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| Hugo Black U.S. Courthouse |
Meanwhile, in Birmingham, my wife and I see unmistakable signs that our federal justice apparatus is broken. We are operating in the civil arena, not criminal; no one figures to be in physical danger. But we see mounting evidence here that federal-courthouse employees--a couple of judges, perhaps a law clerk, a member of the U.S. Marshals Service, various personnel in the clerk's office--are involved in a scam.
The criminal investigation in Boston and our civil matter in Birmingham are separated by about 1,200 miles and many degrees of complexity and national interest. But central figures in both belong to the U.S. Department of Justice. And both cases seem to be raising this question: Can federal justice officials be trusted to get it right?
A quick check of the Web reveals a torrent of information and opinion about the events in Boston, and it's easy to find material that suggests many Americans do not think a wide-ranging investigation will uncover the full story. It's tempting to dismiss such sentiments as conspiracy-minded quackery. But my wife and I are finding clear evidence that something seriously is amiss at the Hugo Black U.S. Courthouse here in Birmingham, and it appears to be driven by individuals with a warped sense of right and wrong--and little, if any, regard for the law.
In fact, the culture at the Hugo Black building seems so dirty that we want to take industrial-strength showers whenever we return home from a visit there. Is there any reason to believe the "justice" culture in Boston is more pure than the one in Birmingham. I can't think of any--and given Boston's reputation as a place of political patronage and arm twisting--the culture there might even be nastier than ours.
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| Boston Marathon bombing scene |
As I reported last week, we appeared for a hearing only to be told that the judge who had scheduled it, U.S. Magistrate T. Michael Putnam, was not there. On the surface, that might not sound so sinister. But join me for a brief journey through the legal underworld--a trip that will show something most certainly is afoul at the Hugo Black building.
No visit to the underbelly of the Alabama legal world would be complete without a visit from our old "friend," U.S. District Judge Abdul Kallon. An Obama appointee to the federal bench, Kallon has cheated MS and me on multiple occasions, leading me to vow that I would not renew my vote for the president in the 2012 election, as a form of protest. I only changed my mind on that after realizing that GOP nominee Mitt Romney was one truly warped and frightening individual; I had a civic duty, it seemed, to vote in a way that would help keep Romney out of the White House.
I wound up voting for Obama in 2012, but MS and I still loathe Kallon. And we were none too pleased to learn that he had been "randomly selected" to issue an order and memorandum opinion on Putnam's findings in the case up to that point. (Kallon's opinion can be viewed at the end of this post.)
We did not have to read even two full pages of Kallon's 14-page opinion, to realize that he was up to his old tricks. In footnote No. 2 at the bottom of page 2, Kallon references the "tortured procedural history of this case" and notes that MS had filed a motion to stay proceedings because she did not receive multiple documents from the court via U.S. mail. That's pretty important for a pro se litigant who is not allowed to file or receive documents electronically and must rely on the U.S. mail to keep up with her case. Because she was not served with certain key documents, MS had not been given an opportunity to object to the magistrate's reports and recommendations.
Kallon states in his footnote that the magistrate had granted MS additional time, to March 25, 2013, to file objections. Then Kallon offers this pearl: "Even so, plaintiff has filed no objections."
Both of our jaws dropped when we read that. Why? Well, my wife had filed objections, and the docket clearly shows that. Her document was filed and time stamped at 11:31 a.m. on March 25, 2013, well within the deadline that she had been given. (See the time-stamped objections at the end of this post.)
Kallon apparently ripped off his order and opinion without even bothering to check the court file for my wife's objections. How in the hell did that happen? We vowed to find out, and that's when a foul odor really started to hit our noses.
Meanwhile, our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their loved ones in Boston. May the machinery of justice operate much more efficiently there than it does in Birmingham.
(To be continued)
May justice prevail for you and Mrs. S. And may justice of a different sort rain down on the cowardly criminals who planted the bombs in Boston.
ReplyDeleteA sobering post, LS. We all like to think justice will be done in Boston. But this is the same system, in a broad sense, that gave us the Don Siegelman case.
ReplyDeleteWe all are thinking about a big injustice from yesterday. Thanks for reminding us that smaller injustices happen every day.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how credible the investigation will be into the Boston bombing anymore than any one else but it is clear that our justice system is acting irrationally. Banks are looting this country blind; oil companies are destroying the environment; corporations \have consolidated and lo longer provide real competition but the workers now have to compete with people half way around the world.
ReplyDeletePolitically connected people committing massive crimes are unaccountable. A wall mart worker eating a few Oreo cookies is prosecuted to the full extent of the law at tax payer expense. Shoplifting incidents involving the theft of sandpaper or underwear are turning into shootings. A hostage incident happened to get the power company to turn the power back on. A sixty something year old man is tasered and bean bagged into submission for wielding a knife by at least half a dozen if not a dozen or more police on camera.
The massive corporate corruption is creating a terrorist breeding ground and there are peaceful protests by well informed people every week but the commercial media only provides sporadic coverage of them as isolated incidents.
Cenk asked how we can call our selves a democracy based on the Guantanamo activity last night if you add all these other inequities the answer is obvious. If you want to be honest we can't.
Zachery:
ReplyDeleteThanks for a compelling comment. Very insightful.
There is a good reason many Americans don't trust our justice system, whether it's on criminal or civil matters; local, regional, national, or international. How many people truly believe the official story of 9/11? How many holes can one easily shoot into that story?
ReplyDeleteHow many times have you had Abdul Kallon on one of your cases? Is he the only federal judge in Birmingham?
ReplyDeleteThis makes three times we've had Kallon, and he's not issued an order that jives with the facts/law yet.
ReplyDeleteIf my memory is correct, we have 12 district judges in Northern District of Alabama, not counting magistrates.
When Obama and Holder do nothing about a case like the Siegelman travesty, it causes loss of trust in the whole system. And that comes back to bite you at times like today, when we are dealing with the Boston Marathon bombings.
ReplyDeleteI think the person or persons responsible will never be found. I HOPE THEY ARE. That is just my personal opinion. I hope this is something we will not have to get used to here in the USA. I always think when I am somewhere like Disney or where there is a big crowd like a football game what if.. what if something happened. It makes you actually afraid to go somewhere. We were at Disney this past fall and they searched our bags and when we went through the stalls to go in we have to put our passes in and then our finger over a scanner to get our print. I did feel better about that.. I was thankful for that but then I thought of all the foreign folks I saw there as well as American folks how did they know there was not something strapped under their shirts and jackets. I thought about it several times that day and was a bit anxious. But I guess we can not let the terrorist keep us at home. Or then they win. This is so horrible and I feel for the families. out having a good time and today some are gone and a lot damaged. Just terrible.
ReplyDeleteWith each passing day, I think conspiracy theorists are less and less nutty.
ReplyDeleteWhat better way to establish Marshall Law than the events in Boston yesterday! This should becoming obvious to all Americans by now! We can't be as stupid as they think we are!
ReplyDeleteKallon said your wife had filed no objections to the magistrate's report and admitted that the deadline was March 25, but you say the record shows she did file objections? I initially thought, "This must be a misprint. The Schnauzer must be off his game today."
ReplyDeleteBut I checked the first document you embedded, and saw Kallon's footnote on page 2, noting that no objections had been filed. Then, I saw the second document you embedded, showing your wife's objections were time stamped on the morning of March 25, roughly five hours inside the deadline.
This is mind-blowing. How can a judge be this incompetent? How does someone with such low brain wattage sit on the federal bench? We pay these people to do an important job, and it's not getting done--not even close.
I encourage readers to click on the embedded documents and see exactly what you are talking about. It's right there in black and white, and it's scary stuff. I can think of no excuse, and no logical explanation, for a court to turn out such obviously flawed documents.
LS, have you and MS ever filed a motion for recusal in the several cases you all have? There is evidence of impropriety on their part. Especially in this case with your wife.
ReplyDeleteYes, my wife has filed a motion for recusal that is pending in her case. I filed about three motions to recuse on Acker in my UAB case. He denied them all. Motions to recuse are mostly an exercise in futility because they are filed with the compromised judge himself. Of course, a compromised judge is supposed to recuse without being asked, but that rarely happens. A truly corrupt judge--and Kallon and Acker both fit that description--is not about to recuse because he has been assigned to that case for the specific reason of cheating a certain party. I'm convinced that Kallon and Acker were not randomly assigned to our cases; they were put their intentionally. In the real world, the whole concept of recusal is a joke.
ReplyDeleteRumor has it that a new "Susan marshall" e-mail was sent out blasting Bill Britt . . .AND that an enterprising person traced the e-mail back to a computer in Speaker Mike Hubbard's office.
ReplyDeleteState computer . . .taxpayer dollars . . .spent slandering people. Impeachable . . .criminal?
Hi,
ReplyDeleteThis is the first time I have read your blog (by way of C & L) and I have to say it brought back the nightmares of my own case.
What you are experiencing is not just in the upper levels of our justice system but has made it all the way down to the every day legal proceedings that the general public experiences.
Mine, was of all things a divorce. I went to my states supreme court over it and won. It was a huge decision, vote #1 in Lawyers Weekly for 1996, the chief justice toured the nation presenting the decision.
Just so readers know, the total combined assets were only $89,000.
One example of corruption. I had to hire a detective to find the stenographer because an entire section of the transcript went missing. That section was the moment my attorney was about to make the attorney on the stand admit to doing an illegal act related to my case. At that moment, right before said witness attorney could open his mouth, the judge stepped in and completely stopped the proceedings. Just cut it right off and dismissed the witness. To this day, those notes are gone. This is just one example in my case. All for a divorce.
At one moment in the case the chief judge of the family court looked me in the eye and said, and I quote "I can tell this is a good decision by the look on your face".
I have a friend that could tell you horror stories regarding his son's case that is of the criminal side of the law.
Something is terribly wrong with our legal system. I don't know if it's the education, the over all profession changing of ideology, or what, but what you are experiencing is now the norm throughout the entire system...from top to bottom and back again, from one coast to the other, north and south.
Anon at 4:47--
ReplyDeleteThanks for the information. Does "Susan Marshall" refer to a name that is used in the e-mail? I'm not sure this would fall under a standard criminal statute, but it could fall under the Alabama Ethics Law, and that can be criminal. It certainly could be a civil matter, with Bill Britt and/or general citizens possibly having cases.
Daniel:
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing about your experiences, and I very much appreciate the exposure from C&L.
Divorce/family law seems to be the No. 1 area of corruption I've written about in court, even though I didn't set out to write about it at all. If you are interested, you can go to the search box at the top of the blog's front page and key in the words "Rollins" or "Wyatt." That will pull up everything I've written about two notorious divorce cases here in Alabama.
In Rollins, the wife filed for divorce in South Carolina, where the family lived, and the case was litigated there for three years. The wife fled to Alabama, where she had relatives, after husband failed to keep up court-ordered mortgage payments, and husband managed to get case moved to Alabama, even though jurisdiction long had been established in SC. That can't be done under the law, but it was done in Rollins, and mother/2 daughters got such a raw deal financially that they've been on food stamps, even though father is CEO of Wall Street company and owns multiple private jets.
In Wyatt, wife wound up in jail for five months for failure to pay a property-related debt from a divorce. Again, black-letter law shows this can't be done; it amounts to unlawful debtor's prison, but it was in Wyatt. Wife now being forced to sell her home, contrary to simple contract law.
Daniel--
ReplyDeleteIf you feel comfortable doing so, could you share the state where you live? I know the Southeast is bad for court corruption, but my general sense is that this is a coast to coast problem. I know I've read about horrible corruption cases in California, Florida, New York, Texas, Louisiana, Washington, Virginia, Oregon, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri, Vermont . . . the list goes on. And I hear from readers all over the country, many of whom seem to have experienced genuine courtroom cheat jobs.
The state was RI.
ReplyDeleteIt is odd, male, female once the judge gets a side there is nothing that will move the case back to reasonablness.
I have to say, I had what I consider one fair ruling in my case. It was a discovery issue. There was nothing to discover but they kept pushing. Fortunately and the only time it happened the ruling was if nothing was found on their discovery request they would pay the bill of the discover. That was the end of that line of attack. It was all I asked for through out my case. Just be fair with me Judge.
I truly learned the meaning of nothing left to loose.
In the end, after we had supposedly settled everything (chief judge no less) and I made the final payment they took me back to court for court costs for the trip to the state supreme court. I lost. I had to pay their bill in total even though I had won in our state supreme court.
I guess the prize is that my case will forever be mentioned? Oh boy!
Daniel:
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing. I think of the NE as enlightened, compared to the South, but our courts are largely unaccountable all over. And yes, I've found gender means pretty much nothing in divorce cases. Husbands and wives can both come up losers, often depending on whose lawyer gets a favor from the judge.
Here in Alabama, we have hunting clubs where divorce lawyers and judges are members and cook cases. We've had multiple federal lawsuits filed on the subject, and I've written a number of times, with more to come. Word is that if you don't have a "hunting club lawyer," you are pretty much toast. Of course, what we are talking about is organized crime. But no one in authority has stopped it yet.
So much discretion in divorce cases, and that seems to be a big problem. Hope you will keep up with the blog and feel free to drop a comment and stay in touch. I write a bunch about divorce and family law.
I think Judge Abdul Kallon's eyes bulge 'cause he's just waiting to rule on another case concerning Mr.& Mrs. Schnauzer.
ReplyDeleteDaniel, you can thank Clinton for that! He started this mess back in 95-96 with the "Welfare Reform Act". It was intended for "deficit recovery" i.e.; by making divorce more difficult! Sounds like your case fell through the cracks and your supremes picked up on it and made an example of your case. Since then it has become worse with numerous more "deficit recovery acts" being passed and with illegal content included. Senator Ron Haskins lost his position for slipping in detrimental wording that has since proven to be nothing short of naziism! Haskins still plays an active/ major role in CCF and believe he's with the Brookings Institute. Im referring to the family law voucher system for attorneys and other court officials and how these cases are being cooked. It's all about $$! Yet when you do a little digging and find out how much it being exchanged you can clearly see why these attorneys, judges and others involved are so scummy. Doesn't seem worth those amounts to destroy children and families! But then again we are referring to subhumans who hold lives in their hands. Most enjoy destroying lives and children matter none! Including their own!
ReplyDeleteThe courts, a corporation to serve the upper classes. Slave owners needed protection for the property of greatest value, human capital, slaves. Common Law was adopted by the American Courts as our basic. Slaves had begun to demand not to be slaves. Human beings have always awakened throughout time and demanded to be treated as civilized people, all. Courts were created to protect the slave owners and of course, the war industries because this was the greatest amount of property and therefore, wealth, to be "transferred"
ReplyDeleteThe upper classes in America actually began when academia got to be the decider as to who was and is the more smart to decide for the majority. Model again from Europe. Money support came from the greatest families of Europe who got most of the wealth from raping, pillaging and plundering other people of the same species.
Chief Justice Marshall US Supreme Court, basically took the Republican form of government "We The People" power away and gave the power to 'legislate law' to the court system: "Judicial Review." He was BIG on contracts and property rights (think slaves). He basically wrote the law that has been always followed, that stipulates the 'academic scholarly judicial' gets to review what is or isn't US Constitutional.
Quite a decision, everyone should read it.
The court system has finally reached a point of total? corruption? IT had to be seen for what it really was-is.
A faction, an apartheid, anything BUT due process law.
Supposedly not the greedy, but indeed the curious about humanity, counselors of the rule, letter and spirit of good law, and seeking the ever greater verve of being an upright higher thinking 'mammal'?
Whoa, what went wrong!
Wall Streets owners own the so called US Court System. Why Siegelman believing in the system or trusting the system, is truly unbelievable. Exception and only exception is Clinton's Global Initiative gets to fail. We all pay for the Globalists' fantasies.
Maybe now that America is broke and can't use other people's wealth on a global scale, the rumor of democracy back in the US by default can be.
Mr. and Mrs. Schnauzer could not be smart. You acted smart and in fact you acted highly intelligent and behave civilized. This is not the new American model. The new American model has a smart phone that does everything for them so they only have to plug in the phone and pay the master of technology for thinking being a mindless slave is smart.
The court and government are one in the same. Not representative of an enlightened democracy. Made to be a gigantic technology grid of stupid robots destroying the reality of common sense.
Kallon bends his back and writes what the masters cracker his back to, just like Obama the "lawyer" from Harvard [the model begins at the top and fraud all the way down the ladder] does exactly what the off shore countless units pay him to do. Government employees? All in this time destroying the United States are supposedly paid public servants by the Federal Reserve System's fraudulent financial free get to not eat out of garbage cans.
The government in this time is afraid of getting the reality that the real government has awakened? Siegelman, marks reality.
The BIG Wheel is turning and your work Legal Schnauzer has caused the LITTLE Wheels to spin and spin until the spokes are indeed beginning to spun out of control.
All the so called "Federal Government," and the "State Government," too, that continue to participate in the FBI Boston Bomb GWOT role model and then the digital robots treat the thinking humans like slavery is true justice: ALL into centers where observations can begin.
Barry Soetero the Obama imposter needs to be impeached and George Jr. needs to be perp walked to GITMO and disappeared into forgotten memories.
Thank you as always LS for your genius and there are not enough thank you praises for teaching Alabama and the world the true story by a true great journalist.