By
Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.
Ph.D., University of Cambridge, England
M.B.A., University of Michigan Business School
D.E.A., La Sorbonne, Paris
Judicial Discipline Reform
New York City
Dr.Richard.Cordero_Esq@verizon.net, CorderoRic@yahoo.com, Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@cantab.net, Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@outlook.com
This article may be republished and redistributed, provided it is in its entirety and without any addition, deletion, or modification, and credit is given to its author, Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.
A. Anecdotic allegations v. pattern evidence of judges’ wrongdoing
- A party to a lawsuit cannot merely allege in court that the judge is biased or is engaged in other wrongdoing and thereby cause a judge to recuse herself or have her disqualified. The party must provide evidence of his allegations; otherwise, the allegation will be dismissed as impressionistic and anecdotic, and the party will be disparaged by being labeled ‘a disgruntled loser’.
- The most convincing way of making such allegations is by identifying in one’s case an instance of conduct, an event, statement, position, person, name, address, date, number, quantity, etc., that is the same as, or similar to, another in the same case or in several of them, or better yet, in a statistically representative sample of related cases, e.g., those presided over by the same judge or in the same court or jurisdiction: These are commonalities.
- When connected, they form a pattern of wrongdoing(* >ol:154¶3). It is like finding in a judge’s conduct and written or oral statements dots with a common color or shade that when connected reveal a figure: the face of a wrongdoing judge(* >jur:10:Nature of…).
_________________________
* This article is part of the study of judges and their judiciaries titled and downloadable as follows:
EXPOSING JUDGES’ UNACCOUNTABILITY AND
CONSEQUENT RISKLESS WRONGDOING:
Pioneering the news and publishing field of
judicial unaccountability reporting
http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf
or http://1drv.ms/1IkvhB8
or http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/jur/DrRCordero_jud_unaccountability_reporting.pdf
If these links do not download the file in Internet Explorer, download either of the following browsers, install it, copy the first link above into the browser search box, and hit ‘Enter’. If the file, which has over 760 pages and is more than 50MB in size, does not download, try using the other links:
Google Chrome: https://www.google.com/chrome/ or
Mozilla-Firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/firefox/download-and-install.
All (blue text)references hereunder are keyed to the study, where they are active cross-referential links, and where this article is found at page (ol:274). _________________________
4. Pattern evidence is the picture in, “A picture is worth a thousand words” of mere allegations of parties, never mind pro ses. That is what auditing a judge means.
- So a party can either:
a. whine about allegations without evidence, which are unconvincing and self-defeating; or
b. think and proceed strategically(Lsch:14§3; ol:52§C; ol:8§E; jur:xliv¶C) to expose the judge’s disregard of facts and the law, bias, conflict of interests, etc.; obtain relief now; and for the wrong done to the party by the judge as well as by the judiciary that failed to supervise and discipline her obtain perhaps even compensation from both in future.
- A party that chooses the latter, strategic course of action can:
a. gather raw data, e.g., judges’ calendars, rulings, and decisions or even the whole record of cases to glean her statements from transcripts, dockets, party contact information; and
b. examine them and compare notes with other parties in search of commonalities that reveal patterns of wrongdoing that deny parties due process and equal protection of the law in violation of the state and the U.S. constitutions, the laws thereunder, court rules, etc.;
c. use such pattern evidence in an appeal to the highest state court and thereafter to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it hardly ever reaches because most pro ses do not know how and cannot afford to appeal, so that a case that does make it there can become a test case; and
d. additionally produce concrete, verifiable evidence of wrongdoing(jur:5§3) reasonably calculated to attract the attention of journalists(ol:197§1) in search of a scoop(ol:199§H) and so outrage the public(ol:193§D) as to stir it up to force politicians to call for judges to be held accountable and investigated at nationally televised hearings (ol:273¶¶5-7).
- Exposing judges in court with convincing evidence does not mean obtaining relief from the presiding judges. Relief can come through its publicity effect on outsiders(ol:271):
- The all-too many presidential candidates that have entered the 2016 Campaign are in dire need to be among the limited number of them who will be invited to the candidates’ debates, and survive the early primaries. Whether honestly or opportunistically, they can choose to become the champions of the huge(ol:272¶4) untapped voting bloc of people dissatisfied with the legal system, especially those among them most passionately committed to exposing wrongdoing judges: their victims.
- Patterns can be expressed in percentages of all cases of a given type, e.g., how many times a commonality pointing to bias was detected, such as how many times a judge dismissed a case brought by a pro as compared to similar cases brought by a represented party where she denied a motion to dismiss. Patterns can be represented in charts(jur:9); tables(jur:10,11,15,16); and classic graphs of X,Y coordinates(jur:12-14).
- There are many forms for visually representing sets of values, e.g., side by side columns to compare percentages; bell curves for normal distributions; pie charts for shares of a whole, time lines that indicate fluctuations over time as well as trends; intersecting circles for shared characteristics, etc. These are statistical concepts that go from the very simple, which parties may be using without knowing it to represent the ups and downs of their income and their home budget, to the more sophisticated.
- The above describes how the pursuit of an unconventional, strategic course of action in court by go-getters can provide support for, and lead to, an out-of-court strategy(ol:236) for exposing judges’ wrongdoing and bringing about judicial reform at a politically favorable juncture.
- The use of statistics in court was introduced by Then-Attorney Brandeis
- Statistics have been used in courts for a very long time since the first time, one which provides an illustrious precedent: Before Louis Brandeis became a justice of the Supreme Court in 1916, he was an effective litigator advocating progressive causes. He won his cases, not only by arguing the law, but also by writing briefs where he presented socio-economic data and treated it with as much rigor as if it were legal evidence.
- The best known of such briefs of his was filed in Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412, 28 S.Ct. 324 (1908). There Then-Attorney Brandeis used social and economic studies to argue successfully to the Supreme Court that it should uphold statutes limiting workdays for women to a maximum of 10 hours. His briefs were so innovative and persuasive that they gave rise to a new type of brief: the Brandeis brief. They contributed to ushering in a more just society and thus, to making history. In time, Brandeis became a justice.
- Programs such as Excel and PowerPoint turn massive amounts of numeric data into color graphs that Brandeis could not dream of and that substantially enhance their understanding(cf. dcc:11).
B. Parties joining forces to audit judges so as to advance their common cause
- Each party need not work alone to examine the data concerning the judge in his or her case in search of pattern evidence of wrongdoing. Parties who have appeared before the same judge or have an ongoing case before her can join forces to do so. These similarly situated parties can form a group of strategic thinkers and doers, rather than remain as isolated whiners and losers.
- Parties will not be joining forces to search for pattern evidence so as to form a class that brings an action in court against judges. That is a futile exercise, doomed to fail at the hands of the defendant judges’ peers, colleagues, and friends, who will preside over their trials and any appeals, and protect their own and themselves(ol:158).
- Rather, it is an exercise in gathering evidence in support of the two-pronged approach(supra ¶4c,d; ol:248) to exposing judges’ wrongdoing.
- The parties must join forces to advance a common cause rather than each one work alongside others only to benefit his or her own personal case. They should realize that it is useless for each of them to take on coordinated(jur:88§§a-c) judges in their turf, the courts, where they arbitrarily handle and make rules as they go, and their staff, who must execute their wrongdoing orders lest they be fired without recourse(jur:30§1).
- It is foolhardy to take all of them on with the arms of a pro se: ignorance of the law, TV notions of court procedure, lots of self-defeating, disruptive, blinding emotions, and wishful thinking that is no substitute at all for strategic thinking.
C. How a party can go about locating others wronged by the same judge
- A party looks up the list of cases on the calendars of the judge in its case, which are:
a. posted on the court’s website or the judge’s webpages on that site; or
b. affixed on the wall outside the judge’s courtroom every motion hearing and trial day and of which a picture can be taken with a smartphone or tablet.
- The party extracts from the calendars party names and case docket numbers to find:
a. briefs
1) on the court’s website to download them;
2) in the court’s research room or law library, where they are in paper form;
3) through computer research in the legal databases of:
a) PACER (Public Access to Courts Electronic Records), https://www.pacer.gov/, accessible through any computer;
b) Westlaw, http://web2.westlaw.com/signon/default.wl?vr=2.0&fn=_top&__lrguid=i1eb21045275b4acf89cde9be245fb745&rs=WLW15.04&bhcp=1, and
c) Lexis, http://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/legal-solutions/default.page,
which are accessible through computers and WIFI at the court and public and law school libraries or a subscription later on bought by a group of parties.
4) Those briefs have the contact information of similarly situated parties. Most likely they will be persons, not companies. Ordinary cases brought by persons, even if represented, neither hold as much interest for judges nor command as much of their respect for due process as those filed by the likes of Pacific Coast Docks against NY Association of Importers, represented by big law firms and top lawyers ready to appeal and embarrass sloppy and wrongdoing judges(jur:45¶86).
5) Pro ses are trampled. Their cases can be identified by the absence next to their names of an attorney’s name. Person cases and pro ses are easy prey for wrongdoing judges; and
b. their phone numbers.
1) The phone numbers of parties are not on calendars, but should be on the cover page of their briefs; otherwise, the party names found in the calendars can be used to look up their phone numbers in the phone book or the Internet white pages.
- The party uses a well-rehearsed brief message to contact those similarly situated parties, e.g.:
a. I have a case before Judge Z and found out that you do too. She has disregarded the facts and the law in my case. If you feel that way as to your case, you, I, and others like us can join forces to expose her by detecting common points of her wrongdoing that reveal a pattern of wrongdoing. That is convincing evidence to be used in a test case to go before our highest state court and as an incentive for journalists and politicians to expose her.
b. You and I can find other parties using the method I used to find you. When there are five of us, we can meet at a party’s home to search for common points. I can share with you an article explaining this search(ol:274) and templates(ol:280,282) for organizing our work.
D. Meetings of parties are sessions for division of labor and getting work done
- Meetings are not social occasions where people who do not want to be alone come together to commiserate. They are not for chatting, so wasteful of time and effort. Sobbing together as they pass the box of Kleenex is not the same as professionally gathering the data, detecting their commonalities, and using them to establish patterns of judges’ wrongdoing.
- Meetings are occasions for working. Everybody should come to the meetings with a laptop, a tablet, or a yellow pad and a smartphone. The best meeting place is where there is a large table where people can sit at in business-like fashion. There should also be power strips to plug in all the electronic devices so that nobody need stop working because their device ran out of battery power.
- It should be a quiet place. A pool table in the back of a bar on a Saturday night is not conducive to working. The box of Kleenex is for the group members’ profuse sweating, but not because the place is hot and stuffy.
- The invitation to the meeting must set forth the preliminary work that each party should have done in preparation for the meeting; and the agenda of the meeting; at the end of it, the agenda will provide the measure of what the group accomplished.
- Everybody must bring their documents organized chronologically in a binder or on a pdf, not thrown together in a supermarket plastic bag.
- Documents yield the most information when they have been scanned into a searchable pdf. Then when a group member proposes key terms to search for a possible point of commonality, such as a name of a lawyer or a clerk or a date, all group members can open the pdf’s binocular icon and enter those key terms in the search box to look for that term in all their documents.
- Rummaging a hundred or hundreds of pages manually and visually every time a term must be searched is time-consuming, exhaustive, and unreliable.
- Moreover, pdf’s can be annotated with electronic sticky notes that do not deface the document and can be searched with the search function. Ideas can be committed to writing, not to memory.
- The parties should bring their documents preceded by a table listing each one’s title, sender, addressee(s), date, and page number, and bearing a note on whatever makes that document relevant; cf. the summarizing title of this article(ol:274).
- A well-prepared table of documents serves as a summary of a party’s case. It can be shared with the group by email in advance so that as the members read it, they can spot a possible point of commonality to search.
- See the table of documents template(* >ol:280); see also the table of documents of the main file(* >ToC:i) and its bookmarks.
* http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf >ol:280
- Meetings are also opportunities for the parties to realize that they eventually will have to contribute financially to the effort to find commonality points; establish patterns; bring them to the attention of journalists(* >ol:250) and politicians; appeal to the highest state court and the U.S. Supreme Court; publicize their effort through intense mass-emailing and social media use.
- The parties who agree to join forces must proceed methodically. They can elect a meeting leader. The latter can organize group work by applying the fundamental principle of any organization, i.e., division of labor in accordance with each person’s skills and preferences and the organization’s needs and objectives.
- Some members may be more adept at searching for parties’ contact information; if so, they may pass on that information to those members who are more articulate and can communicating with others on the phone or in person.
- Every effort should be made to contact and attract the attorneys of represented parties. Their knowledge of the law is priceless.
- Tasks of the group of searchers of judicial wrongdoing pattern evidence
- The initial task of the group is to:a. identify each instance of apparently disregarded or falsely alleged facts, and the law, court rules or any ethical or professional123a provision deemed to have been violated by the judge, clerks, and other insiders169; and apparently relevant characteristics of people, which may later on prove to be correlated, e.g., dismissals and form denials are signed on Fridays when the judge leaves early to play golf at his country club with some lawyers;
b. tabulate the data in a table:
1) with a top horizontal row of labels for classifying facts and provisions:
a) facts, e.g., deadline alleged missed, affidavit missing; date manipulated by clerk; ex parte meeting with opposing counsel; unadvertised auction of assets; prevented or cut short examination or cross-examination of witnesses; and
b) provisions and their citations: e.g., judge appointing spouse, Rules of the NY Chief Judge, 22 NYCRR Part 36.2(c)(3); and
2) in the vertical column on the left are listed the characteristics of people, e.g.:
PARTIES
a) pro se
b) represented by counsel
(1) a solo practitioner
(2) law firm with between 2-10, 11-50, 51+ lawyers
c) parties income range
d) parties educational level
e) area of residence
f) plaintiff or defendant
g) male or female and age
h) kind of party: creditor, debtor, driver, pedestrian, banker, professional, etc.
JUDGES
a) size of law firm where the judge worked before coming to the bench
b) work experience the judge had before coming to the bench:
(1) prosecutor
(2) lawyer at a government agency or legislative branch
(3) lawyer for a company or a public interest entity; etc.
c) gender, age, and years on the bench
d) party affiliation of judge or of appointing officer; etc.
3) square of intersection between the row of headings and the column of characteristics:
a) name of case with docket number and date
b) case decided or pending; etc.
Other people
a) law/court clerks, lawyers, auctioneers, accountants, real estate developers, etc.
E. From groping for sense in a fog of data to becoming Champions of Justice
- Auditing a judge’s decision is an investigative exercise. At the beginning, the group will not know what is a commonality point or, if so, whether it has any evidentiary value. Patterns are not even suspected until much later, when sense starts to emerge from the points’ relatedness.
- To perceive meaningful commonalities, the group must apply the two key elements of social intelligence to understand the dynamics between parties, judges, clerks, lawyers, etc.: what makes people tic –power, money, love, hate, safety, fear, job insecurity, etc.– and what makes the world turn around –interpersonal relations, clan mentality, tradition, values, ideals, the economy, politics–.
- This will allow identifying harmonious and conflicting interests between parties so as to recognize who is an ally and who is a foe(Lsch:14§2; ol:52§C; dcc:8¶11).
- The effort to find commonalities in cases, parties, and judges can reveal a pattern of bias, conflict of interests, dysfunctionality in the court, turf fighting, schemes among connected people, prejudice, etc.
- The tabulation is a data organizing exercise. In its initial stage, the group will not know what is statistically relevant: what happens so frequently or infrequently for that judge, other judges, or people generally that it can only have happened intentionally. So it is a commonality point that forms part of a pattern of some form of wrongdoing(Lsch:17§C).
- This requires that at the outset everything be listed. Later on the data will be sorted out into what is or is not a commonality point showing wrongdoing; see the table of commonalities and patterns template(ol:282).
* http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf
- At the end of each meeting, the agenda for what the members should do at home and what they will do at the next meeting should be set. That includes growing the group; getting documents; and networking to be able to present at the right time any incriminating audit results to journalists and presidential candidates(ol:269§2).
- The meeting will have been a success if the consensus is, not ‘that guy is a lot of fun. I wish him well’, but rather, ‘Our group leader is a slavemaster… but we got a lot done. We’re gonna get that judge! I’m coming to the next meeting with my friend’.
- Working together breeds enthusiasm and optimism. It can coalesce ineffective single parties into a team of achievers with valuable skills that they can teach others in their own and the public interest.
- The members will be asked to invest effort, time, and resources to grow the group of parties before their and other judges; and to spot insiders who can be persuaded to become confidential informants(jur:106§c). That is how they can become the organizers of their court’s questers for justice. As such, they will organize other courts in their city, in other state cities, and in other states.
- A group that first met in an apartment garage and had to put their computers on a door resting over two trash cans can grow to become a Tea Party-like entity: a national civic movement of people who pursue strategically and with determination their conviction that We the People are the masters of all public servants, including judicial ones, and are entitled to hold them accountable and liable to their victims.
- We can become the People’s Champions of Justice(ol:235§C).
This article and its templates are at
* http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf >ol:274
So I look forward to hearing from you.
Dare trigger history(* >jur:7§5)…and you may enter it.
* http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf
Sincerely,
Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.
Judicial Discipline Reform
New York City
Dr.Richard.Cordero_Esq@verizon.net, CorderoRic@yahoo.com, Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@cantab.net, Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@outlook.com
www.linkedin.com/pub/dr-richard-cordero-esq/4b/8ba/50/
NOTE 1: Given the interference with Dr. Cordero’s email and e-cloud storage accounts described at * >ggl:1 et seq., when emailing him, copy the above bloc of his email accounts and paste it in the To: line of your email so as to enhance the chances of your email reaching him at least at one of those addresses.
* http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf
NOTE 2: Watch the interview with Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq., by Alfred Lambremont Webre, JD, MEd, on the issue of exposing judges’ wrongdoing and bringing about judicial reform, at:
or
NOTE 3: All my replies are shared with the group that I am trying to form to expose wrongdoing judges and advocate judicial reform, and the national public that I am trying to inform thereof.
If you wish to engage in private communications with me, you must first retain my consulting services; otherwise, your communications are part of your contribution to advancing our common cause of judicial wrongdoing exposure and reform.
NOTE 4: For consulting services, I charge $350 per hour plus expenses and incidentals to be deducted from a retainer of $7,500-$10,000 paid in advance.
The fee for an appearance as an expert witness in a court in New York City is $1,500 per half a day in addition to preparation and any written statement for it, transportation, and any other expenses and incidentals. The fee for appearing in a court outside New York City is determined by the amount of time that it will require plus transportation, hotel, meals, and communication expenses and incidentals.
You can determine the quality of my legal research and writing by examining the articles that I post and my study of the Federal Judiciary and its judges, the models for their state counterparts(* >jur:1):
To evaluate my oral advocacy skills, please watch the interview referred to in NOTE 2 above.
* http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf
If you are seeking pro bono legal assistance, kindly see my suggestions for finding it(* >ol:131). I cannot afford to work for free for all the people across the U.S. who request my assistance.
I trust that I am helping all victims of wrongdoing judges and advocates of honest judiciaries with my analysis, strategy, and proposals for action in my articles. But attaining our objectives requires that we all join forces to implement those proposals. Will you join in your own as well as the national public interest? If so, please let me know.
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