Tag Second Amendment

FABRY v. POWERS: An Injunction against a Woman That Underscores the Wastefulness and Absurdity of the Restraining Order Process, and Its Licensing of Civil Rights Violations by the Courts

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Contents of this post were independently investigated by the writer. He alone is responsible for the post’s authorship.

Tennessee ball player Jacob Benjamin Fabry petitioned an “order of protection” against a Colorado woman 20 years his senior in September. He told the court he feared “harm” from the woman, Sheila Powers, who is 65 lbs. lighter than he is, stands 7″ shorter, and has never been within the borders of the state in which Fabry lives.

Here is a chart prepared by the “state administrative offices of the courts” in 2010 that puts the number of “general” and “limited” jurisdiction state courts in our country at about 30,000.

Here is a single judge’s docket for this week. It has about 30 cases on it, eight of which (about a fourth) are protection order cases.

That’s one judge, one week, eight restraining order cases. While it’s unlikely this means there are 240,000 restraining orders issued each week in the United States, it does suggest that there are a whole lot. (A cost estimate by DailyFinance.com, also from 2010, projects the national expenditure to be at least $4,000,000,000 per annum.)

The particular judge whose docket is cited is L. Marie Williams, who issued a restraining order in Tennessee last year petitioned by Jacob Fabry against Coloradan Sheila Powers. The judge’s order requires that Ms. Powers, who lives three states distant from Mr. Fabry, “stay away” from him and his children, and it mandated that she turn over any firearms in her possession within 48 hours.

Mr. Fabry’s affidavit to the court claims “threats of harm,” besides “harassment and stalking,” as the motives for his application for an injunction. Ms. Powers says she has never been to Tennessee, including to contest Mr. Fabry’s “order of protection.” The order was finalized by default: “The Tennessee judge…refused to let me appear by phone and then threw my notarized affidavit out, [rejecting] it as hearsay.”

Mr. Fabry, the plaintiff, is a competitive baseball player who stands 6′ 1″ and weighs 195 lbs.; Ms. Powers is 5′ 6″, weighs 130, and lives in a different time zone. She’s also 20 years older than Mr. Fabry.

Jacob Fabry

Judge Williams ruled:

Respondent shall refrain from contacting Petitioner, his family, his girlfriend or his employer, directly or indirectly, from stalking, harassing, threatening, texting, emailing, posting on the Internet or any social media platform anything about, referring to in any way referencing the Petitioner, his family, his girlfriend or his employer.

The judge’s ruling exemplifies how an already extravagantly expensive, easily exploited, and dubiously necessary process opens the door to gross violations of citizens’ civil rights. In wanton excess of her jurisdiction, the judge prohibited Ms. Powers from exercising her right to freedom of speech.

This order, besides highlighting palpable absurdities endemic to the restraining order process, is transparently unlawful (i.e., unconstitutional) and therefore void (which does not mean it can be safely disobeyed).

Copyright © 2016 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*The order concludes: “Neither you nor the Petitioner can agree to change this Order. Even if the Petitioner attempts to contact you or agrees to have contact with you, you must obey this Order. If you do not, you can be jailed for up to 11 months and 29 days and fined up to $2,500.” (Emphases added.)

Jacob Fabry

 

“Somebody Do Something to End This Madness!”: One Commenter’s Appeal for Restraining Order Reform

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A comment Wednesday resonated with the author’s experiences of legal abuse and many others’. It said its writer’s life was trashed because he showed compassion for another. He exhausted his savings to help his ex-wife out of a fix, flying out to California from Colorado on a day’s notice. Five years later, having lived with the aftereffects of legal madness every day of the interim—which included appeals in another state, postponements, and a five-year restraining order extension—he says he feels his life is “over.” Of particular note is that the apparent instigator of the fraudulent restraining order petitioned against him was his ex-wife’s son; the son allegedly threatened to turn his back on his mother and evict her from his home if she didn’t comply with his wishes.

The commenter’s account:

[In] 2010, she calls me in Denver [Colorado], where I had a two-bedroom apartment, crying the blues that she had a big fight with her boyfriend, and requested to stay with me for a little while. I gave in as we were married for 23 years and had remained friends.

I fly out to San Jose [California] the next day, and we drive directly from the airport to U-Haul, pick up a truck, and are on the road in a couple of hours. Five days later, I move her into her own bedroom and put her furniture in storage.

Things went fine until she wanted this dog up in Wyoming that had some issues.

We drive up to get the dog and then after getting it home, I find out the issues—the dog would just pee on the carpet at random. I told her the dog had to go. She’s not happy, but we surrendered it to the local shelter.

Next thing I know, there is a knock on the door with her son ready to drive her back to San Jose.

Not a problem until two weeks later when the sheriff delivered the TRO [temporary restraining order] that stated I had to give up my guns and appear in San Jose at a hearing in seven days. “Why?” I asked. “Don’t we have laws in Colorado? Shouldn’t the case be tried in Denver?” Apparently not. I lost that argument.

I went to San Jose, had a 10-minute hearing in front of—what else?—a woman judge. My ex had a lawyer [thanks to] the good old folks at VAWA providing the funding. I [checked with] over 30 attorneys, and no one would touch the case pro bono (she took any spare money I had moving her).

Then we found out that she can talk to me; I just can’t talk to her (great system).

We found a way to communicate…through the Internet on one of those game shows. We would pass notes back and forth. She did not have a problem with that. The son found out and over his IPhone requested an extension on the court order.

Turns out, truth be told, that the son was the one who wanted her to get the RO. She never had any intention of doing such a thing. The son apparently was angry because he asked me what happened between his mother and me. I responded by asking him if he was sure that he really wanted to know the truth about his mom. Well, I told him the truth. I told him that his mother was screwing around on me every chance that she had.

That did not sit well with him. So here we are…RO. Every lie in that first and second complaint was written by him. He forced his mother to go along with it by threatening that he would not want her to be around him anymore and that she would have to move out of his house.

With all the postponements, when we finally got a ruling on the attempt to continue the first RO, which only had two weeks left on it, the judge, a new woman judge, ruled against me. She would not even let me speak.

So, long story short, after all the delays in between the appearances, I now received an additional five-year RO causing my total RO to be about 7 years.

I don’t give a shit whether I ever see her again, but I thought that this was a country of laws. There was never any violence between us. Yet this judge violated my Second Amendment rights once again.

So…lesson learned: Never even raise your voice to your significant (???) other. When she finds out how much money she can get out of all the federal funding, inclusive of cars, a place to stay, educational programs, etc., etc., she will come after you without a second thought.

The entire law is wrong. It violates [the First, Second, and Sixth Amendments, and probably others]. And the worse part of it is that any woman you want to date is going to plug your name into the Internet before she considers going out with you. Or her son or daughter or girlfriend will…just because they want to make sure she’s not going out with a “bum.”

My life is over. I have no social life [and] no place to turn. Not one lawyer will help. Not one congressman or senator will go against all the women who started all of this in 1994. And why? The only reason that I can come up with is that they don’t want to get “cut off.” They have no balls and couldn’t care less about what is right or wrong.

This is a bad law. I think if I remember the VAWA statute correctly, the phrase man or men is mentioned one time. I am for anyone who has any ideas on how to overturn this law and at least give us our “rights” back. I can understand it if you are a wife-beater or something like that, but the word harassment is so ambiguous. How can any judge make an honest decision?

Please, everyone, chime in. This could happen to you! If your wife gets an RO on you, you are in “the system.” You no longer will have a job, friends will shy away from you, and even your own family will distance themselves from you.

SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING TO END THIS MADNESS!

Please.

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*The anonymous commenter’s remarks began: “I will be more than happy to pay any attorney to get my Santa Clara County, California RO taken off of the Internet!”

Restraining Orders Are Not Solutions People Should Be Told They Can Stake Their Lives On

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A couple of weeks ago, a correspondent of mine, whose brother is in the service, brought my attention to a National Review story that underlines the sort of political contradictions that are bound to drive any thinking person up the wall.

It’s about a 39-year-old hairdresser, Carol Browne, who “had become increasingly nervous about her ex-boyfriend. Convinced that he intended to do her physical harm, she took out a restraining order, had security cameras installed at her home, and purchased an alarm system.”

She also applied for a permit to buy a gun, which she should have received (or at least had some word about) within a month. About six weeks after her application, she was stabbed to death in her driveway.

Defending his tardiness, the local police chief explained that the application process usually takes more than two months, and that when Bowne died, his team was still waiting for her fingerprints to be processed. Perhaps so. But this should serve as no acceptable excuse. By state law, New Jersey is required to get back to permit petitioners within 30 days. It didn’t.

It almost never does. Instead, would-be gun owners report waiting for three, four, six, and even nine months for permission to exercise what the Second Amendment makes clear is an unalienable individual right. The rules do not apply to the government.

Sure, the story makes a good case for easing restrictive firearm policies (or at least making them no more restrictive than the law prescribes), but what it saliently stresses is that liberal/feminist perspectives and the public safety policies they coerce are incoherent. Easy access to restraining orders is fiercely defended, and domestic and sexual violence are promoted as “epidemic.” Complainants of “whatever” are emboldened to represent their situations as dire and seek state protections. It’s estimated that millions of these orders are dispensed every year, and violence is the justification—and violence is always implicit in judicial rulings in this arena of law.

At the same time, the most obvious deterrents to violence, guns, are denounced—also in accordance with party positions. Okay, but which is it? Are multitudes of people in immediate danger…or aren’t they? Are their needs desperately important…or aren’t they?

(What wonder if police officers exhibit a degree of cynicism?)

Corollary to millions of restraining orders’ being granted to people is that millions of restraining orders are issued to people, and those people are publicly represented as threats. If they’re not really regarded as threats, then this is wrong. If they are regarded as threats, then there are a lot of people at risk, and denying them the means to defend themselves is wrong.

What the story in this post emphasizes above all is that restraining orders aren’t armor; they can’t live up to their promises and may enrage violent aggressors to extremity.

The perspectives outlined above persist in spite of obvious and outrageous contradictions because the leftist ideologues who hold them don’t get falsely accused…or stabbed to death in their driveways on their way to restock their larders with croissants and cat litter.

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