criticism of judges | TALKING BACK to restraining orders

What follow are brief reviews of judges the writer had during 12 years of prosecutions (2006–2018) prompted by a vindictive liar (see this post’s third endnote), her husband, and a cohort of theirs. All allegations introduced against the writer during the previous decade by the three—and some that reach back over a dozen years—were discredited and/or dismissed in the past 24 months, no thanks to any but one of the judges referenced below. (Besides to the court, allegations were made to municipal, state, and federal police, among others.) The writer was awarded no compensation by the court, which has, with rare exception, never formally acknowledged error.

Judge Christopher Staring, Judge Sean Brearcliffe, Judge Philip Espinosa, Judge Paul Tang, Judge Carmine Cornelio, Arizona Courts, Judge Richard Gordon, Judge Roger Duncan, Judge Jack Peyton, Judge Jay Cranshaw, Judge Antonio Riojas, Judge Wendy Million

ARIZONA COURT OF APPEALS (DIVISION 2)

Judge Christopher Staring (2017):

Distinctly polite and affable, Judge Staring would make a superlative Walmart greeter. What qualifications he may possess as a negotiator of facts and interpreter of law were indiscernible.

Judge Sean Brearcliffe (2017):

A pedant who seemed to consider freedom of speech a nonessential civil liberty that could be casually revoked by a court.

Judge Philip Espinosa (2017):

Profoundly limited.

ARIZONA SUPERIOR COURT (PIMA COUNTY)

Judge Charles Harrington (2006):

Pedestrian and unworthy of note.

Judge Paul Tang (2010):

Like several of the judges critiqued here, Judge Tang is distinguished only for adding ethnic diversity to the court. (In a 2010 case, Judge Tang servilely parroted back what he was told by opposing counsel almost verbatim—at least in this writer’s opinion—and the writer believes he may have documents from the court not inaptly stamped “P. Tang.” See UrbanDictionary.com.)

Judge Carmine Cornelio (2013):

A disgrace who was twice censured by the Arizona Supreme Court for abusive conduct, in 2010 and 2013, and shamed off the bench in 2016 by a no-confidence vote returned by the Arizona Judicial Performance Review. Judge Cornelio unlawfully denied the writer a trial in 2013 and imposed an unconstitutional speech injunction that denied the writer core civil liberties for five years, including the right to speak about his experiences in court even “by word of mouth.” (The amoral attorney who coerced the illegal injunction from Judge Cornelio has also served as a judge of the Arizona Superior Court.)

Judge Richard Gordon (2016–2018):

Faultlessly civil, a too rare quality among judges, but from this writer’s perspective not above placing personal/political motives before the law. Judge Gordon ruled against the writer in 2016, a couple of months before a retention election, only to mandate a settlement of the case two years later after an eminent constitutional scholar, UCLA Law Prof. Eugene Volokh, tweezed apart the court’s rationale.

PIMA COUNTY JUSTICE COURT

Judge Roger Duncan (2006):

As a judge pro tem the year he intruded upon the writer’s life, thoroughly incompetent.

Judge Jack Peyton (2006):

A bombastic bully whose neck must have strained under the weight of his inflated head.

TUCSON CITY COURT

Judge (Timothy) Jay Cranshaw (2016):

Recommended only by the quality of his grooming and manners, which are somehow meant to justify a $100,000 salary.

Judge Wendy Million (2016–2017):

A scold who was more civil on a second encounter but whose derelictions necessitated reprimand by the superior court for abuse of discretion.

Presiding Magistrate Antonio Riojas (2017):

Genial and conscientious after rebuke by the superior court for abuse of discretion, which translated to seven months of added stress to this writer’s life. To his credit, Judge Riojas acknowledged to the writer that he knew court process was routinely abused…with impunity.

*TUCSON ATTORNEYS

Jeffrey Marks (2010, 2013, 2016) and Chris Scileppi (2016–2018):

This writer would categorically characterize these officers of the court, both of whom frivolously attempted to have him jailed on multiple grounds, as an aggregate of used latex condoms recycled into matching douchebags.

**TUCSON POLICE TASK FORCE

Tucson Police Mental Health Support Team (2016):

The Tucson Police Mental Health Support Team is a clown car. A detective of this task force issued the writer two criminal citations based on statements made by a woman who is herself reportedly diagnosed mentally ill (bipolar disorder). Both charges were subsequently dismissed.

***WHAT STARTED IT ALL

David Palmer’s website NoEthics.net provides a service that may not be its author’s first priority but is certainly a valuable one: It puts the shoe on the other foot. Mr. Palmer outs officers of the court who’ve been publicly censured for misconduct—and more than a few of them have felt the pinch.

Here’s how one website (now defunct) characterized his commentary:

David Palmer is taking data off the Bar Association of any infraction, which is public information, and then adding misleading insults to injury and pouring salt on people’s wounds to make it sound 10 times worse than what the incident really was.

Any veteran of court process who’s been characterized by a member of a state bar association would probably describe the experience exactly the same way—and the consequence may have left him or her destitute, with allegations on his or her record that reside in police and/or court databases indefinitely, whether true or not.

This writer’s response to Mr. Palmer’s critic is too bad, so sad. The real objection of the anonymous critic, furthermore, is that Mr. Palmer is making public information more publicly accessible.

Good for Mr. Palmer.

Anyone who has had his or her character impugned in a courtroom, especially falsely—and there will always be an element of “falsely” in any set of charges—carries that weight every day. Lawyers may disgorge any bilious slime they can concoct about the opposing litigant. Judges drop the hammer and go shoot a round of golf. Impacts to a defendant (or a plaintiff) can be much graver than some unfavorable publicity. People’s lives can be extinguished by courthouse games.

If Mr. Palmer succeeds in coercing some empathy from political creatures with (possibly high) six-figure salaries, cool. Coercive speech is fully protected by the First Amendment, as are factual reportage and name-calling. The likes of “ethical leprechaun” and “screwball” are, besides, hardly scathing criticisms.

We’re talking here about actual things that actual lawyers and judges were actually paddled for, not accusations and innuendo, which lawyers spew and judges act on in the practice of their professions as a matter of course. It’s a lot easier to implicate someone as a batterer or a stalker, including falsely, than it is to have a judge or a lawyer censured.

A citizen falsely implicated in a quickie restraining order procedure, for example, can end up sleeping in his or her car after being deprived of everything that made his or her life meaningful, and his or her name will be fed into a number of police databases permanently. Attorneys and judges, in contrast, are rarely meted stern punishments even for misdeeds they’ve actually committed.

Yet marvel at the histrionics when they’re merely criticized. Attorney Patrick Rocchio has a dedicated page on his website denouncing Mr. Palmer’s comments about him as “defamatory”…because Mr. Palmer riffed on his name and referred to him as “Roach.” Mr. Rocchio was also termed an “ambulance chaser.”

Anyone can publish anything he or she desires today on the internet regardless of whether it is scandalous, libelous, dishonest, or untruthful and David Palmer is proof of that fact. Unfortunately, Google and other high powered search engines disclaim any responsibility for what their mysterious trade secret algorithms produce in response to a natural word search. And, practically speaking, there is no way to silence weird people like Mr. Palmer and his malicious words about those he judges to be unworthy of his approval. I have no explanation for why his untruthful and unflattering words about me are produced as a page one listing in response to a Google search which includes my name.

Coming off a trial in which the plaintiffs’ attorney, Chris Scileppi (who has a dedicated page on NoEthics.net), made the identical argument about my speech, I’m freshly struck by how remarkably sensitive plaintiffs and attorneys, who may blacken others’ reputations just because, are to any negative speech about them…at all. Are we to imagine lawyers and judges scruple about the consequences to defendants’ “names” when they prosecute their clients’ claims or render their verdicts?

Lawyers never exaggerate and make things “sound 10 times worse” then they were? They never allege anything “scandalous” or “untruthful”? Judges never force-fit conclusions? They’re above petty motives? Yeah.

There are no innocents among practitioners of law.

*I’ve never heard an attorney or a judge apologize for his or her misconduct, only deny that it’s blameworthy. A judge this year insisted that I pay a sanction ordered during a 2013 case that should have been dismissed, in which I had been denied a trial (in violation of multiple provisions of the state and federal constitutions). The administration of the 2013 case was a flagrant mockery of civil procedure. The 2016 judge who ordered me to pay the sanction even concluded that actions of the prior judge, Carmine Cornelio (who also has a dedicated page on NoEthics.net), were “not legal.” Judge Cornelio faced no comeuppance (though he was shamed off the bench for other reasons in 2016), and his $350 sanction was used to ransom a civil liberty of mine of which he had no jurisdiction to deprive me in the first place.

TALKING BACK to restraining orders

THEY’RE NOT JUST ABUSED BUT ABUSIVE

Tag criticism of judges

Terse Reviews of Arizona Judges I’ve Been Disappointed with So Far (with Critiques of a Couple of Arizona Attorneys and a Police Task Force Tacked On)

NoEthics.Net Holds Judges and Lawyers Accountable to the Laws They Ply