Indio Traffic Court Scam, Part 2

I have written and spoken about this scam for a long time and on many occasions, and the public needs to know the latest chapter.

Two things are fundamental in our system.  One is that all people have a constitutional right to a trial if they are accused of committing a crime [and traffic infractions are crimes].  The other is that “bail” may not be imposed on people accused of crimes, conformably with the 8^th Amendment, unless they are found to be flight risks.  The latter is rather regularly violated in this jurisdiction for all levels of crime, because it is understood that people who are held in custody for extended periods of time are thereby softened up into pleading guilty to something, thus releasing pressure on the bloated criminal trial calendar.  It takes literally months to obtain habeas corpus relief for illegal pretrial detention, by which time defendants have generally taken some sort of plea bargain.

In the traffic trial setting, there are troublesome tweakings of those two fundamental doctrines which have resulted in an overt scam on the public of a sort and depth that if it were practiced by an individual, he would be in state prison for extortion.

In traffic, the unwitting public are told that if they plead not guilty to traffic charges at arraignment, they will not receive their trial [a constitutional right] unless they post “bail’ [which constitutionally requires they be found to be flight risks before it can even be imposed].  That “bail” is suspiciously about the same amount, or slightly more, than the fine would be if they were to plead guilty.  They are told that they will not receive a trial unless and until they post that “bail.”  If they politely refuse, they are dealt with quite rudely and menacingly by the Court, which has even been known to threaten an additional sum, over and above that “bail” amount, if they have not paid that illicit tribute by the time of the future-set trial.

Here are the facts from a declaration executed by one motorist who was exposed to that horrid, virtually terroristic, attitude by the local traffic court:

1.      I appeared at the appointed time for arraignment on this traffic infraction.  No one said or suggested I was a flight risk.

2.      As part of the general advisals to the whole room full of people apparently there on traffic citations, the judge said that there are only three ways to respond to his reading of the charges to each defendant: Guilty, Traffic School, or Not Guilty.  He got seemingly great enjoyment out of mocking people who responded otherwise or who wanted to explain something about the charges.

3.      When my name was called, I came forward and pled “not guilty,” which was one of the alternatives that he had said was available.  Only after I pled “not guilty” and asked for a trial did the Court announce that I had to post $500.00 “bail” to obtain a trial.  When it was clear that I was not, at that point, going to pay the $500.00, he told me to go back and sit down.  As I was headed back to my seat, he said to the bailiff “Bailiff, get your handcuffs lubricated.” I thought I had a constitutional right to a trial.  I thought bail could only be imposed on someone who is a flight risk.  I know many people who have had misdemeanor charges against them, including drunk driving charges, and they never had to post bail.  This infraction is, I believe, of less serious nature than a misdemeanor.  The discussion of “bail” came up only when I insisted on having a trial.  The judge became visibly agitated at me and asked why I thought I didn’t have to do the same thing everyone else was doing.  I don’t and didn’t know what everyone else was doing; I only know that I was there on my promise to appear for an arraignment on a traffic infraction, I appeared when I was supposed to appear, when the Court asked me how I pled, I respectfully said “not guilty,” to which the Court responded that I had to post bail.  If that was happening to everyone else, then it was as wrong for them to be required to pay “bail” to enjoy their constitutional right to trial as it is for me.

4.      The Court suggested that I would not get a trial until and unless I posted $500.00 “bail.”  I started thinking then that what the Court was labeling “bail” was really an admission fee to the trial Court, sort of like the old tickets one had to buy and hand over to enter certain rides at Disneyland.  It was not clear whether this was an “A Ticket” ride or an “E Ticket,” but I again said I was pleading “not guilty” and I wanted a trial.  By then the judge seemed quite furious.  He snapped that the matter was being continued to June 6.  I said I was not waiving time and I wanted a trial.  As his closing comments to me, he said that if I had not paid the $500.00 by the time of the continued date, he would add $300.00 to the amount he was saying was due.  He did not supply the authority for that warning.  Nor was it clear whether he was thereby prejudging guilt on the citation charges, or whether he was going to impose that amount, regardless of what he determined, in his “neutrality,” was the truth of the charge, or what.  I do not scare out of enjoying my constitutional rights that easily, and I had said, for a total of three times, that I was pleading not guilty and I wanted a trial.  I have consulted with counsel who knows the law of these matters and he does not know what authority would support the imposition of that additional $300.00 figure, but since I do not intend to pay this admission fee to enter the trial Court, I guess we will find out the authority, because I have been led to understand that many criminal defense attorneys are interested in learning what it is.

5.      Before I left, I politely inquired how I would go about getting a transcript of what had transpired in Court that day. The judge responded “I don’t care what you do after you leave this Court.  You can go spend $3,000.00 to hire a lawyer and figure that out; I don’t care.”

6.     I don’t think I have ever seen such rude treatment of a citizen who was simply and politely trying to enjoy his constitutional rights.

This all occurred in America, Folks – right here in Riverside County and Indio.

Needless to say, the dismissal motion that this declaration was appended to was granted today and the case was dismissed.  But that was no great loss to the voracious traffic court fiscal coffers, because the dismissal motion was called first, granted, and there was a courtroom of more potential lambs to the slaughter of “justice,” ready to be arraigned, and ready to be assailed and exploited out of their hard-earned funds.

When I first became aware of this sort of exploitation years ago, I brought the matter to the attention of the then-presiding judge of the Court system, Judge Thomas Cahraman, and he wrote me back that (a) it is not happening, and (b) if it is, it is okay.  Huh?  It was and is happening, and it is not okay, if we are a nation of laws and not of governmental hooligans.

That patent and purposeful rip-off of the public, denied to exist by a previous presiding judge, is what impelled me to run for judge against one of the greatest victimizers of the public in this scam the last time around, but his supporters also denied that what happens every day happens at all, and the easily fooled public fell for it.  You got the judiciary you deserve.  I and other liberty-oriented people did not.

Citizens who cannot afford counsel, who are the majority of people appearing on traffic arraignments, don’t know their rights in this regard, and cannot afford to litigate their rights on the subject, and hence they default into quietly paying their fines and leaving the courthouse, without trial or dignity.

There are circulars in the county law library regarding traffic court procedures that announce that a person appearing on a traffic arraignment who pleads not guilty must pay “bail” to obtain a trial.  There is no authority for that, and the Constitution speaks loudly against it, and I suspect most of the judges know it to be a fraud.  Paperwork from the Court, and some judges, cite Vehicle Code section 40519 as the authority for this scam.  Apart from the clear point that state statutes cannot trump state or federal constitutional doctrines, this one does not pretend to do so, if it is read.  That provision announces that if you have an arraignment date and you want to come in early and plead not guilty to the clerk, not in court but to the window clerk, they can require you to pay this “bail” to obtain a trial.  Neither it nor any other provision authorizes the collection of “bail,” which is really just an admission ticket to the traffic funhouse, to obtain a trial, if you have pled not guilty in open Court.  The Court cannot even read or understand the very authority it invokes for ripping unsuspecting people off.

There is nothing more loathsome that for a person’s government, the government of, by, and for the People, to rip off those people in the guise of administering “justice.”  The traffic court system has really morphed into a glorified appendage of the state tax revenue system, stealthily detouring Prop. 13’s limitation on taxation by duplicitously labeling the moneys thus extorted “fines” and “fees” and “assessments.”

This scam has to stop, and it has to stop now, and all judges who have enabled it should hang their heads in shame and resign.

Marijuana Madness; the Jury Got it Right, Regardles of What "The Man" Wanted

This recent item from the San Francisco Public Defender's Office illustrates, in stark tones, why "jury nullification" should continue to be understood to be the Framers' intended and legitimate protection for us all against governmental over-reaching, whether by the executive, the legislative, or judicial branches. [Yes, the fundamental power of civilian juries protect us against bad judges as well as against other agencies of government, which is why juries, when told by judges that they don't have that power, should merely smile and say "Uh, ya wanna bet?/!"]

Thursday, June 5, 2014 · by Tamara Aparton

San Francisco, CA— A good Samaritan who offered a pinch of marijuana to soothe a stressed out stranger only to have his compassion repaid with felony charges was acquitted following a jury trial, San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Adachi announced today.

After three hours of deliberation, a jury on Wednesday found Stetson Qualls Jones, 24, not guilty of possession of marijuana for sale and sale of marijuana. If convicted, Qualls Jones faced up to three years in state prison, said his attorney, Deputy Public Defender Ariel Boyce-Smith.

Qualls Jones’ ordeal began Feb. 5 while hanging out with friends in the “Hippy Hill” area of Golden Gate Park. The group was socializing and smoking marijuana when Qualls Jones thought he recognized a man approaching the group and waved him over. Upon closer inspection, Qualls Jones realized the man was a stranger, but welcomed him regardless. When Qualls Jones invited him to smoke with the group, the man declined, asking instead if he could buy marijuana.

Qualls Jones testified that he told the man that he did not sell marijuana. The man appeared agitated and stressed out, so Qualls Jones reached into his personal stash, pinched off a small amount of marijuana, and handed it to the man, who turned out to be a police decoy.

Qualls Jones, who lives a communal lifestyle and frowns upon capitalism, testified that he refused the $20 the man offered him in exchange for the marijuana.

After the interaction, Qualls Jones was swarmed by five to six police officers, who were conducting a sting operation. Police found a bag of less than 1 ounce of marijuana in his jacket pocket. Police testified they found the $20 under a blanket where Qualls Jones was sitting.

Qualls Jones spent four days in jail before being released by a judge.

During the trial, Qualls Jones testified that he considers marijuana to be medicine and feels it should be freely shared instead of bought and sold.

Under questioning from Boyce-Smith, two police officers admitted they were receiving overtime pay in exchange for the buy-bust operation. One of the officers also acknowledged on the stand that his department receives federal grants for the stings.

“Despite conducting a well-funded operation, police did not bother to gather any corroborating evidence. There wasn’t a single photograph taken or a single witness interviewed, despite the fact that Mr. Qualls Jones was sitting with six other people in a public park,” Boyce-Smith said.

Throughout the trial, Boyce-Smith repeated a rhyme that captured the frailty of the case: “He didn’t accept a dime/they made up this crime/while they were getting paid overtime.”

In 2006, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved an ordinance making marijuana offenses the police department’s lowest priority. However, public marijuana sales are not included in the policy.

Qualls Jones was found guilty of possession of less than 1 ounce of marijuana, an infraction, and fined $25.

Adachi said Qualls Jones never posed a risk to public safety.

“A tremendous amount of city resources were wasted in a manufactured case against a man who was minding his own business,” Adachi said. “San Franciscans have been very clear about marijuana enforcement and I am not surprised a jury rejected this case.”

Don Sterling, the Racist, is Not Alone - The Punishment is Too Much

The understandable folderol about Don Sterling and his foul mouth and his Clippers franchise [his personal property] raises many interesting, telling, and sometimes disturbing issues, over and above the rankness of his bigoted speech.  For instance, I was amused to note that a friend who pretends to value free speech and balance deleted my comment on his Facebook page, along the lines of this post, about the lifetime ban of Donald Sterling, which sadly might say more about him than Sterling's known foul mouth said about him.

I think the punishment of Sterling is quite over the top. Sterling is a jerk, a bigot, an asshole, and he deserves whatever loathing comes his way. However, official, regulatory ostracism is not a standard practiced in this country.  And there are many team-members who also fit that description [including one who labeled the teams "black teams"], some of whom liberally use the "n" word while decrying those of other races who use it, and their racism is similarly revolting, and yet we don't see them banned, punished, highlighted as the cretins they are, etc.

Just as it is Un-American to practice ostracism, it is also un-American to deprive a person of the use and enjoyment of his property, which he alone assumed the risk to build up, to the same extent that it is un-American to be a bigot [although I suspect a high percentage of Americans really are bigots of various sorts!], and I think we should tread carefully before we allow collective moral self-righteousness be the measure by which WE decide if YOU can keep and enjoy your property and pursuit of happiness.

Make no mistake about it - I think Sterling is a scumbag and he has earned a place on the lower rungs of Dante's Inferno. We need to be careful, though, that we don't slip down close to him by our actions and public and private thoughts, glass houses and stones and the like.

Coachella Fest and Stagecoach

CoachellaFest and Stagecoach: as I have warned over and over and over, 1. don't discuss the subject of drugs with anyone you don't know, and 2. don't admit to anything of criminal significance, nor consent to searches of your person or belongings or car, when contacted by the police. Indeed, since too many people readily fall prey to predatory cops, program yourself to not say anything to the cops, other than your name.  Responding to “what is this?” or “have you ever been arrested before?” or “how long have you been here?” or “do you mind waiting here while I get a police dog?” or “where did you get this money?” or anything other than a legitimate question about your name can and will be used against you in ways you won’t understand until the police report supporting your arrest and felony accusation comes out, so say nothing to the cops.  It never helps, except by helping them serve their agenda and by helping me obtain a juicy retainer fee! 

Get this in your minds - the cops are NOT your friends when it comes to investigating crimes - they are friends only of themselves and of their agenda, and their agenda has nothing to do with your well-being or liberty. Telling the cops they can search your pockets that you know are crammed with drugs, and then coming to me to get you out of it, is thoughtless - protect yourself because you pay me $thousands to undo the effects of you not doing so.

Following this past weekend’s “Fest,” there is the stench in the nostrils of freedom-loving people who were the victims of the predatory tactics of the police searching, seizing, arresting, harassing them to build up their grant-funded portfolios in the hypocritical name of "public safety." I am outraged by some of the overbearing antics by the cops, and their police dogs, to profit from conduct that might technically be illegal [although not all of it is], but which is really not hurting anyone. We have lost our way in this Republic, all the while scolding regimes in other parts of the world for their anti-liberty activities that sometimes pale in comparison to ours. Back off, cops, and leave people alone, unless there is evidence of true crime, not the drug and alcohol manufactured crime about which you are suspiciously aggressive.

The police are predators looking out for their own interests – do not become their sadly easy prey by thinking you will help yourself by “cooperating” with tidbits of statements or consents – you will not, ever.  You only hurt yourselves by “cooperating” into supplying the government with evidence to be used against you.  Protect yourself from the Hun, because it is sometimes very costly to undo the effects of your lack of wisdom in protecting yourself, and a complete undoing is not always possible anyway.

Talking to the cops, or giving consent to search, is a suicidal move – are you into suicide, or self-preservation?  Only you know the answer to that, but I will not sugarcoat the psychological nature of cooperating with government when it is investigating crime – it is suicide.

 

 

 

 

Thoughts About Bullying on the School Ground

There is a resurgence in the incidence of, or at least in discussions and public attention about, bullying in our society, and there are some things that can be done about the problem right off the bat [over and above dumping the bullies in a mine shaft!], but we need to see what might be causing it because we need to focus on a systemic cure.

It is important to realize that school-ground bullying is simply a microcosm of our national political policies, from the beginning right up until now, and so one cannot entirely fault street punks from picking up on and emulating that which our “leaders” teach and do on a regular basis.

Bullying, by definition, is the exercise of physical force and verbal intimidation by an obviously stronger person against an obviously weaker one.  Bullies do not take on people of their own size and power, because they know there is a high danger of them getting cold-cocked: they are, in a word, cowards.  But isn’t that characteristic of our national war philosophy?

We know the greatest evils against individuals and peoples, and the most wide-ranging genocides, in our lifetime have been, and are practiced, by the U.S.SR./Russia, and China.  But while we get belligerently self-righteous about the supposed menace of their puppets like North Korea, Cuba, North Vietnam, Cambodia, and we get belligerently self-righteous about the comparatively lesser outrages by the Taliban and Iraq and Iran and Grenada and Libya and Yugoslavia, and by people we dislike in Pakistan and Egypt and Somalia and Syria and elsewhere, we never invade, attack, or threaten Russia or China.  That is precisely the same as the schoolyard bully:  we pick on and prod and invade and attack and execute the little guys [killing innocent civilians as “collateral damage”!], but we dare not move against the big guys.

And there is something in the American psyche that perversely celebrates, or at least tolerates, the bully.  There was a recent criminal case locally in which a police detective absolutely, verbally brutalized the teenage suspect for hours, over and over accusing her of being a liar when she would not say what the cops wanted, screeching “Bullshit” at her, threatening her with lifetime incarceration if she did not say what they wanted, so she eventually was coerced thereby into saying what the brutish cops wanted.  And we were certain that the jury would recoil against the over-the-top bullying by the cops.  But they didn’t.  They genuflectingly gave the government what it wanted out of the trial, thereby exhibiting the same values for jury trial practices as Benedict Arnold did for military practices - the jurors were traitors.

And then it has been found that the majority of school bullies were/are abused at home.  They emulate their perverse parents, learning that threats and physical violence is a regular way of communication, since their parents communicate with them that way.  Just as spanking by parents teaches kids violence by example, so too bullying by parents.  We teach and learn by example.

So, if jurors allow and hence enable constabularial bullying, and if national foreign policy practices international military and diplomatic bullying, and if twisted parents practice bullying, and if some school teachers administrators practice bullying, then how are school punks supposed to understand that such is evil and uncivilized?

We need to examine ourselves and our views, and then we can begin to find a cure for bullying.

Garcinia Cambogia Scam

Don't get victimized by the scam being carried out by Garcinia Cambogia, an alleged natural weight-control "premium" you "win" for certain things you do or see or perform on the net.  I signed up for what sounded like a first supply for S&H [shipping and handling] of $4.95, with the rest to be ordered if I liked it.  What the fine print reads is that they will send it for the $4.95, and then if you keep it, you owe them about $85.00, and they will automatically send you more for $85.00, charging the same card!! 

This needs to be addressed by the local US Attorney - it is an utter internet fraud scam!!!!!  I can't seem to get it stopped [I told them two days ago to stop and just got a new shipment notice!!!], so I am cancelling my credit card, and going after them in damages. 

Beware S&H "deals": they "deal" from the bottom of the deck!

Liberty Receives Another Blow from SCOTUS

In the new Fernandez v. California, SCOTUS ruled, by 6-3, that if a present cotenant refuses consent to enter the residence [which controls against contrary wishes of another cotenant], if the cops can figure a way to get the refusing person away, then his refusal evaporates for 4th Amendment purposes!  Huh?  Does his duty to make mortgage payments cease if he is taken away?  Then how does his other authority over his residence cease?

Here, after he refused them warrantless entry, the cops "removed" the refuser from his home, and then they had only the meek, mild cotenant to deal with, and she gave in and let them search.  Wow!  I wonder how much these so-called originalists study about the Framers' intents about government invasions of residences when they come up with this police power cockamamie garbage.

A nagging pivotal point needs addressing: "He does not contest the fact that the police had reasonable grounds for removing him from the apartment so that they could speak with Rojas, an apparent victim of domestic violence, outside of petitioner’s potentially intimidating presence. In fact, he does not even contest the existence of probable cause to place him under arrest. We therefore hold that an occupant who is absent due to a lawful detention or arrest stands in the same shoes as an occupant who is absent for any other reason."

This is where his criminal lawyer failed him - he should have contested the warrantless removal from the residence, because there is no DV exception to the warrant clause for residential searches/arrests!  Reaching in and dragging a person out of his residence or commanding him to leave the residence is tantamount to a Payton search and requires a warrant!

Attorneys should NOT forget to object to any warrantless incursions/extractions in this sort of situation.

I love Alito's comment that they won't "extend" Randolph to this situation! Uh, Liberty is not granted [nor extended] by SCOTUS - it inheres in us as a people and is the default position in this Republic, Mr. So-Called "Originalist."


A book that comes to mind here is I. Müller, Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich (D. Schneider trans. 1991 Harvard University Press).  I recommend all who think we have a court that protects us from a rampaging executive to read that - we are living in shades of '30's Germany, yet none dare voice it.  Then read R. Balko, Rise of the Warrior Cop: the Militarization of America's Police Forces (2014), and all will become clear.  Too clear for comfort.