CT CITIZEN TESTIFYING BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT, APRIL 14, 2014

SOJOURNER TRUTH SPEAKS BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT ON THE ILLEGAL PRACTICE OF VIDEOCONFERENCING!

April 14, 2014

Public Testimony

Of

Sojourner Truth

            It is my intent to remain anonymous in my testimony today inasmuch as I fear judicial retaliation from members of this court that might result from my commentary today on Practice Book Rule §23-68:  “Where Presence of Person May Be By Means of  an Audio Visual Device” (which is also included  by reference in Sec. 25-39 miscellaneous rules).

            This is an example of where a Practice Book Rule  expands  the jurisdiction of the courts by use of the words, “judicial discretion” since such videoconferences are allowed based upon judicial discretion alone rather than any other factors.

            Practice Book Rule §23-68 as written makes no provisions in civil proceedings to ensure the due process and equal protection rights of self-represented litigants who are incarcerated as defined in the 14th Amendment.  Such rights are as follows:  The right…

1)    To be present in the courtroom to observe proceedings

2)    To receive proper notices for such court proceedings to ensure no elements of surprise

3)     To provide consent to the judicial authority to waive a litigant’s who is self represented party’s fundamental right to a writ of habeas  

4)    To review and authenticate evidence which may be presented at a court proceeding

5)    To have the ability to subpoena witnesses in the same manner as an opposing litigant

6)    To properly examine witnesses with documents which may aid in “refreshing the recollection” of a witness

7)    To properly allow a litigant who is a self-represented party while incarcerated with access to files which could retain documents relevant to any proceeding

            Further, the  adoption of this Practice Book rule 23-68, represents an abridgment of a substantive right of every litigant to an application for a writ of Habeas Corpus.

            Article One, Section 9 of the Constitution of the United States clearly states:

“The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Case of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

            At the November 2010, Rules Committee meeting, then Superior Court Judge Michael Sheldon, and Judge Juliet Crawford objected to the implementation of videoconferencing rules adoption in juvenile court proceedings on the grounds of federal protections for writs of habeas corpus

The Rules Committee had received a presentation from Judge Eliot Solomon in November 2010 on the “cost savings” offered to the State of Connecticut in utilizing videoconference court proceedings. 

However, there was never a discussion at the November 2010 meeting about protecting the rights of a self-represented litigant to a writ of habeas corpus.

The judicial branch seems unaware of the lack of library access an incarcerated litigant is afforded in a detention facility.  There is limited access to one hour per week to library resources in many detention facilities to perform legal research.

Therefore, the provisions in Connecticut Practice Book Rule §23-68, must be revised to remove the ability of any judicial authority to order a person who is a litigant and a self-represented party to appear at a court hearing by an interactive audiovisual device without the self-represented party’s consent.

The Supreme Court is reminded of its duties to protect the rights of citizens who elect self-representation under the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution.

Connecticut’s Practice Book Rules must in all cases be considered in light of the Oath of Office taken by all judicial officers to support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Connecticut, in Article First: Declaration of Rights, Section 12:

“The privileges of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless, when in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it; nor in any case, but by the legislature.”

            Minimally, Practice Book §23-68 and §25-39 (which references family matters as

subject to provisions in §23-68) should be amended as follows:

(a)   No self-represented party can be ordered by any judicial authority to participate

in any  court proceeding conducted by an interactive audiovisual device without consent.

            In order to ensure compliance by the judiciary on this proposed modification on JD-FM-201, this form would need to be modified to contain a box with a consent waiver and signature and would require seven days notice by certified mail:

            I, __(print name)______________ consent to the use of an interactive audiovisual device for the hearing scheduled on ___date____ as noted above

           I, __(print name) ________DO NOT Consent to the use of interactive audiovisual device for the hearing scheduled on ___date___and request transportation to the courthouse for the hearing as noted above.

__________________                    _______________

(Signature Required)                              (Date)

 

PROTEST ABUSE OF CT CITIZEN JUSTINA PELLETIER: MAY 4, 2014, NYC!

MindFreedom International is organizing a protest of the American Psychiatric Association's Annual Meeting May 4th in New York City.  I think it is so important that Jim Gottstein himself is coming from Alaska to participate.  I really hope you can join us.  There is a Facebook Event Page, #StopPsychAssault: Protest the American Psychiatric Association, NYC 2014, that just got launched today. 

 

In addition to protesting (1) psychiatric imprisonment, euphemistically called involuntary commitment, (2) forced drugging, (3) Electroshock, (4) seclusion & restraint, etc., we are joining those in the Free Justina Pelletier effort.  

 

·         #StopPsychAssault: Protest the American Psychiatric Association, NYC 2014

·         #FreeJustina: Protest the American Psychiatric Association, May 4, 2014, NYC

 

OVERVIEW OF THE JUSTINA PELLETIER CASE FROM THE "ABOUT" SECTION OF "A MIRACLE FOR JUSTINA" ON FACEBOOK!

**Justina's Story**

On February 10, 2013 Justina's doctors sent her to Boston Children"s Hospital to receive their prescribed treatment for symptoms of Mitochondrial Disease, which had evolved following a flu-like illness. Justina's GI specialist had transferred from Tufts to Boston Children's Hospital (BCH) and was expecting to admit her under his care,
Instead, a BCH neurologist intercepted the direct admission, asserting "Mitochondrial Disease does not exist", and supporting a young psychologist's premature diagnosis: "Undifferentiated Somatoform Disorder", meaning it was psychosomatic or "all in her head."

When Justina's parents disagreed with the 'new' diagnosis and treatment plan presented to them on day 3 of Justina's hospital admission, the admitting physician ignored their concerns and asserted himself as the ultimate authority on Justina, The Pelletiers were instructed in writing that they could not be in contact with any of Justina's doctors, nor could they seek the medical care they trusted prior to coming to BCH.

On February 14, day 4, Justina's parents formally requested a transfer for their daughter- asserting their parental right to make medical decisions for their daughter, including discharge from BCH. Rather than acknowledge parental rights and demonstrate respect for parents dealing with their daughter's long standing medical problems, BCH petitioned for the Department of Children & Families (DCF) to seize custody of Justina, which was granted in court the next day.

Since February 15th, BCH has exerted control over all aspects of Justina's health care and her life-- BCH executed the traumatic separation of Justina from her family, friends and trusted doctors and continues to use coercion and force to treat Justina -- against her will.

Now in addition they have only let her family see her for an hour a week and only two people can visit her and they are supervised. There are only two twenty minute phone calls a week which are supervised as well. She has even had her rights taken away by not even allowing her to talk to any of her friends. She cannot speak out for what she wants and how she feels! To this point there has been no investigation by Mass DCF of her family. Now they have been threatening her and the family that she will never go home and will be put in foster care.  Her health has gone downhill without her medical treatment and where she was skating before she is now not able to walk and in a wheelchair. She is scared and wants to come home!

Justina's supportive community is expanding to meet the daunting challenge of exposing the egregious human rights violations committed by world renowned BCH and their cohorts, the Department of Children and Families in MA. This costly battle is fueled by the love and commitment of Justina's family , friends and those who have been inspired to fight against this injustice through close connection to their story.

Only through exposure and accountability of BCH and DCF for the pain and suffering they have caused Justina and her family can we hope to secure protection of our own rights!!

 

Tax deductible donations to support Justina's parents' efforts to rescue her can be made at www.freejustina.com.

Also, PsychRights is selling #FreeJustina T-Shirts with the profits to go to the Free Justina nonprofit.

 

The Twitter hastag for the Free Justina effort is #FreeJustina.

 

  

 

THE PRICE ATTORNEYS PAY FOR BEING SCUMBAGS: SUICIDE AND DEATH, PART II

I can recall when I first began to have problems in my own divorce.  At one point, I was calling around to speak to attorneys to find one who would be willing to work with me. Sometimes when I was calling around, I ended up having conversations with attorneys focusing on the many litigants who end up committing suicide.  I certainly believe that the subject of litigants and suicide might be one worth exploring. 

None of these attorneys mentioned that there is an issue in their own profession.  But, as my discussion in the first part of this report indicated, there are is a serious public health problem in connection to attorneys and their high rate of suicide.

Among the factors I mentioned involved in the high rate of suicide among attorneys is the drive to make money at all costs.  But in addition, another issue is that many attorneys are terribly overworked and overburdened.  On the website "Legal Cheek" one blogger put it this way, "The prevailing culture of 24/7 availability only makes matters worse.  And then there is the unwritten expectation that lawyers should put their work and firm first."

 

Another factor is personality.  According to journalist Deborah Cassens Weiss, "Personality characteristics often associated with lawyers, such as perfectionism and competitiveness, when combined with depression may  be contributing to a higher suicide rate in the legal profession." 

I noticed these qualities frequently when I worked as a temporary employee when I first arrived in Hartford in the late 1980s.  The attorneys I worked with were frequently very stressed out, very impatient and brusque, and unwilling to allow me any time to get oriented when I first arrived in their offices. 

In fact, I can recall that it was in an attorney's office that I had my first experience of actually calling my temp agency and asking them to "get me out of here right away!"  This attorney firm was criticizing my work even before I had a chance to walk from the front entrance over to the desk they had assigned me to. 

This was despite the fact that in those days I was highly skilled as an administrative assistant -- I was the fastest typist in my class, and I was also able to take stenographic dictation.  But it wasn't enough--I could tell within the first ten minutes. 

If attorneys have to work in such environments, and they aren't able to send out an S.O.S. to their supervisors, I can imagine how difficult it must be for them. 

Commentator Stuart Mauney also suggests that the problem is that the legal profession attracts pessimists.  As he put it, "Recent studies have shown that in all graduate school programs, in all professional fields except one, optimists outperform pessimists.  The one exception:  law school." 

He further noted, "Pessimism helps lawyers excel by making us skeptical of what our clients, our witnesses, opposing counsel, and judges tell us.  It helps us anticipate the worst and thus prepare for it."  I will say that people who are pessimistic are actually more realistic, or even more sane than the average, if you want to put it that way.  Even so, pessimism is bad for our mental health! 

 

 

Attorneys can also end up being socially isolated because they have argumentative and abrasive personalities that again, might make them successful in the courtroom, but also make them unpopular.  In general, Americans do not feel comfortable with intellectual exploration, critical thinking, or challenging ideas.  Instead, they value concensus and cooperation. 

America's homegrown promoter of this kind of harmonious  vision is Dale Carnegie of "How to Make Friends and Influence People" fame whose prime tenet was , "Don't Argue!"  Of course, if attorneys didn't argue, they couldn't earn a living!  

Has anyone watched the House of Commons in England confront the Prime Minister on television?  If you can, you should watch it sometime.  In these debates, representatives interrupt each other, they contradict each other, confront one another, and above all they challenge the Prime Minister directly and ask for immediate responses to the questions they pose.  If representatives don't get the kinds of answers they are looking for, they will call out the Prime Minister and each other on the flaws to their comments and demand better answers.  

This kind of direct confrontation and debate is very uncomfortable to most Americans.  Then look at attorneys and see that attorneys behave this way all the time!  It is their job to be this way!  

Unfortunately, however, annoying, irritating, demanding and challenging personalities simply do not play well in your average social situation, and for attorneys who cannot turn themselves off after court is over, this could lead to considerable social isolation. 

 

Further compounding the social isolation that might result purely based on personality, the practice of law has become increasingly isolated in recent years.  Some of this is the result of advances in technology which mean that attorneys can get a lot of their work done alone in their offices typing into a computer.  Thus, in an article published in the CT Law Tribune, one attorney, Frederic C. Ury wrote, "Unless you attend court on a regular basis or participate in bar association events, you no longer interact face-to-face with your fellow attorneys.  Instead, face-to-face has given way to Facebook, listservers, e-mail, text messaging and sometimes the antiquated telephone."

 

After reading this information, I have a better understanding of why the CT Bar Examiners are concerned about identifying those people who might have difficulties and seeking to monitor them.  However, it is always the spirit in which these tasks are done which counts.  It is one thing if you are seeking to undercut and stigmatize.  It is another thing to keep track so that you can intervene and be supportive if anything comes up and if you are trying to convey that help is available in time of need. 

 

On that note, for attorneys who need support here in CT there is a program known as Lawyers Concerned For Lawyers, which offers complete confidentiality.  

If you are interested in obtaining more information about this program, please click on the link below:

http://www.lclct.org/resources.htm

Online, I also took a look at another blog which I think would be helpful; see below:

http://www.lawyerswithdepression.com/

THE PRICE ATTORNEYS PAY FOR BEING SCUMBAGS--SUICIDE AND DEATH: PART I

As a Court Watcher, I have heard many attorneys point the finger at litigants and say he or she has a mental health disability and needs supervised visitation, or should be denied access to the children. 

 

Turns out this is a bit of the kettle calling the pot black because attorneys have some of the highest rates of mental illness in the country! 

 

From the articles I have read on the subject, this means that I am supposed to have more compassion for attorneys because of the sad fate they have in store for them because of the profession they have chosen.  One commentator said, you know that joke that goes, "How do you describe hundreds of lawyers at the bottom of the Ocean?  Answer:  A good start!"  Apparently, that joke isn't so funny in the light of the reality that there is an epidemic of depression and suicide among attorneys throughout the nation. 

 

Of course, I can't help responding that this epidemic is pretty much self-inflicted, and is nothing in comparison to the pain and suffering of the victims these attorneys leave behind.  But perhaps that is an argument for another day.

 

Let's get the data.  What I did was review several articles on the issue of attorneys, depression, and suicide and the following is the sum total of what was said:

 

1.  Lawyers, as a group, are 3.6 times more likely to experience depression than the general population;

 

2.  Of 104 occupations, lawyers were the most likely to suffer depression;

 

3.  A 1989 National Institute for Safety and Health found that male lawyers between the ages of 20 and 64 are more than twice as likely to die from suicide than men of the same age in other occupations;

 

4.  In 1990, a quality of life survey by the North Carolina Bar Association revealed that almost 26% of respondents exhibit symptoms of clinical depression, and almost 12% said they contemplated suicide at least once a month.  Studies in other states have found similar results.  In recent years, several states have been averaging one lawyer suicide per month.

 

5.  A 1991 North Carolina Bar Association study found that 25% of lawyers suffered symptoms of anxiety three or more times a month in the last year;

 

6.  In a 1997 study, suicide accounted for 10.8% of deaths among lawyers in the U.S. and Canada, and was the third leading cause of death among this group;

 

7.  Furthermore, the study concluded that the suicide rate of attorneys was 6 times as much as the rate of the general population;

 

8.  According to a study by Prof. Andy Benjamin (U. of Washington) by the spring of their 1L year, 32% of law students are clinically depressed, despite being no more depressed than the general public (about 8%) when they entered law school.  By graduation, this number has risen to 40%.  While this percentage dropped to 17% two years after graduation, this rate of depression was still double that of the general public;

 

9.  Suicide is the 3rd leading cause of death among attorneys, but only the 10th leading cause of death in the general population;

 

10.  Attorneys are 3 times as likely to be depressed as the general population;

 

11.  Attorneys are 2 times as likely to be addicted to drugs and alcohol as the general population;  (Then people who struggle with substance abuse are about six times more likely to kill themselves)

 

12. A John Hopkins study found lawyers have the highest rate of depression of any profession;

 

These are pretty sobering statistics.

 

The majority of individuals who are at risk are lawyers and judges aged 48-65, trial lawyers, or as one journalist put it, "It's men in their 50s." 

 

So what is going on?  Why is this happening? 

 

One person, Yvette Hourigan of the Kentucky Lawyer Assistance Program speculated that the reason is that legal work involves a high level of stress. 

 

As she put it, "There are a lot of high stress professions.  However, when the surgeon goes into the surgical suite to perform his surgery, they don't send another physician in to try to kill the patient.  You know, they're all on the same team trying to do one job.  In the legal profession, adversity is the nature of our game." 

 

I think that what brought this issue to the forefront of so many people's minds was the 2009 suicide of Attorney Mark Levy, one of the most skilled appellate lawyers in the country, and friend to many powerful individuals in Washington.  He was around 59 years old and had just been let go from the firm Kilpatrick Stockton when he came to work in the morning, pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head.  

 

While many expressed puzzlement for his decision to kill himself, after a while the picture emerged of a profession for whom money is the bottom line. 

 

An attorney who cannot generate major income by generating hefty bills to clients will not be successful.  

 

Unfortunately, the focus on cold cash was an approach to the legal profession that Attorney Levy did not feel comfortable with and this was a substantial reason for his death.   

 

As journalist Richard B. Schmitt put it, "Levy loved the practice of law, but he struggled with the business of law.  Without a firm stable of paying clients, he grew vulnerable in a world where rainmaking is often valued over skill and judgment." 

 

Further, "He was not interested in compromising to make law a business."

 

And "Levy never relished the role of salesman." "He was a superb lawyer but he wasn't a business-getter." 

 

Finally, "his disdain for marketing and client recruitment again seemed to undermine his standing with firm management." 

 

In a field such as the law, where attorneys and their supervisors expect to make six digit salaries or more, ideals, ethics, and sometimes basic human compassion end up on the wayside, as we litigants in family court have observed and experienced. 

 

But the attorneys who make those kinds of decisions to let go of basic human decency inevitably pay the price for that, if not professionally, then indeed personally.  If you are a good person and you don't go along with the "money is everything" mentality, you are doomed to suffer in terms of your career.  So, in a way, you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. 

 

(More on this topic in Part II.) 

ANNE STEVENSON, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST, DEMANDS ACCESS TO INFO ON GAL FEES!

(CLICK ON THE STORY BELOW TO LINK TO THE ENTIRE ARTICLE!)

CONNECTICUT, April 8, 2014 — Massachusetts attorney Maureen Martowska was reviewing charges related to her son Matthew Martowska’s custody case when she noticed something irregular. She realized that the Connecticut State Comptroller had paid guardian ad litem Barry Armata’s $988.12 for his work on the case. However, the family had been following court orders to pay Armata thousands of dollars out of their own pockets.
While Martowska does not rule out the possibility that Armata’s bill may have been a clerical error, she said the mistake raises serious questions about how GAL’s in the State of Connecticut are paid.
Last week, the Judiciary Committee approved RB-494, which if passed by the State Legislature would set limits on the way the State’s out of control guardian ad litem system does business.