OH - Judicial Tyranny At Its Worst

[FWiedner]

Ohio Case Showcases Judicial Tyranny At Its Worst

By June Maxam
 
   It’s a case of judicial tyranny at its worst.

   Public confidence in the judiciary is eroding from the town courts to the Supreme Court and members of the judiciary have no one to blame but themselves.

   Judges are running amok, engaging in a rape and pillage of the U.S. Constitution, abusing the laws, their gavel and their black robe to terrorize, retaliate and intimidate members of the citizenry who have the courage to stand up to their arbitrary and wrongful rulings, to the cover-ups of abuse and corruption in the justice system and to their abuse of parties whom appear before them seeking justice and redress of grievances.

   Throughout the country, judges who are being rightfully challenged by attorneys, the media, the citizenry are claiming they are being threatened and intimidated because increasing, overdue demands are being made for judicial accountability.  Attorneys who have the tenacity and courage to knowledgably disclose, criticize and heaven forbid, legally challenge what goes on behind those closed chamber doors are being disbarred, discredited but fortunately there are many of them that aren’t going away, lawyers like Israel Weinstock in New York, Linda Kennedy in Virginia, Zena Crenshaw in Indiana and Elsebeth Baumgartner in Ohio.

    Judges like Pinellas County probate court judge George Greer, Brandt Downey, Greer’s fellow judge in Florida’s Sixth Judicial Circuit; Ohio judges Thomas Moyer and retired judge Richard Markus and many others nationwide who are being exposed to the public’s view can’t stand the scrutiny. Instead, they of righting the wrongs, they are wrongly lashing out at their critics.

    Two wrongs don’t make a right, especially in the courts.

    Former Ohio attorney Elsebeth Baumgartner and the editor of a news blog, Bryan DuBois of Sandusky, Ohio, have been charged with intimidation and retaliation because a judge filed a complaint against them, claiming that he was intimidated by them and their charges of judicial corruption.

   However, it appears that it is the Ohio officials who should be charged, not only in the alleged corruption that the pair have been reporting and spotlighting, but in abusing the criminal justice system to intimidate and retaliate against their critics.

    Dr. Baumgartner has been a long-time critic of Ohioan government, both local and state, alleging massive federal and state grant fraud as well as abuses of power by public officials, particularly Erie County district attorney Kevin Baxter and numerous judges in northern Ohio.    Baumgartner teamed up with DuBois in the publication of Erie Voices, www.erievoices.com/blog, a website that publishes articles and opinion alleging misconduct by public officials in several northern Ohio counties including Cuyahoga, Erie, Lucas and Ottawa.

  We don’t think it was any coincidence that they were arrested on a secret indictment the day after they served a federal lawsuit against  Robert Taft, Governor of Ohio and other Ohio officials.

   The two bring alleged judicial and other public corruption to the public’s view, supporting their allegations with documents and other substantiation. They have now been deemed “paper terrorists” by the special prosecutor in the case, Daniel Kasaris who regularly serves as an assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor, because they had the audacity to legally challenge the public officials by legal court filings, trying to exercise the rule of law.

   However, the appointment of Kasaris appears to be yet another conflict of interest in this convoluted case which has constitutional rights as its nucleus.  With DA Baxter at the forefront of the controversy, case law, court and professional conduct rules would certainly prohibit him from handpicking the special district attorney to prosecute his critics but yet that is exactly what happened.  Baxter personally selected Kasaris, a former employee of Baxter when he served as an assistant district attorney in the Erie County prosecutor’s office.

   Case law and legal ethics say that any conflict between a prosecutor and defendant, especially in a case such as this, extends to the entire office and that would certainly include former employees of that office such as Kasaris.  The entire indictment obtained by Kasaris, apparently with the assistance and direction of Baxter, is tainted from the getgo.

   In an attempt to defuse the allegations of corruption, the officials have abused the powers of their office in their attempt to discredit Baumgartner and DuBois.

   In the effort, these same officials who purportedly took an oath of office, avowing to protect and uphold the U.S. Constitution and Ohioan Constitution are instead raping the rights of the pair.  Not only are these officials engaged in an egregious abuse of power but in horrendous violations of the pair’s constitutional rights, especially the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

   In fact, as we look at the dockets and read the charges, it appears that these officials who allegedly represent the people aren’t even complying with the basic rules of criminal procedure and are engaged in an all out effort to not only quash the voice of these people and their medium, Erie Voices, but to destroy them emotionally and financially as well as their families—force them into submission if you will.

   Baumgartner and DuBois have been charged in several counties with the same charges of intimidation and retaliation for having had the audacity to express their opinion, to exercise free speech and freedom of the press as guaranteed by the First Amendment. While publicly admitting that neither of them made any physical threats to anyone, these officials are claiming that the writers are using their computers as “criminal tools”.

    “Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword”, wrote Edward George Bulwer Lytton in 1839.

    In today’s age of technology, that has extended to computers too.

    Baumgartner has meticulously tried to force these public officers to comply with the law, to follow court rules in filings but instead has been labeled a vexatious litigator because she has tried to exercise her constitutional right to redress grievances through the court.  She has routinely been denied her constitutional right to due process in legal filings, even to the point where she was recently denied her Sixth Amendment constitutional right to appeal a wrongful conviction when a court clerk refused to allow her to timely file an appeal.

   In one instance, a public official has even gone so far as to reportedly remove documents from the court file, a sworn affidavit allegeding his own wrongdoing.

   DuBois was indicted by Ottawa County prosecutor Mark Mulligan. DuBois has charged that Mulligan is using his position to silence his reporting of alleged crimes in order to protect Mulligan’s own alleged misconduct.  It has been reported that Mulligan allegedly withdrew from the court file a sworn affidavit signed by Baumgartner which detailed all of Mulligan’s alleged misconduct in the past four years.

   Jurisdictional, legal requirements to be bonded, legal appointments, oaths of office. Public officers such as Kasaris poo-poo and disrespect the legal statutes and have even gone so far as to asking an Erie County judge to ignore the jurisdictional issues raised by Baumgartner in challenging Kasaris’ appointment.  Baumgartner has questioned Baxter’s appointment of Kasaris, if he can legally act in Erie County in that he has allegedly not filed the required bond, there is no court appointment of Kasaris or contract with Erie County for his employment and the Erie County Board of Commissioners has not approved his appointment.

   Baumgartner is being held on $360,000 bond, DuBois on $150,000 bond for allegations of non-violent “crimes”, the exercise of their First Amendment rights, and according to reports, are even being held in isolation. When DuBois was transferred from one jail to another, it is alleged that he was not allowed to take his belongings with him or his notes, nor was his family reportedly allowed to retrieve his personal possessions.

   “….agents, servants of a Government and a society whose existence and strength comes from…..constitutional safeguards, are serving law when they respect, not override these (constitutional) guarantees.  The claim and exercise of a constitutional right cannot thus be converted into a crime”,  the federal court opined in Miller v. U.S. 230 F2d.486 at 289.  “There can be no sanction or penalty imposed upon one because of his exercise of Constitutional rights”, it was held in Sherar v. Cullen 481 F2d 946.

   The courts honor the Whistleblower Act which prohibits retaliation against public employees who report official wrongdoing.  That same Whistleblower Act must be applicable to court officers and others who blow the whistle on the judges themselves and other court employees and officers. The act states that “a state or local government entity may not suspend or terminate the employment of,, or take other adverse personnel action against a public employee, who, in good faith reports a violation of the law by the employing governmental entity or another public employee to appropriate law enforcement authority”.  That Act must be applicable to the court system too, especially the court system.

    The Penal Code in most states provides for the punishing the offense of compounding a crime.  In the Baumgartner-DuBois case this too is applicable to the public officials involved for they are seriously compounding their crime of violating the constitutional rights of the pair, of unlawfully abusing the law to further their own personal interests.

   According to published reports, both Baumgartner and DuBois have been kept incommunicado from the outside world, with Baumgartner in particular being denied mail, phone use and visitors. A call by Erie Voices to the Cuyahoga County Jail produced this published recorded conversation:


EV: Hello. I’m calling to find out if Elsebeth Baumgartner is able to have visitors.

Officer: Pardon me?

EV: I’m wondering if Elsebeth Baumgartner is able to have visitors.

Officer: Ok….I’ll check.

Officer: Let me see……(long pause)……huh!

EV: “Huh!” what?

Officer: Well, there’s a note here. It says that she is not permitted to have visitors, phone calls, or mail.

EV: Hmmm. Is that standard? I mean, is that typical? Is this what usually happens?

Officer: No, m’am, I’ve never seen anything like this before.

EV: I mean, I could understand MAYBE if she were a serial rapist or something!

Officer: Yeah, I know. This is unusual.

EV: Can you tell who made the note? Was it Dan Kasaris?

Officer: No, it just says that it is ordered by the court that she is not permitted to have visitors, phone calls, or mail.

EV: Well, thank you very much.

 

   Not only have the officials seriously infringed upon the First Amendment rights of Baumgartner and DuBois and their right to seek public redress of grievances, but now with the help of the court they are allegedly compounding their crime and engaging in egregious violations of prisoners’ rights.

   In the 1970s, the Supreme Court acknowledged that prisoners and certainly pre-trial detainees have First Amendment rights although they must be balanced with the prison’s needs for security and order. In the 1974 Supreme Court decision of Procunier v. Martinez, the high court struck down a ban on inmate bail and correspondence, holding that it violated First Amendment rights of non-prisoners, not inmates.

   “The Supreme Court makes clear that in the prison context, an inmate retains those First Amendment rights not ‘inconsistent with his status as a prisoner or with the legitimate penological objectives of the corrections system”. Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union Inc. 433 U.S. 119.  However, in the case of Baumgartner and DuBois,  officials and the courts of Ottawa, Cuyahoga and Erie Counties have imposed a serious legal liability for its residents in that charges against Baumgartner and DuBois are not only constitutionally and legally defective, in violation of their rights, but the actions against them as a result of those charges are also unconstitutional.

   In Procunier, the Supreme Court held that both the addressee as well as the sender of direct personal correspondence derives from the First and Fourteenth Amendments a protection against unjustified government interference with communications.

   “The wife (or husband) of a prison inmate who is not permitted what her husband (wife) wants to say has suffered an abridgement of her/his interest in communicating with him/her as plain as that which results from censorship of her letter to him and in either event, censorship of prisoner mail works as a consequential restriction of the First and Fourteenth Amendment rights of those who are not prisoners.  Prison officials may not censor inmate correspondence simply to eliminate unflattering or unwelcome opinions or factually inaccurate statements”.

  “The interests of prisoners and their correspondents in uncensored communications by letter provided as it is in the First Amendment is plainly a “liberty interest” within the meaning of the 14th Amendment even though qualified of necessity by the circumstance of imprisonment and as much, it is protected from arbitrary governmental invasion.

   Prisoners and pre-trial detainees have a First Amendment right to telephone access, subject to rational limitations.  Considering that correctional facilities record prison communications, they have no rational basis to hold Baumgartner and/or DuBois in isolation, denying them communications with their family, media or legal counsel.  If the limitations imposed are unreasonable as it appears in this case, there is yet another First Amendment violation being perpetrated.

   As said previously, two wrongs don’t make a right and in this case, it appears that the court is a willing conspirator in violating the constitutional rights of these individuals.

   In this particular case, it appears that the bottom line issue in this whole matter is if the allegations leveled by Baumgartner and DuBois against the public officials including Baxter, the judges, and other public officers charged with the public trust are true.  If so, then the charges that have been levied against Baumgartner and DuBois, causing the loss of their freedom and liberty, and violations of their rights have been brought falsely and maliciously.

    Their charges against the officials and particularly the judiciary, should be laid before the public at a jury trial, with them being allowed to present their proof and evidence without restriction with benefit of legal counsel in a venue outside of northern Ohio, where the potential jury pool hasn’t been tainted by prejudicial publicity, where Baumgarnter and DuBois can get a fair trial.  In fact, this entire matter cries for federal intervention by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

    Let the public be the judge, follow the Constitution and indict the real criminals in this case.

http://www.theempirejournal.com/072405_judicial_tyranny.html

*FW Note:

"Paper Terrorists."

Now the legal system is twisting a term that used to include only the worst kind of cowardly murderers to include American citizens who inform other American citizens of government misconduct.

"...they had the audacity to legally challenge the public officials by legal court filings, trying to exercise the rule of law."

If this sort of grass-roots activism is "terrorism", then why aren't lawsuits against gun manufacturers stemming from criminal misuse by individuals "Terrorism"?

It's obvious where these political fat-cats stand on the 1st Amendment...

 :evil: