The Silent Deadly Branch

America has three branches of government. The most popular is the executive branch; run by President Barack Obama. The most noteworthy, is the legislative branch; you can turn on CSPAN on any given night and observe members of congress digress as they squabble over issues that affect the American people and the world at large. The third branch, the judicial branch is not so well known. I call this branch the silent deadly branch. The judicial branch is silent and deadly because its operations are cloaked by the virtual darkness of public ignorance; and once you are in its clutches, regardless of guilt or innocence, your life as you once knew it is over.

The silent deadly branch is tasked with enforcing the law, and with this task it has virtually unchecked power to rebuild or destroy life. Its cloak of darkness is made possible by the fact that from birth, citizens are kept in the dark about the law that governs them. Unlike its sister branches, operations of the judicial branch are not taught in public school. Instead, citizens are conditioned from birth to accept a child-like reliance on lawyers. Lawyers are a race of super-humans who have achieved a monopoly on the right to discuss, assert and opine on the law.

Lawyers have taken advantage of their special positions in society. They have entrenched themselves in the justice system, garnering further power through bar associations who lobby the other branches of government on their behalf, by becoming judges and by infiltrating the other two branches of government, where they ensure statutes such as the unauthorized practice of law (UPL) are in place to maintain their oppressive monopoly over American citizens.

As an American citizen, born and raised under this legal system of oppression, I did not realize until recently that I was oppressed. This is because I was cultivated by a public school system that taught me to believe that liberty and justice is for all. In fact, everyday that I went to school I was required to repeat the mantra “liberty and justice for all” and so it was ingrained in the fabric of my being, even before I had awareness of self that liberty and justice was for all. No one told me it was a lie. The mantra was repeated so often that it became a building block in my value system; and my self-esteem was placed, upon that block. I can only thank God that He infused himself in my spirit before the beginning of time. It was God that saved me when I found myself caught in the death grip of the silent deadly branch.

To my horror, I discovered the gatekeepers of justice, judges and lawyers are not a race of angels , but are human and prone to frailties like greed, incompetence and abuse of power. Further, there are no mechanisms in place to protect the public against corrupt gatekeepers of justice and the lives that they touch, in many cases, are permanently destroyed. Pennsylvania Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan were indicted in September 2009 for what has been nicknamed as “selling kids for cash.” 10-year old Jean Paul Lacombe, was reported as being the victim of a court-sanctioned kidnapping after a Judge’s lack of due diligence, enabled the Judge to be duped by the boy’s father. Former governor Don Siegelman, Democratic governor of Alabama from 1999 to 2003, was thrown in jail as the result of what one media outlet called an “incestuous pool of corruption in Alabama, with government officials, lobbyists, attorneys, and even judges behaving in ways that breach the public trust. Something has to be done to protect the public before lives are destroyed. The government has yet to acknowledge that there is a pandemic of corruption in the American justice system, so the people must step up.

My contribution is a framework for mitigating corruption in the justice system. The framework can be used in any democracy. The framework is designed to be implemented by people who enter the system without an attorney a.k.a. pro se. At the root of the framework is a pro se’s ability to collect and report information about their experience in the justice system. Information on a citizen’s interaction with judges, prosecutors, court clerks, attorneys, state bar associations and judicial commissions are captured and aggregated. Statistics are generated including turnaround time for ruling on motions filed by pro se litigants vs. turnaround time for ruling on motions filed by parties represented by counsel. The number and types of errors that judges make in their rulings that yield unfavorable outcomes for pro se litigants are also captured as well as the cost to taxpayers and the cost to pro se litigants that arise as a result of improper criminal charges, erroneous rulings and repeat errors. Finally the number of pro se litigants who resort to vigilantism or other crimes of revenge as a result of being denied justice in our court system are tracked. Qualitative and quantitative methods are used for reporting the results.

In addition to statistics, the framework makes it possible to hold a mirror up for Judges who fail to exercise courtroom decorum and whose character, deviates from the morally proper character that the public expects from persons in positions of public trust. Findings are compiled into monthly reports and distributed to elected representatives, the U.S. Justice Department, the Media and the public at large.

Benefit of the framework is that it works to mitigate corruption in the justice system by creating negative consequences for those who are corrupt; it also reduces vigilantes as it gives individuals legal power to punish, and finally it serves as a catalyst for judicial reform. A complete introduction to the framework can be found in “A Game Called Justice.” Details of how to apply the framework to any litigation will be spelled out in upcoming title “How to Beat a Corrupt Justice System.