Legal Briefs
Legal Briefs
Felon Voting
Muntaquin v. Coombe is a case which should be widely discussed in the Black community. Unfortunately, it is not because Blacks still have no knowledge of or appreciation for history. Charles Hamilton Houston institutionalized the assault on Jim Crow when Black elected officials were as rare as diamonds are on the market.
After the presidential debate in 2000, Black leaders vowed that they would initiate a relentless assault on felon disenfranchisement statutes. This was just media grandstanding and posturing in 2000. Jamil Abdul Muntaquin, a prison inmate in New York and without fanfare, initiated a civil rights action in Albany Federal Court challenging NY Election Law § 5-106 as violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
This has not been an easy issue for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. An en banc panel deadlocked in 1996 in Baker v. Pataki. Last April, a three-judge panel found the state’s disenfranchisement statute to be constitutional. Later, the 13, active circuit judges voted to hear the issue en banc. The appeal will be heard on April 7.
Because Blacks and Hispanics make up less than thirty percent of the voting population but more than 80 percent of the prison population in New York, the felon disenfranchisement statute has the effect of discriminating against historically-oppressed groups and gives rise to a denial of the right to vote. The question is whether Congress, by passing the 1982 amendments, intended to include felon disenfranchisement statutes.
The Black community has a real stake in the outcome of Muntaquin v. Coombe. Yet, Black leaders have failed to represent Blacks. There has been no motions by Black leaders to seek permission to file amicus curiae briefs. This is another example of failed representation and of putting all of your eggs in one basket. Blacks have been hoodwinked into believing that electing Black mayors, governors and putting Black faces in high places is a panacea.
This is a myth unsupported by any historical evidence. Except for Cong. Adam Clayton Powell, no other Black elected official has engaged in any legislative activity which is monumental. Blacks are defying the teachings of history and putting money and votes on lame donkeys. There is no focus on judicial representation even though it took the courts to give Blacks any semblance of constitutional rights.
Backdoor Slavery
1. Undocumented Aliens
Two years ago, the Supreme Court in Hoffman Plastics Compounds v. NLRB decided that undocumented aliens were not allowed to collect back pay. This would supposedly encourage employers to give undocumented aliens job preferences. The Supreme Court reasoned that the awarding of back pay violates federal immigration policy.
A similar question arose in New York state courts. Two panels of the Appellate Division, First Department ruled that despite its mandated deference to the Supremacy Clause, it would not offend federal policy to allow an undocumented alien back pay commensurate with the prevailing wage in the alien country of origin.
2. Patriot Act
The federal government sought to apply the Patriot Act to money that was legally earned in the United States and no evidence existed to prove that it would be used to finance terrorism. Three Pakistanis boarded a flight with more than $500,000 but only declared $32,000. According to the government, it was entitled to all the money in a civil forfeiture proceeding and the Patriot Act precluded any judicial review.
Defendants refused to embrace this position. They argued that the “bulk cash” statute was inapplicable. In any event, civil forfeitures were subject to review under the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment. Judge Jack B. Weinstein of Brooklyn Federal Court ruled that only $96,000 of the seized money belonged to them and of the amount the government could only seize $48,000.
School Aid
In litigation which has spanned more than a decade, Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State, 100 NY2d 893 (2003) seems to have been settled when the state’s highest court reversed the intermediate appellate court and reinstated the decision of Justice Leland DeGrasse of Manhattan Supreme Court. The Court of Appeals ordered New York to implement a funding scheme for New York City schools.
A panel of referees pursuant to court order found that the city was entitled to a 45 percent increase in annual expenditures until 2008 when it would cap out at $5.63 billion and the city was entitled to capital expenditures in excess of $9 billion for five years.
This increase in school aid should provide only a sound, basic education for historically-oppressed children. In other words, this funding is only to guarantee an eighth grade education. The New York Legislature, the court ruled, has the obligation to ensure adequate funding for education.
New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has devised a new scam to prolong the litigation and deny to historically-oppressed children a sound, eighth grade education. He has filed a declaratory judgment action before Justice DeGrasse in effect asking him to toss the Court of Appeals ruling. Justice DeGrasse lacks the authority to overthrow the decision of a higher court and the law requires finality.
Actually, Justice DeGrasse clearly should cite Spitzer for contempt for filing a frivolous lawsuit for the obvious and odious purpose of denying to historically-oppressed children a basic, sound education. This is foot-dragging at its worse and demonstrates racial animus.
Spitzer now argues that because of the separation of powers doctrine courts are powerless to tell the Legislature what to do. This issue was resolved in Marbury v. Madison and was certainly affirmed in Brown v. Board of Education.
There must be limits in the arguments a lawyer should be able to make in court. Only Spitzer would now argue that Brown was a mistake and Jim Crow should once again rule the day in education. If left unchecked, Spitzer intends to tamper with the constitutional clock.
No Black leader or elected official has taken Spitzer to task for making an argument right out of the slave codes. In fact, no Black leader or elected official will challenge Spitzer. Listen to radio. You will never hear a Black leader calling for Spitzer’s ouster.
If you look at the executive staff in the state attorney general’s office, it will tell you everything you need to know about him. This staff is lily-white. No Black nor Hispanic need apply even though the Black vote was the margin of difference in his defeat of the incumbent, Dennis Vacco, in 1998.
Two prominent Black leaders said that he would be the greatest thing since sliced bread. They have now rolled over. When you pay a Black leader for an endorsement, you get a bonus. They will automatically seal their lips forever.
Of course, this was political puffing if not outright fraud. Both of them, according to New York State Senator Carl Andrews, received a quid pro quo for the honors. Nobody has ever accused Dr. King of taking money under the table. Until Blacks get their ethics right, we will always be oppressed.
Bill of Attainder
On the 12th day of January, Dr. Khallid Muhammad comes to mind as a righteous and non-compromising Black leader. This is his birthday. Black leaders targeted him and encouraged Congress to file a bill of attainder against him.
This was unprecedented, in a legislative sense, and the Black community stood tongue-tied and refused to retain a lawyer to challenge this unconstitutional action. Of course, Black leaders also led the assault on Marcus Garvey and separated themselves from Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. after he took the correct position on the Vietnam War.
Article I, Section 9 clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution prohibits Congress from passing bills of attainder. The Supreme Court has also construed this constitutional provision as prohibiting bills of pains and penalties. These bills were employed by British Parliament during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries to impose the death penalty on persons guilty of sedition.
Dr. Khallid’s speech at Kean College in New Jersey gained the attention of Congress after Rev. Jackson spearheaded the publication of an advertisement in the New York Times attacking the speech as anti Semitic. No one ever considered that his speech fell far short of violating the “clear and present danger” test of the First Amendment.
Of course, members of Congress like Del. Elanor Holmes Norton, who is also an attorney, vigorously defended the rights of the KKK and Rev. Al Sharpton, also defended the rights of white supremacists in New York who were fired as policemen and /or firemen for engaging in and promoting racist practices. Dr. Khallid, on the other hand, became a social pariah.
When Congress voted a bill of attainder against Dr. Khallid it amounted to a death sentence. This conduct openly violated the U.S. Constitution and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas stood mute. Of course, there was a stay of execution until he died mysteriously in Cobb County Georgia, a county named after the legal architect of the slave codes.
Usually, a death sentence arises in a judicial forum after the accused has been accorded due process of law. Apparently, no one in the Congressional Black Caucus understood that they were participating in a legislative lynching and it would later be used against their constituents.
It is imperative that Blacks sue Congress posthumously on behalf of Dr. Khallid to rescind, vacate and annul the bill of attainder. Otherwise, it will become a legal precedent and any rebellious Black will be brought before Congress to decide his or her fate without any semblance of due process. White supremacists have never been subject to bills of attainder.
Amadou Diallo and Double Jeopardy
Usually when a person is guilty of a crime, double jeopardy bars a second prosecution. This will not apply to Edgar Rae Killen who was acquitted in federal court years ago for the murders of the three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, MS, a venue Ronald Reagan used as his launching pad for the presidency. Killen was arraigned in state court this week for those murders.
Anyone with a modicum of a working brain cell knows that a government conspiracy was afoot in the state prosecution of the four members of the New York Police Department for the assassination of Amadou Diallo in February 1999.
He died in a fusillade of bullets. The fatal shooting had all of the earmarks of a planned and state-sponsored murder. These policemen were members of a death squad. There was an illegal confrontation and the cops were away from their post.
Afterwards, Gov. George Pataki personally supervised the case by, first, dismissing the Black judge from the case and getting the Appellate Division, First Judicial Department to take the unusual step of not only granting a change of venue motion in this judicial district but also removing the case outside the judicial district; namely, to Albany County, NY.
Pataki wanted the case in Albany so that he could personally send signals to the new judge, Joseph C. Teresi of Albany Supreme Court. This can be inferred from newly-discovered evidence. It has just been revealed that Teresi is a serial offender. His modus operandi is to manipulate criminal trials through ex parte communications. This is illegal.
In other words, the Commission on Judicial Conduct has just disciplined Teresi for engaging in ex parte communications to the detriment of unpopular, criminal defendants. In the case of the Diallo assassins, however, they were popular defendants.
He visited the hotel where the assassins were staying and expressed his bias in favor of the policemen. No Black leader had the guts to file a complaint against him. A judge is supposed to be neutral. Obviously, Teresi was on an assignment.
Double jeopardy means that no person should be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense. Of course, when the person was never put in jeopardy in the first place and his acquittal arose from a criminal conspiracy, double jeopardy does not attach and the person should be retried.
Ample evidence exists that the criminal trial in Albany was staged and a second trial of these assassins is warranted. The acquittals were a miscarriage of justice like the acquittals of the murderers of Emmett Till.
The Black community should assemble a team of legal investigators to conduct a thorough investigation into the Albany show trial and present the evidence to an appropriate forum with a demand for justice. When four cops shoot at someone 41 times with 19 bullets hitting its target, the culpable parties should be looking out of the windows of jail cells for the rest of their natural lives. Otherwise, Blacks should head back to the plantation for judicial shelter.
Felon Voting
Muntaquin v. Coombe is a case which should be widely discussed in the Black community. Unfortunately, it is not because Blacks still have no knowledge of or appreciation for history. Charles Hamilton Houston institutionalized the assault on Jim Crow when Black elected officials were as rare as diamonds are on the market.
After the presidential debate in 2000, Black leaders vowed that they would initiate a relentless assault on felon disenfranchisement statutes. This was just media grandstanding and posturing in 2000. Jamil Abdul Muntaquin, a prison inmate in New York and without fanfare, initiated a civil rights action in Albany Federal Court challenging NY Election Law § 5-106 as violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
This has not been an easy issue for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. An en banc panel deadlocked in 1996 in Baker v. Pataki. Last April, a three-judge panel found the state’s disenfranchisement statute to be constitutional. Later, the 13, active circuit judges voted to hear the issue en banc. The appeal will be heard on April 7.
Because Blacks and Hispanics make up less than thirty percent of the voting population but more than 80 percent of the prison population in New York, the felon disenfranchisement statute has the effect of discriminating against historically-oppressed groups and gives rise to a denial of the right to vote. The question is whether Congress, by passing the 1982 amendments, intended to include felon disenfranchisement statutes.
The Black community has a real stake in the outcome of Muntaquin v. Coombe. Yet, Black leaders have failed to represent Blacks. There has been no motions by Black leaders to seek permission to file amicus curiae briefs. This is another example of failed representation and of putting all of your eggs in one basket. Blacks have been hoodwinked into believing that electing Black mayors, governors and putting Black faces in high places is a panacea.
This is a myth unsupported by any historical evidence. Except for Cong. Adam Clayton Powell, no other Black elected official has engaged in any legislative activity which is monumental. Blacks are defying the teachings of history and putting money and votes on lame donkeys. There is no focus on judicial representation even though it took the courts to give Blacks any semblance of constitutional rights.
Backdoor Slavery
1. Undocumented Aliens
Two years ago, the Supreme Court in Hoffman Plastics Compounds v. NLRB decided that undocumented aliens were not allowed to collect back pay. This would supposedly encourage employers to give undocumented aliens job preferences. The Supreme Court reasoned that the awarding of back pay violates federal immigration policy.
A similar question arose in New York state courts. Two panels of the Appellate Division, First Department ruled that despite its mandated deference to the Supremacy Clause, it would not offend federal policy to allow an undocumented alien back pay commensurate with the prevailing wage in the alien country of origin.
2. Patriot Act
The federal government sought to apply the Patriot Act to money that was legally earned in the United States and no evidence existed to prove that it would be used to finance terrorism. Three Pakistanis boarded a flight with more than $500,000 but only declared $32,000. According to the government, it was entitled to all the money in a civil forfeiture proceeding and the Patriot Act precluded any judicial review.
Defendants refused to embrace this position. They argued that the “bulk cash” statute was inapplicable. In any event, civil forfeitures were subject to review under the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment. Judge Jack B. Weinstein of Brooklyn Federal Court ruled that only $96,000 of the seized money belonged to them and of the amount the government could only seize $48,000.
School Aid
In litigation which has spanned more than a decade, Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State, 100 NY2d 893 (2003) seems to have been settled when the state’s highest court reversed the intermediate appellate court and reinstated the decision of Justice Leland DeGrasse of Manhattan Supreme Court. The Court of Appeals ordered New York to implement a funding scheme for New York City schools.
A panel of referees pursuant to court order found that the city was entitled to a 45 percent increase in annual expenditures until 2008 when it would cap out at $5.63 billion and the city was entitled to capital expenditures in excess of $9 billion for five years.
This increase in school aid should provide only a sound, basic education for historically-oppressed children. In other words, this funding is only to guarantee an eighth grade education. The New York Legislature, the court ruled, has the obligation to ensure adequate funding for education.
New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has devised a new scam to prolong the litigation and deny to historically-oppressed children a sound, eighth grade education. He has filed a declaratory judgment action before Justice DeGrasse in effect asking him to toss the Court of Appeals ruling. Justice DeGrasse lacks the authority to overthrow the decision of a higher court and the law requires finality.
Actually, Justice DeGrasse clearly should cite Spitzer for contempt for filing a frivolous lawsuit for the obvious and odious purpose of denying to historically-oppressed children a basic, sound education. This is foot-dragging at its worse and demonstrates racial animus.
Spitzer now argues that because of the separation of powers doctrine courts are powerless to tell the Legislature what to do. This issue was resolved in Marbury v. Madison and was certainly affirmed in Brown v. Board of Education.
There must be limits in the arguments a lawyer should be able to make in court. Only Spitzer would now argue that Brown was a mistake and Jim Crow should once again rule the day in education. If left unchecked, Spitzer intends to tamper with the constitutional clock.
No Black leader or elected official has taken Spitzer to task for making an argument right out of the slave codes. In fact, no Black leader or elected official will challenge Spitzer. Listen to radio. You will never hear a Black leader calling for Spitzer’s ouster.
If you look at the executive staff in the state attorney general’s office, it will tell you everything you need to know about him. This staff is lily-white. No Black nor Hispanic need apply even though the Black vote was the margin of difference in his defeat of the incumbent, Dennis Vacco, in 1998.
Two prominent Black leaders said that he would be the greatest thing since sliced bread. They have now rolled over. When you pay a Black leader for an endorsement, you get a bonus. They will automatically seal their lips forever.
Of course, this was political puffing if not outright fraud. Both of them, according to New York State Senator Carl Andrews, received a quid pro quo for the honors. Nobody has ever accused Dr. King of taking money under the table. Until Blacks get their ethics right, we will always be oppressed.
Bill of Attainder
On the 12th day of January, Dr. Khallid Muhammad comes to mind as a righteous and non-compromising Black leader. This is his birthday. Black leaders targeted him and encouraged Congress to file a bill of attainder against him.
This was unprecedented, in a legislative sense, and the Black community stood tongue-tied and refused to retain a lawyer to challenge this unconstitutional action. Of course, Black leaders also led the assault on Marcus Garvey and separated themselves from Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. after he took the correct position on the Vietnam War.
Article I, Section 9 clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution prohibits Congress from passing bills of attainder. The Supreme Court has also construed this constitutional provision as prohibiting bills of pains and penalties. These bills were employed by British Parliament during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth centuries to impose the death penalty on persons guilty of sedition.
Dr. Khallid’s speech at Kean College in New Jersey gained the attention of Congress after Rev. Jackson spearheaded the publication of an advertisement in the New York Times attacking the speech as anti Semitic. No one ever considered that his speech fell far short of violating the “clear and present danger” test of the First Amendment.
Of course, members of Congress like Del. Elanor Holmes Norton, who is also an attorney, vigorously defended the rights of the KKK and Rev. Al Sharpton, also defended the rights of white supremacists in New York who were fired as policemen and /or firemen for engaging in and promoting racist practices. Dr. Khallid, on the other hand, became a social pariah.
When Congress voted a bill of attainder against Dr. Khallid it amounted to a death sentence. This conduct openly violated the U.S. Constitution and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas stood mute. Of course, there was a stay of execution until he died mysteriously in Cobb County Georgia, a county named after the legal architect of the slave codes.
Usually, a death sentence arises in a judicial forum after the accused has been accorded due process of law. Apparently, no one in the Congressional Black Caucus understood that they were participating in a legislative lynching and it would later be used against their constituents.
It is imperative that Blacks sue Congress posthumously on behalf of Dr. Khallid to rescind, vacate and annul the bill of attainder. Otherwise, it will become a legal precedent and any rebellious Black will be brought before Congress to decide his or her fate without any semblance of due process. White supremacists have never been subject to bills of attainder.
Amadou Diallo and Double Jeopardy
Usually when a person is guilty of a crime, double jeopardy bars a second prosecution. This will not apply to Edgar Rae Killen who was acquitted in federal court years ago for the murders of the three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, MS, a venue Ronald Reagan used as his launching pad for the presidency. Killen was arraigned in state court this week for those murders.
Anyone with a modicum of a working brain cell knows that a government conspiracy was afoot in the state prosecution of the four members of the New York Police Department for the assassination of Amadou Diallo in February 1999.
He died in a fusillade of bullets. The fatal shooting had all of the earmarks of a planned and state-sponsored murder. These policemen were members of a death squad. There was an illegal confrontation and the cops were away from their post.
Afterwards, Gov. George Pataki personally supervised the case by, first, dismissing the Black judge from the case and getting the Appellate Division, First Judicial Department to take the unusual step of not only granting a change of venue motion in this judicial district but also removing the case outside the judicial district; namely, to Albany County, NY.
Pataki wanted the case in Albany so that he could personally send signals to the new judge, Joseph C. Teresi of Albany Supreme Court. This can be inferred from newly-discovered evidence. It has just been revealed that Teresi is a serial offender. His modus operandi is to manipulate criminal trials through ex parte communications. This is illegal.
In other words, the Commission on Judicial Conduct has just disciplined Teresi for engaging in ex parte communications to the detriment of unpopular, criminal defendants. In the case of the Diallo assassins, however, they were popular defendants.
He visited the hotel where the assassins were staying and expressed his bias in favor of the policemen. No Black leader had the guts to file a complaint against him. A judge is supposed to be neutral. Obviously, Teresi was on an assignment.
Double jeopardy means that no person should be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense. Of course, when the person was never put in jeopardy in the first place and his acquittal arose from a criminal conspiracy, double jeopardy does not attach and the person should be retried.
Ample evidence exists that the criminal trial in Albany was staged and a second trial of these assassins is warranted. The acquittals were a miscarriage of justice like the acquittals of the murderers of Emmett Till.
The Black community should assemble a team of legal investigators to conduct a thorough investigation into the Albany show trial and present the evidence to an appropriate forum with a demand for justice. When four cops shoot at someone 41 times with 19 bullets hitting its target, the culpable parties should be looking out of the windows of jail cells for the rest of their natural lives. Otherwise, Blacks should head back to the plantation for judicial shelter.
posted by Attorney Alton Maddox at 1:46 PM
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Eliot Spitzer
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