attacked a judge with a sledgehammer.
Yet, remembering that I was suspended for two years for sanctions imposed upon me for "making threats against the court", which can have the readers believe that I threatened physical violence against a judge, while I simply made a motion to recuse a judge based on record of misconduct and conflicts of interests, and notified the judge that he is a witness in the case and that I intend to call him to testify as a witness, I decided to find the actual disciplinary case of attorney Christine Mire.
And what a treasure it was.
First of all, the "attack on judge" was criticism of CONFIRMED and DOCUMENTED corruption of a judge - including a financial stake in the outcome of a divorce proceedings (the judge's real estate firm was selling the property that the judge was splitting as a factfinder in the divorce case) and falsifying court transcripts (there was unrefuted evidence that the audiofile where the judge allegedly made disclosure of her conflict of interest was sliced, matters were redacted out of there, and other matters were added to it by means of recording equipment that the court did not have available).
Yet, it is not the judge - Phyllis Keaty, of Louisiana, and not the three judges of the appellate panel who covered her up - who lost their law licenses and their judgeships - but an attorney who criticized them in a pleading, fully supported by documentary evidence.
Here is the 38-page disciplinary decision against attorney Christine Mire.
Attorney Christine Mire, for her efforts to do her duty for her client, and for her efforts to do her duty to report judicial corruption and misconduct, got suspended from the practice of law for a year and a day, and ordered to pay the expenses of the unconstitutional disciplinary proceeding against her.
Attorney Mire raised the issue of the 1st Amendment in the case, which the court rejected based on a 1964 case that has nothing to do with content-based regulation of speech.
Strict scrutiny, the required standard for attorney speech regulation, was not used by the disciplinary court.
There was a strong dissent in the case though, clearly indicating that (1) the attorney had objective grounds for her criticism, and that (2) the attorney's criticism of the judges is protected by the 1st Amendment and the Free Speech Clause of the Louisiana State Constitution.
Apparently, the dissent has fallen on deaf ears of the court - but I wonder whether Attorney Mire will appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court and whether the sans-Scalia court will actually take this case.
High time to take a case of retaliation against critics of judicial corruption, and it is suspect that the court, judges who belong to the same class as those criticized by sanctioned attorneys, would not "exercise their discretion" to hear such cases, leaving such constitutional violations unanswered, their victims without a remedy, the bar intimidated and refusing to make motions to recuse for fear of retaliation, and constitutional rights of litigants to an impartial judiciary not enforced.
I applaud your courage, attorney Mire. And I wish you luck with the U.S. Supreme Court. I will gladly provide an amicus brief for you.
I must also point out that our timid press, including the legal press, in its efforts not to misstep against "the honorable" and very powerful judiciary, prefers to choose words in a sensational heading like Law360 did, which could easily be understood that Christine Mire was suspended for doing physical violence to a judge.
But, this very blog exists exactly because the so-called mainstream media is too timid to address issues of public concern - prosecutorial and judicial corruption which are rampant in this country.
I just wrote about a dismissal of fabricated criminal charges against my dear friend Barbara O'Sullivan, here and here.
I mentioned there that her attorney Joe Ermeti refused to make a motion to recuse, as did his previous attorney Tyner.
Joe Ermeti is actually the attorney who referred his other client to me back in 2014, with an instruction to his client in a pending case to have me make a motion to recuse for him, because Ermeti did not want to be "blackballed" in a certain judge's court while I allegedly, and in Ermeti's opinion, had "nothing to lose", with the disciplinary proceeding already pending against me.
So, Ermeti recognized that the motion to recuse was warranted and necessary, but did not want to do that for his client in a case where he was an attorney of record and was duty-bound to make that motion.
This is the type of courage that decisions like the one against me, and now against Christine Mire, inspire in our "honorable" legal profession.
All that Mire had to do, same as all I had to do to keep our respective law licenses was shut up and not defend our clients' constitutional right to an impartial judge.
We did not. We did our duty by our clients. And we got slammed. And I wonder when courts will start to realize that what they are doing is very visible and very disgraceful.
By the way, one of the dissenters in Christine Mire's case, Judge Weimer, mentioned that chill.
With all the cowardly scraping and bowing, the dissenter did more than the "majority", he (or she, I only know the last name) at least stated that Christine Mire's conduct was constitutionally protected and that she should not have been sanctioned for it.
A detailed analysis of the disciplinary decision, including the analysis of attempts of one of the three dissenters to, at the same time, scrape and bow before a judge who was caught in criminal conduct (fabricating court transcripts) and his duty to rule fairly for Ms. Mire, will follow.
By the way, the corrupt judge has made it to the appellate court which refused to discipline her, and instead disciplined the attorney who exposed her misconduct.
One point that she was especially mad at at Christine Mire was that Christine Mire circulated her writ regarding Judge Keaty's misconduct among her friends and members of the bar during her election campaign.
Judge Keaty knew she could not win a defamation lawsuit against Mire, because truth is an absolute defense, especially in a case where the allegedly defamed person is a public official, so instead she used attorney discipline as a tool of punishment. And it worked. So far, at least.
Here are the pictures of the parties in this sorry story: the panel of the court that refused protection and punished Christine Mire - now including the culprit judge Keaty.
Judge Keaty's election video clip claiming that she is a judge of experience, and "served the community with honor, integrity and distinction".
Well, the clip also says, quite truthfully, that Keaty has 12 years of experience "behind the bench", not "on the bench". Wheeling and dealing for 12 years - and only caught by Christine Mire who suffered for it while Judge Keaty got promoted.
I presume there was no criminal investigation into the actions of #JudgePhyllisKeaty and whoever helped her to cook the transcripts, nor a larger investigation into how many more transcripts #JudgePhyllisKeaty cooked in her "service" to the community "with honor, integrity and distinction" - "behind the bench".
The transcripts were apparently fabricated in a professional way, so you have to do it a number of times and involve a number of experts to do it the way it was done.
The dissenter even mentioned that Judge Keaty's court did not have at its disposal the software or equipment to do the edit of the transcripts.
Thus, the edit had to be made outside of courts, and the question is - who is doing it.
And who will be doing it again, since Keaty is emboldened by not being disciplined or prosecuted for fabricating the transcripts, and especially by having the messenger punished and the rest of the bar intimidated?
Remember, Judge Keaty released the sewn-together audio-file to Christine Mire, obviously in full confidence that Mire will not discern the fraud, that the audio-file was actually cooked.
It was a perfect crime. Not so perfect though, because Christine Mire still was able to prove that the audio-file was sliced, redacted and added to.
So, for her thorough investigation Christine Mire was rewarded - with a suspension for a year and a day, and with costs of disciplinary proceedings awarded against her.
No, Christine Mire did not attack Judge Phyllis Keaty with a sledgehammer.
She simply stated, on the available record, and to protect her clients rights, that Judge Keaty should have recused, and that what she did was corrupt.
Which was true.
For a full analysis of Christine Mire's disciplinary decision, including the three dissents - stay tuned.
you invariably think that an attorney must have attacked a judge with a sledgehammer.
Yet, remembering that I was suspended for two years for sanctions imposed upon me for "making threats against the court", which can have the readers believe that I threatened physical violence against a judge, while I simply made a motion to recuse a judge based on record of misconduct and conflicts of interests, and notified the judge that he is a witness in the case and that I intend to call him to testify as a witness, I decided to find the actual disciplinary case of attorney Christine Mire.
And what a treasure it was.
First of all, the "attack on judge" was criticism of CONFIRMED and DOCUMENTED corruption of a judge - including a financial stake in the outcome of a divorce proceedings (the judge's real estate firm was selling the property that the judge was splitting as a factfinder in the divorce case) and falsifying court transcripts (there was unrefuted evidence that the audiofile where the judge allegedly made disclosure of her conflict of interest was sliced, matters were redacted out of there, and other matters were added to it by means of recording equipment that the court did not have available).
Yet, it is not the judge - Phyllis Keaty, of Louisiana, and not the three judges of the appellate panel who covered her up - who lost their law licenses and their judgeships - but an attorney who criticized them in a pleading, fully supported by documentary evidence.
Here is the 38-page disciplinary decision against attorney Christine Mire.
Attorney Christine Mire, for her efforts to do her duty for her client, and for her efforts to do her duty to report judicial corruption and misconduct, got suspended from the practice of law for a year and a day, and ordered to pay the expenses of the unconstitutional disciplinary proceeding against her.
Attorney Mire raised the issue of the 1st Amendment in the case, which the court rejected based on a 1964 case that has nothing to do with content-based regulation of speech.
Strict scrutiny, the required standard for attorney speech regulation, was not used by the disciplinary court.
There was a strong dissent in the case though, clearly indicating that (1) the attorney had objective grounds for her criticism, and that (2) the attorney's criticism of the judges is protected by the 1st Amendment and the Free Speech Clause of the Louisiana State Constitution.
Apparently, the dissent has fallen on deaf ears of the court - but I wonder whether Attorney Mire will appeal it to the U.S. Supreme Court and whether the sans-Scalia court will actually take this case.
High time to take a case of retaliation against critics of judicial corruption, and it is suspect that the court, judges who belong to the same class as those criticized by sanctioned attorneys, would not "exercise their discretion" to hear such cases, leaving such constitutional violations unanswered, their victims without a remedy, the bar intimidated and refusing to make motions to recuse for fear of retaliation, and constitutional rights of litigants to an impartial judiciary not enforced.
I applaud your courage, attorney Mire. And I wish you luck with the U.S. Supreme Court. I will gladly provide an amicus brief for you.
I must also point out that our timid press, including the legal press, in its efforts not to misstep against "the honorable" and very powerful judiciary, prefers to choose words in a sensational heading like Law360 did, which could easily be understood that Christine Mire was suspended for doing physical violence to a judge.
But, this very blog exists exactly because the so-called mainstream media is too timid to address issues of public concern - prosecutorial and judicial corruption which are rampant in this country.
I just wrote about a dismissal of fabricated criminal charges against my dear friend Barbara O'Sullivan, here and here.
I mentioned there that her attorney Joe Ermeti refused to make a motion to recuse, as did his previous attorney Tyner.
Joe Ermeti is actually the attorney who referred his other client to me back in 2014, with an instruction to his client in a pending case to have me make a motion to recuse for him, because Ermeti did not want to be "blackballed" in a certain judge's court while I allegedly, and in Ermeti's opinion, had "nothing to lose", with the disciplinary proceeding already pending against me.
So, Ermeti recognized that the motion to recuse was warranted and necessary, but did not want to do that for his client in a case where he was an attorney of record and was duty-bound to make that motion.
This is the type of courage that decisions like the one against me, and now against Christine Mire, inspire in our "honorable" legal profession.
All that Mire had to do, same as all I had to do to keep our respective law licenses was shut up and not defend our clients' constitutional right to an impartial judge.
We did not. We did our duty by our clients. And we got slammed. And I wonder when courts will start to realize that what they are doing is very visible and very disgraceful.
By the way, one of the dissenters in Christine Mire's case, Judge Weimer, mentioned that chill.
With all the cowardly scraping and bowing, the dissenter did more than the "majority", he (or she, I only know the last name) at least stated that Christine Mire's conduct was constitutionally protected and that she should not have been sanctioned for it.
A detailed analysis of the disciplinary decision, including the analysis of attempts of one of the three dissenters to, at the same time, scrape and bow before a judge who was caught in criminal conduct (fabricating court transcripts) and his duty to rule fairly for Ms. Mire, will follow.
By the way, the corrupt judge has made it to the appellate court which refused to discipline her, and instead disciplined the attorney who exposed her misconduct.
One point that she was especially mad at at Christine Mire was that Christine Mire circulated her writ regarding Judge Keaty's misconduct among her friends and members of the bar during her election campaign.
Judge Keaty knew she could not win a defamation lawsuit against Mire, because truth is an absolute defense, especially in a case where the allegedly defamed person is a public official, so instead she used attorney discipline as a tool of punishment. And it worked. So far, at least.
Here are the pictures of the parties in this sorry story: the panel of the court that refused protection and punished Christine Mire - now including the culprit judge Keaty.
Judge Keaty's election video clip claiming that she is a judge of experience, and "served the community with honor, integrity and distinction".
Well, the clip also says, quite truthfully, that Keaty has 12 years of experience "behind the bench", not "on the bench". Wheeling and dealing for 12 years - and only caught by Christine Mire who suffered for it while Judge Keaty got promoted.
I presume there was no criminal investigation into the actions of #JudgePhyllisKeaty and whoever helped her to cook the transcripts, nor a larger investigation into how many more transcripts #JudgePhyllisKeaty cooked in her "service" to the community "with honor, integrity and distinction" - "behind the bench".
The transcripts were apparently fabricated in a professional way, so you have to do it a number of times and involve a number of experts to do it the way it was done.
The dissenter even mentioned that Judge Keaty's court did not have at its disposal the software or equipment to do the edit of the transcripts.
Thus, the edit had to be made outside of courts, and the question is - who is doing it.
And who will be doing it again, since Keaty is emboldened by not being disciplined or prosecuted for fabricating the transcripts, and especially by having the messenger punished and the rest of the bar intimidated?
Remember, Judge Keaty released the sewn-together audio-file to Christine Mire, obviously in full confidence that Mire will not discern the fraud, that the audio-file was actually cooked.
It was a perfect crime. Not so perfect though, because Christine Mire still was able to prove that the audio-file was sliced, redacted and added to.
So, for her thorough investigation Christine Mire was rewarded - with a suspension for a year and a day, and with costs of disciplinary proceedings awarded against her.
No, Christine Mire did not attack Judge Phyllis Keaty with a sledgehammer.
She simply stated, on the available record, and to protect her clients rights, that Judge Keaty should have recused, and that what she did was corrupt.
Which was true.
For a full analysis of Christine Mire's disciplinary decision, including the three dissents - stay tuned.
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