LEGAL BRIEFS
Legal Briefs
Supreme Court
The lives of more than one million criminal defendants have been destroyed because of federal sentencing guidelines. Congress established the U.S. Sentencing Commission in 1984 to purportedly ensure that convicted, criminal defendants in the federal system would receive uniform punishment. Sentencing has subsequently gone from lack of uniformity to cruelness and unusualness in both state and federal courts.
In U.S. v. Booker and U.S. v. Fanfan, the Supreme Court found that judicially-enhanced sentences violate the Sixth Amendment. After the jury’s verdict and before sentencing, federal judges would conduct their own fact-finding missions and, by only a preponderance of evidence, would enhance the sentences of convicted defendants. A jury should have been required to sustain the same charge by only proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Around the country, state and federal legislators are weakening the judiciary and empowering the executive branch of government. This is an erosion of the separation of powers doctrine. This also has the intent and effect of undermining an adversarial system of justice and putting criminal defendants behind the eight ball.
The sentencing guidelines actually give federal prosecutors undue leverage in coercing criminal defendants into agreeing to unconscionable plea bargains for fear of receiving a cruel and unusual sentence. These coerced pleas are usually not reviewable on appeal.
Judges can only add fuel to the fire. They are powerless to stop an injustice. The Feeney Amendment was passed in 2003 to keep federal judges under surveillance. Any lenient, federal judge would be reported to Attorney General John Ashcroft. Titusville, FL is in Cong. Tom Feeney’s congressional district. Harry and Harriette Moore once taught at the Titusville Colored School.
Under these coercive circumstances, innocent people, without the resources to retain competent and zealous counsel, will not only go to prison but be saddled down with deprivation of civil rights including the opportunity to secure employment. To combat the high unemployment of Black males, the Black community must address the problem of sentencing nationwide.
Soon after Congress passed civil rights laws in 1964 and 1965, it also passed sundry laws designed to strip Blacks of civil rights and to dilute the liberty interests which wrought unemployment and underemployment. This was Lyndon Johnson’s War on Blacks. It was being waged while Black faces were entering high places for the first time.
Congress will once again seize the opportunity to write even harsher sentencing laws. If this is, indeed, a representative government, the key issue is the response of the Black community. No other group is more disproportionately affected by cruel and unusual punishment than persons of African ancestry.
If Blacks have no written agenda, there will be no response from the Black community to any proposed congressional action including any debate on the floor of Congress. White legislators will rely on sentencing ideas from think tanks, the Federalist Society, the American Bar Association, among others. For them, it is legislative warfare.
Blacks, on the other hand, are more interested in putting Black faces in high places than the establishment and financing of think tanks or the employment of experts to combat legislative repression and to promote progressive ideas. No people will benefit from politics who is, otherwise, thoroughly disorganized like persons of African ancestry in the United States.
We are attempting to put the horse before the cart. This will not work. Politically, we are throwing away money. Politics starts with thinkers and not rappers. In the Black community, it starts with rappers. Thinkers in the Black community are as rare as water is in the Sahara Desert. Dr. Amos Wilson is a model for our survival.
First and foremost, politics is about formulating and implementing public policy. Dr. Martin King, Jr. and Malcolm X pursued and advocated in terms of public policy. Today, Black political hustlers are pursuing putting Black faces in high places as a primary objective. Their objective is selfish. It is only about putting family and friends in a few plum positions like in the DNC. The plight of Blacks is only a launching pad for living high on the hog.
Maddox v. Prudenti et. al.
Far too often, we are guilty of mistaken identity. When whites are speaking, we typically assume that they are referring to other people when, in fact, they are referring to us. When we finally connect the dots and start to think outside the box, it is, invariably, too late.
The “War on Terror” is an example. Most Blacks have no idea that they fall within the loop and are the primary suspects. For the Religious Right, the war against heathens is in full stride. We are the “heathens.” Warfare is based on deception but propaganda is the first missile to be fired. It is about controlling the mind.
After September 11, President-select George W. Bush took the extreme position that he was above the law and enjoyed the authority to arbitrarily classify citizens into categories. An enemy combatant, who is subject to incommunicado detention, is one of the categories. Congress, and not the president, is empowered to make rational classifications.
The Supreme Court granted cert. in three cases and, like the facts in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld v. Padilla indicate, the Bush regime subjects this authority to Americans and non-Americans alike. The legal question for Blacks is whether we are citizens or non-citizens.
The upshot of this authority is the suspension of the Constitution. Even before the term “enemy combatant” was in current vogue, the federal courts, acting only on a complaint from New York and without according to me any semblance of due process, suspended me indefinitely from the practice of law in the federal courts. This suspension, from federal practice, is still in effect. Judges Jack Weinstein and Charles P. Sifton were the only dissenters in an en banc panel.
I had hoped that my reinstatement to practice law would have been based on the exercise of Black power in New York. As Marcus Garvey stated: “A people without power and authority is a people without respect. Given the fact that we are the biggest voting bloc in New York City, it should be unthinkable that we are too impotent or too scared to flex any political muscle like in not getting the promised chump change (ten million dollars) to combat Black male unemployment in New York City.
The lesson that many Blacks have learned is that all black elected officials, without any exception, are pawns of the Democratic Party. They must do as they are told. This rule also applies to high profile Blacks associated with the Democratic Party. Because of fear and cooptation, Blacks are at the bottom of the political totem pole.
Any one who dares to stand up for Blacks must be knocked down. The Democratic Party is our new slavemaster. Black elected officials are plantation overseers. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has allowed us to participate in plantation politics. And we are in it whole hog. In short, we have no clue.
Because of the lack of any support and, in fact, actual and direct opposition from every Black leader and elected official, I have been forced to file a federal civil rights action against the judicial system in New York. People with power prefer to resolve problems politically rather than judicially. A powerless people must use the courts.
Federal law requires that the lawsuit had to be filed in the Brooklyn Federal Court. This is the same court, by suspending me indefinitely, which said that I was, in effect, an enemy combatant and is still not entitled to a hearing. It is doubtful if a change of venue motion would alter the odds.
I am complaining to this Court that New York had violated my constitutional rights by suppressing exculpatory materials and asserting, in any event, that I have no remedy nor relief nor forum to prove that I had been framed and railroaded. Mumia Abu-Jamal sought to exploit this remedy in 1995.
To make matters worse, Eliot Spitzer, the state attorney general, has asserted that the public must never be shown the Brawley files notwithstanding the FOIA and due process of law. This is Brady material. They should be available on the internet. A state attorney general has the obligation to produce exculpatory materials to a victim. Instead, he is engaged in a cover-up.
This classified information argument has not flown in many national security cases. It is being made here to protect a governmental conspiracy. So far, it is working because the political temperature in the Black community is feeble. Like with the promised ten million dollars, Black leaders are afraid to make a demand for this exculpatory materials. They have tuned their backs to Frederick Douglass.
The Grievance Committee has publicly stated that even if I were framed and railroaded by state and federal officials, I have no remedy. My response, as alleged in the civil rights complaint, is a denial of equal protection of the laws since a criminal defendant, by statute, may automatically seek post-conviction relief based on newly-discovered evidence and a civil defendant, by statute, may automatically seek post-judgment relief based on newly-discovered evidence.
I must put my newly-discovered evidence in storage. All avenues to a hearing must be denied. This is why the Brooklyn Federal Court can ill-afford to accord me a hearing as an enemy combatant. All newly-discovered evidence would be revealed in a public forum. The public could finally learn the truth about the Brawley cover-up.
Spitzer’s suppressed evidence would expose a government cover-up in the kidnapping and rape of Tawana Brawley. What has happened to all of those persons who publicly declared that they would defend her with their lives? We have a fear of winning. When the outcome of a case is in doubt, the support is present. Things change when it appears that the slaveowner may lose.
I was summarily suspended from the practice of law on May 21, 1990 without any hint of notice and opportunity to be heard. This was an odious violation of due process. The Brooklyn Federal Court directed me to appear before it in September 1990. I did with a specific and lawful demand that I be given a hearing as required by law.
The Chief Judge of the Brooklyn Federal Court informed me that I could not be suspended from federal practice without a due process hearing. This was on the record. In December 1990, he summarily suspended me from federal practice without a hearing. “No Negro has any rights that whites are bound to respect.” Two federal judges dissented.
The Supreme Court has finally ruled in June 2004 that American citizens labeled as enemy combatants after September 11, 2001, are entitled to a hearing before being indefinitely detained. This was a major victory for two American citizens who had been labeled enemy combatants.
I have been indefinitely suspended from the practice of law for fifteen years. If I were a citizen, I would be entitled to earn a living. For whites, this is not an important consideration for descendants of enslaved Africans who were brought to the Americas to earn a living for whites. Our job still is to finance white supremacy.
An African has no right to earn a living. Usually this is a liberty interest under the Constitution. Due process of law must precede any seizure of a liberty interest for everyone except Africans. Slavery is still in effect. We have failed to honor the teachings of Dr. King: “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” This is why I took so many pro bono cases.
Because descendants of enslaved Africans lack the right to enjoy a liberty interest, more than half of all Black males in New York are unemployed. I am a member of this category and I resent Black elected officials and high profile Blacks using this statistic to fatten their own wallets while too many Black families are homeless and hungry.
Judicial Appointments
A massive effort is afoot to disenfranchise Blacks, Latinos and Asians by abolishing the current system of electing justices to the Supreme Court and replacing it with an elective system. This would also apply to some civil court judgeships. The mayor in New York City appoints judges to the criminal court and the family court. Most of the judges in New York City, which has a non-white majority population, are Caucasians.
The fear among whites is that the judicial system in New York City will have a majority of historically-oppressed judges. To maintain control over New York City, whites are attempting to put appointive, judicial powers in white hands. This is happening while Blacks are being conned into putting all of their political eggs in chasing the rainbow: Gracie Mansion. Blacks are assured of another political setback in 2005. History will repeat itself again in 2006.
Judges
District Attorney Charles J. Hynes declared on Tuesday, January 18 that he also favors the appointment of judges. Like in the cases of Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson etc., Hynes is also playing the race card. The color of evil is Black like in devil’s food cake. Assemb. Clarence Norman, who is being accused of selling judgeships, has made Hynes do it. Racism invariably fuels legislative action.
Hynes is an agent of the prison-industrial complex. If judges are elected, a person like former Justice Bruce Wright may survive the judicial minefield. When former Mayor Edward Koch refused to re-appoint Wright to a criminal court judgeship, the grassroots community took to the streets and made him a Supreme Court justice through the ballot box. Power to the people.
If the right personnel is not in place, the prison-industrial complex will suffer. To thrive, the prison-industrial complex, like the slave trade once did, depends on Black bodies. If the constitutional rights of descendants of enslaved Africans were honored, the stock market would be depressed and Main Street would be liquidated. American capitalism depends on Black bodies and foreign currencies.
Assemb. Helene E. Weinstein of Brooklyn, who chairs the Assembly Judiciary Committee, has also stepped into the judicial fray. She has introduced legislation to establish screening committees to eliminate any potential judicial candidate who may be bent on giving Black and Latino defendants fair trials.
Members of the screening committees would be white persons. Even if the elective system remains intact, whites would still be able to control the content of the ballot. Voting would become an exercise in futility. Black elected officials know of this scheme but the Democratic Party has Mirandized them.
Legislative nooses are tightening around our necks. No one is sounding the alarm. We are sending lapdogs to represent us when we are in dire need of watchdogs like sheep need shepherds. Without watchdog committees, Blacks will most certainly be slaughtered. When you send a Black Democrat to a legislative body, you had better establish a self-defense mechanism. No person can serve two masters.
Supreme Court
The lives of more than one million criminal defendants have been destroyed because of federal sentencing guidelines. Congress established the U.S. Sentencing Commission in 1984 to purportedly ensure that convicted, criminal defendants in the federal system would receive uniform punishment. Sentencing has subsequently gone from lack of uniformity to cruelness and unusualness in both state and federal courts.
In U.S. v. Booker and U.S. v. Fanfan, the Supreme Court found that judicially-enhanced sentences violate the Sixth Amendment. After the jury’s verdict and before sentencing, federal judges would conduct their own fact-finding missions and, by only a preponderance of evidence, would enhance the sentences of convicted defendants. A jury should have been required to sustain the same charge by only proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Around the country, state and federal legislators are weakening the judiciary and empowering the executive branch of government. This is an erosion of the separation of powers doctrine. This also has the intent and effect of undermining an adversarial system of justice and putting criminal defendants behind the eight ball.
The sentencing guidelines actually give federal prosecutors undue leverage in coercing criminal defendants into agreeing to unconscionable plea bargains for fear of receiving a cruel and unusual sentence. These coerced pleas are usually not reviewable on appeal.
Judges can only add fuel to the fire. They are powerless to stop an injustice. The Feeney Amendment was passed in 2003 to keep federal judges under surveillance. Any lenient, federal judge would be reported to Attorney General John Ashcroft. Titusville, FL is in Cong. Tom Feeney’s congressional district. Harry and Harriette Moore once taught at the Titusville Colored School.
Under these coercive circumstances, innocent people, without the resources to retain competent and zealous counsel, will not only go to prison but be saddled down with deprivation of civil rights including the opportunity to secure employment. To combat the high unemployment of Black males, the Black community must address the problem of sentencing nationwide.
Soon after Congress passed civil rights laws in 1964 and 1965, it also passed sundry laws designed to strip Blacks of civil rights and to dilute the liberty interests which wrought unemployment and underemployment. This was Lyndon Johnson’s War on Blacks. It was being waged while Black faces were entering high places for the first time.
Congress will once again seize the opportunity to write even harsher sentencing laws. If this is, indeed, a representative government, the key issue is the response of the Black community. No other group is more disproportionately affected by cruel and unusual punishment than persons of African ancestry.
If Blacks have no written agenda, there will be no response from the Black community to any proposed congressional action including any debate on the floor of Congress. White legislators will rely on sentencing ideas from think tanks, the Federalist Society, the American Bar Association, among others. For them, it is legislative warfare.
Blacks, on the other hand, are more interested in putting Black faces in high places than the establishment and financing of think tanks or the employment of experts to combat legislative repression and to promote progressive ideas. No people will benefit from politics who is, otherwise, thoroughly disorganized like persons of African ancestry in the United States.
We are attempting to put the horse before the cart. This will not work. Politically, we are throwing away money. Politics starts with thinkers and not rappers. In the Black community, it starts with rappers. Thinkers in the Black community are as rare as water is in the Sahara Desert. Dr. Amos Wilson is a model for our survival.
First and foremost, politics is about formulating and implementing public policy. Dr. Martin King, Jr. and Malcolm X pursued and advocated in terms of public policy. Today, Black political hustlers are pursuing putting Black faces in high places as a primary objective. Their objective is selfish. It is only about putting family and friends in a few plum positions like in the DNC. The plight of Blacks is only a launching pad for living high on the hog.
Maddox v. Prudenti et. al.
Far too often, we are guilty of mistaken identity. When whites are speaking, we typically assume that they are referring to other people when, in fact, they are referring to us. When we finally connect the dots and start to think outside the box, it is, invariably, too late.
The “War on Terror” is an example. Most Blacks have no idea that they fall within the loop and are the primary suspects. For the Religious Right, the war against heathens is in full stride. We are the “heathens.” Warfare is based on deception but propaganda is the first missile to be fired. It is about controlling the mind.
After September 11, President-select George W. Bush took the extreme position that he was above the law and enjoyed the authority to arbitrarily classify citizens into categories. An enemy combatant, who is subject to incommunicado detention, is one of the categories. Congress, and not the president, is empowered to make rational classifications.
The Supreme Court granted cert. in three cases and, like the facts in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld v. Padilla indicate, the Bush regime subjects this authority to Americans and non-Americans alike. The legal question for Blacks is whether we are citizens or non-citizens.
The upshot of this authority is the suspension of the Constitution. Even before the term “enemy combatant” was in current vogue, the federal courts, acting only on a complaint from New York and without according to me any semblance of due process, suspended me indefinitely from the practice of law in the federal courts. This suspension, from federal practice, is still in effect. Judges Jack Weinstein and Charles P. Sifton were the only dissenters in an en banc panel.
I had hoped that my reinstatement to practice law would have been based on the exercise of Black power in New York. As Marcus Garvey stated: “A people without power and authority is a people without respect. Given the fact that we are the biggest voting bloc in New York City, it should be unthinkable that we are too impotent or too scared to flex any political muscle like in not getting the promised chump change (ten million dollars) to combat Black male unemployment in New York City.
The lesson that many Blacks have learned is that all black elected officials, without any exception, are pawns of the Democratic Party. They must do as they are told. This rule also applies to high profile Blacks associated with the Democratic Party. Because of fear and cooptation, Blacks are at the bottom of the political totem pole.
Any one who dares to stand up for Blacks must be knocked down. The Democratic Party is our new slavemaster. Black elected officials are plantation overseers. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has allowed us to participate in plantation politics. And we are in it whole hog. In short, we have no clue.
Because of the lack of any support and, in fact, actual and direct opposition from every Black leader and elected official, I have been forced to file a federal civil rights action against the judicial system in New York. People with power prefer to resolve problems politically rather than judicially. A powerless people must use the courts.
Federal law requires that the lawsuit had to be filed in the Brooklyn Federal Court. This is the same court, by suspending me indefinitely, which said that I was, in effect, an enemy combatant and is still not entitled to a hearing. It is doubtful if a change of venue motion would alter the odds.
I am complaining to this Court that New York had violated my constitutional rights by suppressing exculpatory materials and asserting, in any event, that I have no remedy nor relief nor forum to prove that I had been framed and railroaded. Mumia Abu-Jamal sought to exploit this remedy in 1995.
To make matters worse, Eliot Spitzer, the state attorney general, has asserted that the public must never be shown the Brawley files notwithstanding the FOIA and due process of law. This is Brady material. They should be available on the internet. A state attorney general has the obligation to produce exculpatory materials to a victim. Instead, he is engaged in a cover-up.
This classified information argument has not flown in many national security cases. It is being made here to protect a governmental conspiracy. So far, it is working because the political temperature in the Black community is feeble. Like with the promised ten million dollars, Black leaders are afraid to make a demand for this exculpatory materials. They have tuned their backs to Frederick Douglass.
The Grievance Committee has publicly stated that even if I were framed and railroaded by state and federal officials, I have no remedy. My response, as alleged in the civil rights complaint, is a denial of equal protection of the laws since a criminal defendant, by statute, may automatically seek post-conviction relief based on newly-discovered evidence and a civil defendant, by statute, may automatically seek post-judgment relief based on newly-discovered evidence.
I must put my newly-discovered evidence in storage. All avenues to a hearing must be denied. This is why the Brooklyn Federal Court can ill-afford to accord me a hearing as an enemy combatant. All newly-discovered evidence would be revealed in a public forum. The public could finally learn the truth about the Brawley cover-up.
Spitzer’s suppressed evidence would expose a government cover-up in the kidnapping and rape of Tawana Brawley. What has happened to all of those persons who publicly declared that they would defend her with their lives? We have a fear of winning. When the outcome of a case is in doubt, the support is present. Things change when it appears that the slaveowner may lose.
I was summarily suspended from the practice of law on May 21, 1990 without any hint of notice and opportunity to be heard. This was an odious violation of due process. The Brooklyn Federal Court directed me to appear before it in September 1990. I did with a specific and lawful demand that I be given a hearing as required by law.
The Chief Judge of the Brooklyn Federal Court informed me that I could not be suspended from federal practice without a due process hearing. This was on the record. In December 1990, he summarily suspended me from federal practice without a hearing. “No Negro has any rights that whites are bound to respect.” Two federal judges dissented.
The Supreme Court has finally ruled in June 2004 that American citizens labeled as enemy combatants after September 11, 2001, are entitled to a hearing before being indefinitely detained. This was a major victory for two American citizens who had been labeled enemy combatants.
I have been indefinitely suspended from the practice of law for fifteen years. If I were a citizen, I would be entitled to earn a living. For whites, this is not an important consideration for descendants of enslaved Africans who were brought to the Americas to earn a living for whites. Our job still is to finance white supremacy.
An African has no right to earn a living. Usually this is a liberty interest under the Constitution. Due process of law must precede any seizure of a liberty interest for everyone except Africans. Slavery is still in effect. We have failed to honor the teachings of Dr. King: “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” This is why I took so many pro bono cases.
Because descendants of enslaved Africans lack the right to enjoy a liberty interest, more than half of all Black males in New York are unemployed. I am a member of this category and I resent Black elected officials and high profile Blacks using this statistic to fatten their own wallets while too many Black families are homeless and hungry.
Judicial Appointments
A massive effort is afoot to disenfranchise Blacks, Latinos and Asians by abolishing the current system of electing justices to the Supreme Court and replacing it with an elective system. This would also apply to some civil court judgeships. The mayor in New York City appoints judges to the criminal court and the family court. Most of the judges in New York City, which has a non-white majority population, are Caucasians.
The fear among whites is that the judicial system in New York City will have a majority of historically-oppressed judges. To maintain control over New York City, whites are attempting to put appointive, judicial powers in white hands. This is happening while Blacks are being conned into putting all of their political eggs in chasing the rainbow: Gracie Mansion. Blacks are assured of another political setback in 2005. History will repeat itself again in 2006.
Judges
District Attorney Charles J. Hynes declared on Tuesday, January 18 that he also favors the appointment of judges. Like in the cases of Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson, O.J. Simpson etc., Hynes is also playing the race card. The color of evil is Black like in devil’s food cake. Assemb. Clarence Norman, who is being accused of selling judgeships, has made Hynes do it. Racism invariably fuels legislative action.
Hynes is an agent of the prison-industrial complex. If judges are elected, a person like former Justice Bruce Wright may survive the judicial minefield. When former Mayor Edward Koch refused to re-appoint Wright to a criminal court judgeship, the grassroots community took to the streets and made him a Supreme Court justice through the ballot box. Power to the people.
If the right personnel is not in place, the prison-industrial complex will suffer. To thrive, the prison-industrial complex, like the slave trade once did, depends on Black bodies. If the constitutional rights of descendants of enslaved Africans were honored, the stock market would be depressed and Main Street would be liquidated. American capitalism depends on Black bodies and foreign currencies.
Assemb. Helene E. Weinstein of Brooklyn, who chairs the Assembly Judiciary Committee, has also stepped into the judicial fray. She has introduced legislation to establish screening committees to eliminate any potential judicial candidate who may be bent on giving Black and Latino defendants fair trials.
Members of the screening committees would be white persons. Even if the elective system remains intact, whites would still be able to control the content of the ballot. Voting would become an exercise in futility. Black elected officials know of this scheme but the Democratic Party has Mirandized them.
Legislative nooses are tightening around our necks. No one is sounding the alarm. We are sending lapdogs to represent us when we are in dire need of watchdogs like sheep need shepherds. Without watchdog committees, Blacks will most certainly be slaughtered. When you send a Black Democrat to a legislative body, you had better establish a self-defense mechanism. No person can serve two masters.
posted by Attorney Alton Maddox at 1:24 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home