The About Us (Pre-6/11/07) page is an exact and continuous excerpt of the About US page existing at the time of the release of The Citizens REACT Report on June 11, 2007.  It is the last electronic recording of the Access To The Courts website (archived as a snapshot by the site's founder), as much of the site's content was temporarily removed upon submitting the report to the U.S. Congress.  For some as yet unknown reason, the entire Access To The Courts website (including stored documents and links) were deleted and expunged on August 31, 2008.

The following material is an attempt at a back fill of the site's content added since June 11, 2007, the date of the release to the US Congress of the Citizens REACT Report, documenting judicial misconduct.  The UNWRITTEN RULES are listed below...

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Access To The Courts is publisher of the Independent Observer

The first edition was prompted by the intentional prejudice of Magistrate Judge Andrew Wistrich on December 13, 2005, the center of attention in the Document 52 Scandal (whereby a fraudulent In-Chambers Minutes document was submitted to manipulate proceedings, in this case, to assign Magistrate Judge Wistrich to a bail hearing, instead of the more appropriate District Court Judge Otero).

Scandals in the prejudiced court proceedings monitored by Access To The Courts include:

The Big Lie of the FBI (Perjury of FBI Agents Sotelo & Greenawalt)
DOJ Hotline Coverup (Ignoring of multiple complaint submittals)
Scituate Matter (False Arrest and Collusion by Police w/ Feds)
Court Diagnostics Scandal (Contrived Delusional Disorder finding)
Document 52 Scandal (Fraud keeps man in pre-trial detention)
Secret Service Scandal (Hidden reason for May 25, 2005 arrest)
and so many more...

The Hingham Matter (The absolute WORST that could happen!)

Our court system has allowed the worst to ever happen in court - conviction of an innocent man of a crime (that he did not do) and the transfer immediately to a jail for 6 months.

Access To The Courts observed the September 18, 2008 trial at Hingham District Court in Hingham, Massachusetts and has reported one of the worst examples of prejudice observed to date, in the September 21, 2008 issue of The Independent OBSERVER.

The trial proved one thing clearly (and it was not the guilt of the defendant), that judges play a major role in the prejudice pedaling of the legal system.  Here is a summary of many of the issues of the trial:

• Unresolved pre-trial issues (esp. of probable cause)
• Bailiff ordered Defendant and Brother out of the courtroom for passing notes (as talking was prohibited)
• Defendant not allowed to address the court
• Defendant scolded by judge in front of the jury pool for the way he was looking
• Judge scolds the Defendant in front of the jury for supposedly pointing at the judge - documented as a Contempt Warning in the public Docket sheet
• A denied Motion for Mistrial is not documented in the public Docket sheet
• Judge order's Defendant's Brother out of the courtroom for writing down notes, in front of the jury!
• Defendant was unprepared for trial, stating many times during the trial that he had not known there was to be a trial and that he was unprepared
• Judge allows expanding access to irrelevant and prejudicial material by the District Attorney
• Judge disallows access by the Defendant into relevant information surrounding the arrest and booking by the police officer
• Jury deliberates for less than 14 minutes before returning a verdict of guilty, despite over 5 minutes of jury instructions, dozens of objections during testimony, and hours of testimony
• Judge sentences Defendant to a manifestly injust 6 months (knowing full well about ongoing civil litigation of the Defendant with the prosecution witness AND the Town of Scituate)

NOTE these two very important facts:

1) The lone prosecution witness - Scituate Police Officer Michael O'Hara - had reviewed the entire arrest and criminal charge history of the defendant prior to arresting the defendant for Disorderly Conduct - reviewed over the radio with a dispatcher, without knowing that there were no convictions, but that the last criminal charge was Disorderly Conduct in Northampton, Massachusetts in 2002...a charge that was dropped (and a charge resulting from a traffic stop for an inoperative headlamp).  Therefore, the police officer had a motive to lie about the Disorderly Conduct.

2) The 911 Tapes of the originating phone call from a Shelly Laveroni in Scituate, Massachusetts on May 12, 2005 - tapes of which are Public Information - were repeatedly withheld, by the Town of Scituate Police Department, from the Defendant and Defendant's Brother until the Summer of 2008, despite written requests throughout 2005, 2006, and 2007.

The 911 Tapes were not introduced at trial, but they reveal that at no time did Shelly Laveroni state that a man had represented himself as a Private Investigator, only that a "strange man" was at her door.  The September 18, 2008 testimony of Michael O'Hara included saying that Shelly Laveroni had told him (on a short investigative visit soon after the phone call) that the Defendant had told her that he was a Private Investigator.  SO, the officer testimony is discrepant with the witness Shelly Laveroni, a witness of which the Defendant had DEMANDED be at the trial.

There is more to this story and it should incite our sense of outrage at a legal system gone wild.

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Here are the most recent editions, "thanks" to the prejudice in the proceedings of Judge David A. Katz in Toledo, Ohio...

April 10, 2007 (Katz and Klucas collude)
June 25, 2007 (Katz communicates irrelevent ATTC info in court)
July 24, 2007 (Katz' creative use of the word "abhorrent")

Many more Independent Observer issues could have been issued for related proceedings in Lucas County Ohio and Los Angeles California since July 2007.  Judge S. James Otero gets his name in bold in our list of Those Who Know (the Unwritten Rules)...this list will be reconstituted soon!  So, stay tuned.


The UNWRITTEN RULES (in the update process...more to be drafted!)


Here are a few of the unwritten rules of the justice system that have sprung out of the documentation and analysis of the case history of Jeffrey L. Clemens:

1) Maintain appearances of propriety, fairness, deliberation, and diligence...above maintaining their actuality.  

2) Preserve the system above that of non-system entities (like Pro Se parties).

3) Practice indifference, thus accept complacency.

4) Obstruct justice (i.e., delay, impede, cover, conceal, etc,) through the use of excuses or pretexts, in order to maintain appearances.

5) Lie, if certain of not getting caught, to achieve desired outcomes or appearances.

6) Criminalize critics of or challengers to the system, especially the non-players (the players being lawyers, judges, police, clerks, and the like).

7) Never acknowledge misconduct within the system (by a player).

8) Assimulate, to the greatest extent possible, the behaviors, habits, beliefs, and appearances of those players that have come before.

9) Craft criminal allegations against non-system entities whenever convenient or possible, so as to prejudice the system against the entities. 

10) Base allegations against non-system entities (such as suspects or pulled-over drivers) on the person's arrest history, inventing and reporting circumstances in a believable fashion, consistent with the prior record, to justify criminal charges.

11) Instill fear whenever possible, as through laying out worst-case scenarios for those accused, making false arrests, providing incomplete or misleading information to the media, promoting judge reputations (as "tough", "trending" toward some undesirable trait, etc.), pushing the plea bargain game (like a drug-pusher promotes his "solution"), or not pushing the plea bargain game - leaving resolution to the vagaries and risks of trial.

12) Market attorney skills that are different or supposedly superior and better than the competition's, yet charge the same outlandish prices for services.

13) Argue the law (when facts are deficient, false, or even abundant) before arguing the facts; argue facts when the law is weak, as in a false arrest situation, but one can simply pretend that the law is stronger.  By arguing law, one leaves current specific issues to the past general beliefs of those who wrote the laws...the knowledge and bases of law makers become unarguable, thus forcing the matter to appeal.  Fortunately, appeals are expensive, so most lower court decisions can go unchallenged.

14) Leave it for appeal, if making fair and honest decisions is too difficult or compromises any of the unwritten rules.  This opens the door to make any judicial decision, whether credible on the face or not. 

15) Limit the information provided in appeals, in order to prejudice the appellate court.  For example, leave out facts (in the lower court record) that would otherwise counter the prejudice.

16) Conduct off-record meetings in chambers with judges in pending matters to the greatest extent possible, for the purpose of pre-determining outcomes of hearings.

17) Utilize ambiguity in transition periods in court proceedings, such as transfers of jurisdiction or changes of counsel, to perform acts and omissions that prejudice proceedings against criminal defendants or civil parties.

18) Promote false notions to the greatest extent possible, including threats of prosecution and illogical rulings.

19) Omit subtle details in court proceedings to the greatest extent possible, including incomplete and/or inaccurate minutes on the docket.

20) Include prejudicial statements in sealed documents (typically CJA forms, Violation Reports, and certain Orders), such as unprovable allegations and hearsay statements.
 
21) Answer or respond to a different issue than originally plead.  This is an old politician trick...answer a different question than asked!

22) Maintain personal ties to court personnel, such as assistants, interns, externs, or clerks of sitting judges, in order to hold subtle sway over the handling of court matters.

23) Cite irrelevant case law, maintaining a sense of relevance by including only partial excerpts or references.  Misstate the actual wording of case law text, if needed to make the point you want to make.

It is the specific premise of accesstothecourts.org that the justice system has some very serious systemic problems, that many of the system's players have no intention of fixing them, and that Jeffrey L. Clemens has had the unfortunate experience of having to deal with the injustice of the self-preserving reflex reactions of the system's players. 

 
Access To The Courts