Tuesday, November 18, 2008

A Lawyer Spills the Beans About Our Justice System

Before I had a firsthand experience with Alabama courts, I was probably like most of you--I assumed judges were honest. (Boy, was I wrong about that.)

Even after I had come to understand that trial-court judges can be grossly corrupt, I assumed appellate judges were honest, that they would fix anything that lower courts did wrong. (Boy, was I wrong about that one, too.)

This gets to perhaps the most scandalous truth about our judicial system. Most of us, I think, can comprehend that a trial judge, acting as a solo artist of sorts, could intentionally or unintentionally botch a case. But how can appellate courts, which include multiple justices, also get stuff wrong?

Well, it happens. And if you followed the Bush v. Gore case of 2000, which gave us eight years of President George W. Bush, you know that even the U.S. Supreme Court no longer can be trusted. (More coming soon on corruption in our nation's highest court.)

Why are appellate courts corrupt? I can point to two reasons: (1) Some judges are more interested in furthering a political agenda than in dispensing justice; (2) Some judges are more interested in protecting corrupt trial judges than in exposing them.

After I posted recently about William C. Thompson, the corrupt presiding judge of the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals, I received an interesting anonymous comment. I'm pretty sure it's from a member of the legal community. He uses the word "colorable," a term most regular folks aren't likely to use. (I'm assuming it's a guy; the language sounds guy-like to me.)

At first glance, my correspondent seems to be taking issue with me. But upon further review (as they say in the NFL), you see that he and I pretty much agree on the state of our courts--they stink.

This is a fascinating, and rare, inside account of what our justice system is really like. It's easy to see why my correspondent wishes to remain anonymous. Any lawyer who put his name to this would be blackballed for sure.

Here's what he had to say (with the original spelling, grammar, and punctuation in place):

Date: Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 4:00 PM

Subject: [Legal Schnauzer] New comment on Has Karl Rove's Terror Campaign Worked in the Deep....

Simply because an appellate judge rules against you does not mean he/she is corrupt. incompetent maybe, but not corrupt.

appellate judges get the law and facts wrong all the time. there are thousands of appeals, and very little court personnel to do an adequate job reviewing each appeal.

if your appeal was pro se, more than likely it was decided by a staff atorney, without judge thompson even reading it. the staff attorney probably just wrote a memo reccomending "affirmed no opinion" and the Court went along with it.

many times the Court does this (affirmed no opinion) to protect litigants. I have filed appeals before to cover my ass from a crazy client where i knew that i was beat on the law and facts. the court would affirm with no opinion, to spare me the beatdown that would follow.

the appellate courts in this state are bad, and they are generally bought off by either corporate or trial lawyer money. but i doubtjudge thompson specifically intended to committ fraud or any other crime in affirming the verdict against you.

maybe you are right. maybe the repubs in this state are out to take you down and have orchestrated all of this rigmarole to simply "get" you. But I would like to see some hard facts on this blog, rather than innuendo and accusations.

The proof is in the pudding. Post the depositions or the trial transcript. post the illicit conversations you recorded that implicate uab. post some hard evidence, rather than opinion.

also remember that if you do get a lawyer- a long shot given that it appears you have sued every lawyer you previously hired- to sue UAB for your wrongful termination (which by the way, may be a colorable claim), the defense will offer all of your web posting into evidence to portray you as a kook. be carefull what you post. post only what you can prove, or it can bite you in the ass in the future.

This guy is sort of taking shots at me, but I like him anyway. After eight years of hearing a constant stream of BS from lawyers, it is refreshing to hear one be this honest. He reveals all kinds of "inside baseball" about the justice system, but let's focus on just a few things:

* He disputes my contention that Thompson is corrupt, but he has no problem with the notion that Thompson is incompetent;

* He says appellate judges get the law and facts wrong all the time. In other words, my experience is not unusual;

* He says Alabama courts are badly understaffed, and "rulings" often are made by staff attorneys without the judge even looking at the case;

* He says Alabama appellate courts are "bad" and are generally "bought off" by corporate or trial-lawyer interests;

* If appellate courts are this bad, imagine how bad trial courts must be.

Well, there you have it folks, straight from one of the horses' mouths. Our courts are "bad," "incompetent," and "bought off."

That's a lawyer talking--not just a Legal Schnauzer.

Gosh, I would like this guy to do an occasional guest post at our humble blog. And he could do it anonymously. No telling what we all would learn.

The invitation is out there.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

To: The "Lawyer/Attorney"

My husband practiced law and is recovering from that. It appears the lawyers/attorneys in the U.S. are more afraid of our inalienable rights than those who take them away, the dressed up like choir rehearsal - or, something in that order - "Judges."

I am a serious cynic since the Portland "Officers of the Peace" showed up at our home and used the "Resist Arrest" scheme to do what the "Police State" modeled after Israel, intends.

Arrested my husband for explaining the law of "probable cause" to the senior police.

Arrested me for "resisting arrest."

I was acquitted on April 1, 2008.

The best criminal attorney in the State of Oregon represented me. It cost a fortune to prove I was innocent and the "Officer of the Peace" was already in a civil rights lawsuit for out of control with weapons, in the Frank Waterhouse case - it was a tazer attack by Mr. Frashour III. Yes, his family have all been in "law enforcement" ... a family affair, like our politicans.

So, surprise, surprise, the familial corruption is deep.

The real frightening piece was when Mr. Frashour took the stand and stated he did what he did with FULL IMMUNITY. Those who tell him to (THE STATE OF OREGON, COUNTY OF MULTNOMAH, CITY OF PORTLAND ADMINISTRATIVE GOVERNMENTS) state that lawsuits are expected and therefore he is always fully protected by THEM.

My confusion has been: why do the attorneys in the U.S., there are so many after all, not group together as a united front and stop the insanity of our Constitution's demise?

It would be similar to those suits that marched in Pakistan - the lawyers, that is. Remember? They, too, (I bet) NEVER thought it would get to that point.

legalschnauzer said...

I'm sorry for your experience, but I appreciate you writing. I wish I could say that I'm surprised by your story, but I'm not.

In my view, the notion that some individuals in our justice system are "immune"--in other words, they cannot be held accountable for their actions--is at the heart of much corruption.

Anonymous said...

thanks LS. It began in 2003, when an eminent domain case was brought against our property in the State of Washington. We stopped that, but it cost us handsomely. The good piece to it is - we legally put a stop to more than 20 years worth of land-grabbing by the State of Washington, under the guise of "environmental." The World Wildlife Fund, set-up in 1965, by that stupid Prince Philip of the "Royal Family" was nothing more than a ploy to steal America's land.

I have had quite the learning experience from the U.S. and its LEGAL/JUDICIAL SYSTEM.

Corruption is the word that just keeps on giving in THE AMERICAN COURT SYSTEM.

I could go on with a few more cases, the banksters, for yet another example - but as the lawyer states ...

EVERYTHING IS USED AGAINST WE THE PEOPLE.

And, it is a kangaroo court, or what I think is a bad high school click that can't find one single creative gene and so they do nothing, but be CRUEL and INHUMAN to their own species.

Study HAGE vs. U.S. This is the case that has truly taken the eyelids that blink like reptilian, off the peepers of many in America.

The U.S. has been set-up as a harvesting unit, for the bank, so to speak. The bank is, in reality, found at the heart and soul of the State of Israel.

Having worked as a mortgage broker for almost 20 years, after graduating years ago with three university concentrations, I found out about how the "money" actually operates. Unbelievable.

Obama is frightening me since his entire click is from the Zionists, yet again.

I am not "antisemitic": paternal great grandmother was cousin to Karl Marx.

I am also NOT A MARXIST - not by any stretch of the imagination.

I believe in our Constitution and I also think that we, once again, escaped by a thin hair from total fascism.

It has not been stopped - only temporarily delayed.

This is why the comatose lawyers in the US need to wake-up and smell the coffee.

Thanks again LS -- I was almost killed with the new fancy RED SABER PEPPER SPRAY.

How many JUDGES, LAWYERS, et al. do you think have TASER INTERNATIONAL and RED SABER PEPPER SPRAY, in their retirement portfolios?

Add "CCA PRISON STOCK" and presto we have the United States of America whose JUDICIAL SYSTEM TRADES FLESH, to live "high on the hog," when they're "fat cats."

BIRDS ON A WIRE, as my late great artist friend cartoon rendered them, they who think GOD is a crown for them to wear as Judge.

Hypocritical chicken you know whats, counting all but a couple of hand-fulls, attorneys in America. Pretending to "love the law."

Money does not talk it screams. Just ask lawyers when they are practicing who do we cheat 'em and how.

Anonymous said...

LS: the "corruption" has been set-up after the model in Israel. The "Israeli Model" being inflicted in Palestine, is what has been, slowly but surely, happening in the U.S. and it is intentional (beginning 1947-48, as a force of serious intention).

Look at Henry Makow, PhD. His work is the best about how it began as a serious corruption in the U.S.

Until the Palestinian conflict is resolved, the U.S. is not going to be "free." When Palestine is free again, America is also to be free - think in terms of hydra-headed because this is the real horror of the U.S. Government and Israel decides the fates of our courts, mostly. Just ask the Supreme Court who decided Bush.

Obama is far too controlled by Israel, look at Rahm Emanuel.

The horror is these "Zionists" believe the "Goyim" are truly a lesser species, (to be bred and harvested.)

I have had my homework cut out for me and it has been through going into the corrupt legal/judicial that my education feels like the twilight zone, deju vu over and over again. PTSD is now a genuine reality in my world of unmakebelieve.

The lawyer is correct: your blog is going to be used against you and the way around it is to go Pro Se. But, this time, hire an attorney to mentor you and make certain to demand a jury trial, I'm told no less than the 12. Also, there are a few other ways and means. Understand, though, you could be prejudiced against simply for your blog. Thus, pay attention to BUILD A CASE, but be careful "how." Maybe read the book that is Bugliosi's, about trying Bush for murder.

When your statute of limitations runs, you can't go back into the system ... should you decide to go back against UAB legally, then begin to take your blog into a very legally careful exposure.

Perhaps invite the "attorney" into a forum, anon, of course. Ask him/her (seems male to me as well) to discuss Pro Se and why it is almost impossible to represent oneself.

We were considering doing cartoon books about how to represent oneself Pro Se.

More importantly, however, is to create a cartoon booklet so the U.S. Constitution can be resurrected from the dead.

I could definitely send a few attorneys towards a blog that is discussing how to get into the court/legal/judicial system and have an impact for genuine, serious change.

Perhaps considerations/options to the global earn a living routine.

I have followed your story and it has been, the good to know how many good people have been attacked in "Bush's America."

It is so sad and losing your beautiful little Schnauz. I am sorry for your wife and you suffering so much pain.

I told you once as a child I had three Schnauzers - one lived until she was 19, for real.

Following Don Siegelman, as well. I consider his case a milestone in the Rovian psychopathic criminally insane cannibal cabal's NWO ... destroy everything to ring in the North American Union.

I am pessimistic about America's future since the over-population drive to depopulate, is likened to a religious zeal now.

We are all "low hanging fruit" in this "New World Order" and globalization did not take into consideration that human beings are not ok with being victimized by the rule of law rather than protected by it.

Sigh. Turning this big sinking ship around is a challenge.

Your work has been an inspiration. Thanks again.

Best, RK

Anonymous said...

LS: I always believe in picking up the telephone and calling someone who is considered a great American with the gene of altruism (an article by him is included)

DEAN LAWRENCE VELVEL
Professor of Law

Phone: 978.681.0800 ext. 126
Email: Velvel@mslaw.edu

B.A., University of Michigan;
J.D., University of Michigan Law School

Lawrence R. Velvel is the Dean of Massachusetts School of Law and a professor of law. Mr. Velvel is a 1960 graduate of the University of Michigan and a 1963 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, where he served on the law review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He was a law professor from 1966-1978, first at the University of Kansas and then at Catholic University. He has been a partner in major law firms in Washington, D.C., and was the first chief counsel of an organization established to write United States Supreme Court briefs in support of state and local governments. He has been active in Supreme Court litigation, constitutional law, antitrust law and complex litigation. He is the author of a book dealing with constitutional aspects of the Vietnam war, of seventeen law review articles and of twenty-three articles for legal and daily newspapers. He has written thirty-three United States Supreme Court briefs, is editor of the MSLAW journal called The Long Term View, and serves as a moderator and executive producer of four MSLAW television programs, the legal series Educational Forum, the topical Issues In The News and the book discussion show Books of Our Time. These programs are carried by television stations nationwide.

Wall Street: Unprecedented Concentration of Financial Power
Huge Financial Entities Being Formed

by Lawrence Velvel

Global Research, November 18, 2008

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11028

In younger days I was an antitrust lawyer for a considerable number of years. Most of my work, and my cast of mind, was on the plaintiff’s side. This mentality meant, and means to this day, that I favor views expressed by Justices Brandeis and Douglas: Antitrust is not simply about claimed efficiency that supposedly makes things better for consumers. The claims of efficiency are often false and consumers often get the short end of the stick. Rather than being solely about supposed efficiency, antitrust is also about fairness towards competitors, about the virtues of smallness in preference to corporate elephantiasis, about maintaining democracy by preserving economic opportunity for the small man or woman.

The Brandeisian-Douglas view has not prevailed in the last 30 to 40 years. Instead, with some of the most famous names in American law as the tip of the spear (in military terms), the field was taken over by, and federal judges learned from and implemented the views of, the economics boys -- famous professors and judges who claimed that economics were all that mattered and that they, with their verbal facility and occasional mathematical models, could tell us which principles of economics to apply.

The result has been the virtual death of antitrust under the guise of making it more sophisticated. Colossal mergers, legalized price fixing, forcing unwanted products upon buyers as the price of purchasing other products which they do want, are the order of the day. The consumer and the small man or woman exists to be screwed over.

...con't @ link provided above ....

Anonymous said...

LS: Here is the place I find one of the best on the www, for reading what's happening in the US:

"... As if that wasn’t enough to finally declare the class war, when General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, who employ millions of blue collar working stiffs had the gall to ask the same Government for even a paltry $25 billion in loans, Bush, Paulson and all the Republicans in Congress suddenly turned back into Capitalists again. All the complex financial double talk in the world can’t hide the basic fact that global Capitalism as practiced over the last eight years has failed. Rich people all over the world lost trillions of dollars and are now trying desperately to use governments to transfer that loss onto the backs of billions of poor and working class people. In its final days, the Bush Administration is trying to hold open the vault doors as wide as possible while the real pirates escape with as much bullion as they can. My guess is that right from the podium of Obama’s inauguration, George Bush and Dick Cheney will board a non-stop flight to Riyadh.

continues:

The Bush Administration’s Invisible Finger, by By Dominick L. Auci

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/106718-1/

Anonymous said...

LS: here's a bit of good news, I think/hope/pray ...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11042

Wall Street and Washington conspired to defraud Japanese banks, by Wayne Madsen

November 19, 2008

snip snip snip snip ...

"... Chinese and Japanese intelligence agencies that look closely at financial malfeasance are alarmed that the Salomon division of Citigroup has managed to take over all of Lehman Brothers’ viable assets, leaving the U.S. bankruptcy court holding the debt of the failed securities firm. Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 15, 2008. Lehman had borrowed billions from two Japanese banks -- Nomura and Sumitomo Mitsui -- to stay afloat. Our Asian intelligence sources report that the Salomon division of Citigroup engaged in a massive fraud scheme with the connivance of the Treasury Department of Henry Paulson and the Federal Reserve Bank of Ben Shalom Bernanke ....

Anonymous said...

Article by Wayne Madsen below is precisely what I was/am talking about with respect to "traders of flesh."

I liken it to: TRAITORS who TRADE THE FLESH OF THEIR OWN.

Portfolios, "Birds on a Wire," every last retiree of the SYSTEM, the CRIMINAL JUSTICE:

Time for

FULL DISCLOSURE

in the U.S.

I bet the UAB has lots of weapons, war and drugs, in those retirement portfolios.

AND, LS: do a thorough background forensics in the COMMON PURPOSE that Brian Gerrish of the UK/GB has ... "stripped the theory from the conspiracy."

Begin to demand COMMON PURPOSE GRADUATES and/or those who RUN THIS "CHARITY" expose and/or become transparent in the true purpose.

Karl Rove is a zombie for the paedophilia billionaire mobster clan that has decided to rid the earth of all but 200 billion. This means the Roves of this plan will do whatever it is that they're told, to get rid of as many humans as possible.

The end result is that the people (Dick Cheney's daughter has been artificially impregnated 5 times) who are "more special" get to live as though "royal" like the others who think their blood is blue -- like Rahm Emanuel, Ben Bernanke, and Hank Paulson, et al.

Dangerous and scary - all extremely mentally/criminally ill.

Dick Cheney, et al. wanted as many "criminals" as they could round-up and they did not think that having been born with inalienable rights had anything to do with it!

HERE IS ONE OF THE MOST PROFOUND INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS:

WAYNE MADSEN REPORT

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/

"Not only do we have a right to know, we have a duty to know what our Government is doing in our name. If there's a criticism to be made today, it's that the press isn't doing enough to put the pressure on the government to provide information."
Walter Cronkite - 3/28/02, PBS

Today's News, November 19, 2008

Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales indicted on private prison criminal charges in Texas. Cheney's role in Vanguard Group and "money trail" to firm cited in indictment. Grand jury indicted Cheney and Gonzales because they "love their country." Cheney declines comment.

legalschnauzer said...

Thanks for the information. Lawrence Velvel is a very interesting writer, and I urge readers to keep up with his work. He is on my blogroll.

He's one of the few people in the legal community who has honestly raised the issue of judicial corruption.

Anonymous said...

Extra/http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/Cheney_indicted_in_S_Texas_case.html

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNH9klJVsxc