An Anatomy of a Grievance Hearing
A. History
Most Black lawyers, before the twentieth century, were initially admitted to the practice of law after the completion of an apprenticeship under a white lawyer. Macon B Allen was admitted to the Maine bar in 1844 after completing an apprenticeship. He became the first Black lawyer in the country.
Usually, the apprenticeship was for three years. Otherwise, a would-be lawyer would have to be examined. New York still has an apprenticeship to supplant a legal education. Howard University started its law school in 1869. Most Blacks continued to learn law as apprentices.
After 1870, states began to enact educational standards. For Blacks, this usually meant night school. Blacks who were the children of slavemasters were favored over Blacks viewed as pure Africans unless the Africans were in good favor with whites.
This is the foundation for the current notion that a Black lawyer needs a rabbi or a priest as an insurance policy against a disciplinary action. Even today, most Black lawyers work for whites or enjoy their legal protection. After the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled against women lawyers in 1873. Charlotte Ray became the first, Black female lawyer in 1872.
The American Bar Association was established in 1878. Afterwards, grievance committees were established to weed out dissenters in the legal profession and historically-despised persons including descendants of enslaved Africans in addition to European immigrants. Their legal status was suspect. These Europeans were fleeing discrimination and persecution.
Between 1910 and 1911, three Black lawyers slipped into the ABA, which in 1912, made it official that Black lawyers were unwanted. Later, Black lawyers would form the National Bar Association. During World War II, the ABA gradually removed its ban. In the meantime, the National Lawyers Guild did admit Black lawyers.
B. First Amendment
“Might makes right” in New York. This is the basis behind positive law and formed the justification for the slave codes. I am accused of violating Disciplinary Rule 8-102(b). “A lawyer shall not knowingly make false accusations against a judge or other adjudicatory officer.”
According to the charges: “Respondent made a knowingly false accusation against a judge, as follows: (1) In columns written by respondent for the New York Amsterdam News, appearing on or about January 23, 2006 and February 2, 2006, respondent accused Hon. William Erlbaum, the judge presiding over respondent’s 1985 criminal trial of instructing the jury to find him guilty. (2) Respondent’s published statements concerning Judge Erlbaum’s instruction to the jury were false.”
The U.S. Supreme Court settled this issue of falsity in New York Times v. Sullivan. Four members of the clergy in Montgomery, AL including Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. had allegedly made false statements against the city’s white police commissioner. These were “fighting words” under the Alabama slave code.
Acknowledging that the statements by Dr. King et. al. were false, the Supreme Court held, nonetheless, that to prove actual malice, the statement must have been made with “knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” The judgment against them had to fall.
When Judge Erlbaum gave this instruction, attorney Louis Clayton Jones went ballistics. He was tossed from the courtroom. I objected to the instruction. After court recess and dinner, the jury asked for a re-reading of the instruction. It was obviously flawed. I objected again to the instruction.
The First Amendment does not allow me to write about this incident in a newspaper. Whites enjoy free speech and a free press. They are able to express opinions on the opinion page of a newspaper. I am forbidden from recounting what happened in People v. Maddox twenty-one years ago.
To make matters worse, the Grievance Committee has never seen the jury instructions. The mere fact that I would criticize a white judge is enough to invoke a disbarment proceeding in New York. This is a crapshoot and a withchunt. Judges are not above the law.
C. Disciplinary Proceedings
The disbarment hearing scheduled for November 21, 2006 has been postponed in order for me to save myself from judicial tyranny. I must prove my own innocence to avert a judicial lynching. The burden of proof has shifted from the Grievance Committee to the accused. This means that I am presumed guilty. It is down to crunch time.
Although I was technically disbarred from the practice of law in May 1990 for defending Tawana Brawley, a kidnapping and rape victim, and Rev. Al Sharpton in a 67-count indictment, it was nominally called a suspension. A definite suspension of five years would follow the remaining period which was achieved without a hearing.
My suspension was for nine years and two months. A disbarment is for only seven years. A disbarred attorney may seek reinstatement after seven years. A suspension is usually for five years in toto. The suspension itself was unauthorized.
In later October 2006, the Grievance Committee for the Second and Eleventh Judicial Districts claimed that I had no right to recount a frame-up orchestrated by the Manhattan district attorney’s office for my outspokenness in the police-sponsored murder of Michael Stewart and my defense of Willie Bosket who was credited with the enactment of the Juvenile Offender Law in New York.
D. Judicial Politics
Michael Stewart was beaten into an irreversible coma in 1983. Afterwards, Louis Clayton Jones, Michael Warren and myself secured evidence of a cover-up involving Mayor Ed Koch, the city’s medical examiner’s office and the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer was employed by the district attorney’s office as a prosecutor.
The political establishment singled me out as the architect of the Stewart expose`. In the defense of my client, Willie Bosket, I was accused of beating up two court officers in a courtroom and throwing my briefcase at the judge. This led to a felony charge and an obstruction of justice charge. It is the poison pill in an accusatory instrument.
An obstruction of justice conviction leads to automatic disbarment. Attorney Jamal Deshong would have to face similar charges twenty years later in Manhattan Supreme Court. He was also accused of engaging in a physical confrontation with court officers.
The judiciary is not independent and politics is pervasive. Judges are chosen, in many instances, to go headhunting. The examples are legion and include the Central Park jogger case and Pagones v. Maddox et. al. involving a defamation trial in Dutchess County.
The lead defendant is usually the person that the state is really after --public enemy number one. The other defendants are listed in the order that the state views them as threats. I was the lead defendant in the defamation trial in Dutchess County Supreme Court.
Judge William Erlbaum was chosen to preside over the trial of People v. Maddox. In legal circles, it was reported that Erlbaum was in the judicial doghouse for ruling, previously, against the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Robert Morgenthau is the most powerful prosecutor in the United States including the U.S. Attorney General. His father was Secretary of the Treasure under FDR.
It was apparent that Erlbaum could improve his judicial status if I were convicted and sent to prison. I had to represent myself since no Black attorney wanted to put his or her legal career in jeopardy. Morgenthau has a long memory and he can pull the plug on any attorney’s legal career.
Everyone knew that this trial was for all the marbles and whites, from top to bottom, lined up to testify against me including Justice Robert Haft who would become the star witness for the prosecution. I had been offered a plea including a public apology over television. A conviction would mean automatic disbarment and imprisonment.
Morgenthau would assign one of his top, homicide prosecutors to prosecute an assault case. He later received applause for successfully prosecuting Joel Steinberg for the murder of his stepdaughter and a vicious assault of his wife. The Daily News would later report that the only blemish on his illustrious career was an acquittal in People v. Maddox.
When the government really wants a defendant and the trial is leaning in favor of the defendant, there will usually be judicial intervention. For example, People v. Sharpton started in March 1990. By May, the trial was leaning in favor of Sharpton. Accordingly, the trial was halted and I was given an offer that I should sink Sharpton or wave goodbye to my law license.
Two weeks later, I was permanently suspended form the practice of law amid the criminal trial on May 21, 1990. This was unprecedented in American jurisprudence. Sharpton was indicted on 70 counts in June 1989. The Grievance Committee started pursuing me for the Brawley file in October 1989.
You connect the dots. They needed the file to get me off the case and use any seized evidence against Sharpton. Anyone who stood between New York and Sharpton would have to bite the bullet. My representation of Sharpton was pro bono and based on principle.
E. Verdict in People v. Maddox
In People v. Maddox, Erlbaum recognized the need for judicial intervention to avoid his booking passage to “Siberia.” When Erlbaum gave the jury instructions to the jury in People v. Maddox, attorney Jones hit the ceiling. He accused Erlbaum of instructing the jury to convict me.
Erlbaum tossed Jones from the courtroom. I made the same objection on the record –twice. The jury asked for this instruction again. It appeared that my fate was sealed. The only other alternative for the jury was jury nullification. The jury nullified the instruction.
After the jury rejected the instructions and announced its verdict, the prosecutor rushed out of the courtroom before the jury could be polled on its verdict of acquittal. The hundreds of supporters in the courtroom and in the hallways did their thing in front of Erlbaum and court personnel.
We had to wait several hours before the prosecutor would return to the courtroom. He knew that either party was entitled to a polling of the jury. His abrupt departure was contemptuous. Obviously, he was shielded from a contempt charge. A contempt charge would only complicate Erlbaum’s plight. Later, Erlbaum would be reassigned to Queens.
F. Police State
The prohibition against double jeopardy does not apply to Blacks. See for example, Judge Alcee Hastings. O.J. Simpson would still be subject to civil liability after the acquittal in the murder case. All of his white friends abandoned him. White supremacists are still waiting to cage him.
The Court Officers Association would not take my acquittal lying down. The gun rules the courtroom. Justice Laura Blackburne found this out the hard way. Criminal courts were once named “police courts” and for good reason. I have always been a thorn in the Association’s side. See Howard Beach.
When I appeared at the grievance hearing with my attorney, the late Hudson Reid, and attorney C. Vernon Mason, as an observer, the Chief Counsel belatedly gave Reid a document to read before the hearing. This document should have been given to Reid well in advance of the hearing.
Once the court officers found out that Reid was a slow reader, he was tossed from the hearing. This left me without an attorney. The hearing never started. Several months later, the Grievance Committee censured me for beating up two court officers and throwing a briefcase at a judge. This censure would be the justification for the permanent suspension.
The indefinite suspension imposed upon me amid the trial of People v. Sharpton was also achieved without a hearing. Four years late, I was accorded a skeleton hearing. Afterwards, the Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department ruled that I should be suspended for another five years because I beat up two court officers and threw a briefcase at a judge. My acquittal on the same charges was meaningless. Time served was not of the question.
G. Conclusion
Now, I am being charged with giving a false account of what happened to me in the trial of People v. Maddox in the New York Amsterdam News. After I received the notice of charges, I asked the Grievance Committee to outline the evidence against me. The response was that it had no evidence against me.
Judge Erlbaum never filed a complaint against me and the Grievance Committee has never read nor is it in possession of the jury instructions. Yet, it announced a sua sponte investigation. This is akin to organizing a lynch mob.
The applicable provision of the NYCRR says that no hearing can be initiated without probable cause. The absence of any evidence is tantamount to racial profiling, the roots of which are in slavery. A lynching also occurs without evidence. Normally, a lack of evidence means dismissing the disciplinary proceeding.
To avoid a lynching, I have had to seek a postponement in order to secure costly transcripts of the 1985 trial to prove my innocence. If I fail to secure these transcripts, I will be officially disbarred since any punishment would push the permanent suspension over the cliff.
Although a lynching is illegal, I know of no politician, leading Black, leading preacher nor leading activist who will step forward to confront the slavemaster. In all of my years in New York, with or without a law license, I have stepped forward to stop an injustice. See, for example, Mumia Abu-Jamal after my permanent suspension. Slavery is alive and well. Black leaders have no tongues.
11/15/06
Most Black lawyers, before the twentieth century, were initially admitted to the practice of law after the completion of an apprenticeship under a white lawyer. Macon B Allen was admitted to the Maine bar in 1844 after completing an apprenticeship. He became the first Black lawyer in the country.
Usually, the apprenticeship was for three years. Otherwise, a would-be lawyer would have to be examined. New York still has an apprenticeship to supplant a legal education. Howard University started its law school in 1869. Most Blacks continued to learn law as apprentices.
After 1870, states began to enact educational standards. For Blacks, this usually meant night school. Blacks who were the children of slavemasters were favored over Blacks viewed as pure Africans unless the Africans were in good favor with whites.
This is the foundation for the current notion that a Black lawyer needs a rabbi or a priest as an insurance policy against a disciplinary action. Even today, most Black lawyers work for whites or enjoy their legal protection. After the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled against women lawyers in 1873. Charlotte Ray became the first, Black female lawyer in 1872.
The American Bar Association was established in 1878. Afterwards, grievance committees were established to weed out dissenters in the legal profession and historically-despised persons including descendants of enslaved Africans in addition to European immigrants. Their legal status was suspect. These Europeans were fleeing discrimination and persecution.
Between 1910 and 1911, three Black lawyers slipped into the ABA, which in 1912, made it official that Black lawyers were unwanted. Later, Black lawyers would form the National Bar Association. During World War II, the ABA gradually removed its ban. In the meantime, the National Lawyers Guild did admit Black lawyers.
B. First Amendment
“Might makes right” in New York. This is the basis behind positive law and formed the justification for the slave codes. I am accused of violating Disciplinary Rule 8-102(b). “A lawyer shall not knowingly make false accusations against a judge or other adjudicatory officer.”
According to the charges: “Respondent made a knowingly false accusation against a judge, as follows: (1) In columns written by respondent for the New York Amsterdam News, appearing on or about January 23, 2006 and February 2, 2006, respondent accused Hon. William Erlbaum, the judge presiding over respondent’s 1985 criminal trial of instructing the jury to find him guilty. (2) Respondent’s published statements concerning Judge Erlbaum’s instruction to the jury were false.”
The U.S. Supreme Court settled this issue of falsity in New York Times v. Sullivan. Four members of the clergy in Montgomery, AL including Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. had allegedly made false statements against the city’s white police commissioner. These were “fighting words” under the Alabama slave code.
Acknowledging that the statements by Dr. King et. al. were false, the Supreme Court held, nonetheless, that to prove actual malice, the statement must have been made with “knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” The judgment against them had to fall.
When Judge Erlbaum gave this instruction, attorney Louis Clayton Jones went ballistics. He was tossed from the courtroom. I objected to the instruction. After court recess and dinner, the jury asked for a re-reading of the instruction. It was obviously flawed. I objected again to the instruction.
The First Amendment does not allow me to write about this incident in a newspaper. Whites enjoy free speech and a free press. They are able to express opinions on the opinion page of a newspaper. I am forbidden from recounting what happened in People v. Maddox twenty-one years ago.
To make matters worse, the Grievance Committee has never seen the jury instructions. The mere fact that I would criticize a white judge is enough to invoke a disbarment proceeding in New York. This is a crapshoot and a withchunt. Judges are not above the law.
C. Disciplinary Proceedings
The disbarment hearing scheduled for November 21, 2006 has been postponed in order for me to save myself from judicial tyranny. I must prove my own innocence to avert a judicial lynching. The burden of proof has shifted from the Grievance Committee to the accused. This means that I am presumed guilty. It is down to crunch time.
Although I was technically disbarred from the practice of law in May 1990 for defending Tawana Brawley, a kidnapping and rape victim, and Rev. Al Sharpton in a 67-count indictment, it was nominally called a suspension. A definite suspension of five years would follow the remaining period which was achieved without a hearing.
My suspension was for nine years and two months. A disbarment is for only seven years. A disbarred attorney may seek reinstatement after seven years. A suspension is usually for five years in toto. The suspension itself was unauthorized.
In later October 2006, the Grievance Committee for the Second and Eleventh Judicial Districts claimed that I had no right to recount a frame-up orchestrated by the Manhattan district attorney’s office for my outspokenness in the police-sponsored murder of Michael Stewart and my defense of Willie Bosket who was credited with the enactment of the Juvenile Offender Law in New York.
D. Judicial Politics
Michael Stewart was beaten into an irreversible coma in 1983. Afterwards, Louis Clayton Jones, Michael Warren and myself secured evidence of a cover-up involving Mayor Ed Koch, the city’s medical examiner’s office and the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer was employed by the district attorney’s office as a prosecutor.
The political establishment singled me out as the architect of the Stewart expose`. In the defense of my client, Willie Bosket, I was accused of beating up two court officers in a courtroom and throwing my briefcase at the judge. This led to a felony charge and an obstruction of justice charge. It is the poison pill in an accusatory instrument.
An obstruction of justice conviction leads to automatic disbarment. Attorney Jamal Deshong would have to face similar charges twenty years later in Manhattan Supreme Court. He was also accused of engaging in a physical confrontation with court officers.
The judiciary is not independent and politics is pervasive. Judges are chosen, in many instances, to go headhunting. The examples are legion and include the Central Park jogger case and Pagones v. Maddox et. al. involving a defamation trial in Dutchess County.
The lead defendant is usually the person that the state is really after --public enemy number one. The other defendants are listed in the order that the state views them as threats. I was the lead defendant in the defamation trial in Dutchess County Supreme Court.
Judge William Erlbaum was chosen to preside over the trial of People v. Maddox. In legal circles, it was reported that Erlbaum was in the judicial doghouse for ruling, previously, against the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Robert Morgenthau is the most powerful prosecutor in the United States including the U.S. Attorney General. His father was Secretary of the Treasure under FDR.
It was apparent that Erlbaum could improve his judicial status if I were convicted and sent to prison. I had to represent myself since no Black attorney wanted to put his or her legal career in jeopardy. Morgenthau has a long memory and he can pull the plug on any attorney’s legal career.
Everyone knew that this trial was for all the marbles and whites, from top to bottom, lined up to testify against me including Justice Robert Haft who would become the star witness for the prosecution. I had been offered a plea including a public apology over television. A conviction would mean automatic disbarment and imprisonment.
Morgenthau would assign one of his top, homicide prosecutors to prosecute an assault case. He later received applause for successfully prosecuting Joel Steinberg for the murder of his stepdaughter and a vicious assault of his wife. The Daily News would later report that the only blemish on his illustrious career was an acquittal in People v. Maddox.
When the government really wants a defendant and the trial is leaning in favor of the defendant, there will usually be judicial intervention. For example, People v. Sharpton started in March 1990. By May, the trial was leaning in favor of Sharpton. Accordingly, the trial was halted and I was given an offer that I should sink Sharpton or wave goodbye to my law license.
Two weeks later, I was permanently suspended form the practice of law amid the criminal trial on May 21, 1990. This was unprecedented in American jurisprudence. Sharpton was indicted on 70 counts in June 1989. The Grievance Committee started pursuing me for the Brawley file in October 1989.
You connect the dots. They needed the file to get me off the case and use any seized evidence against Sharpton. Anyone who stood between New York and Sharpton would have to bite the bullet. My representation of Sharpton was pro bono and based on principle.
E. Verdict in People v. Maddox
In People v. Maddox, Erlbaum recognized the need for judicial intervention to avoid his booking passage to “Siberia.” When Erlbaum gave the jury instructions to the jury in People v. Maddox, attorney Jones hit the ceiling. He accused Erlbaum of instructing the jury to convict me.
Erlbaum tossed Jones from the courtroom. I made the same objection on the record –twice. The jury asked for this instruction again. It appeared that my fate was sealed. The only other alternative for the jury was jury nullification. The jury nullified the instruction.
After the jury rejected the instructions and announced its verdict, the prosecutor rushed out of the courtroom before the jury could be polled on its verdict of acquittal. The hundreds of supporters in the courtroom and in the hallways did their thing in front of Erlbaum and court personnel.
We had to wait several hours before the prosecutor would return to the courtroom. He knew that either party was entitled to a polling of the jury. His abrupt departure was contemptuous. Obviously, he was shielded from a contempt charge. A contempt charge would only complicate Erlbaum’s plight. Later, Erlbaum would be reassigned to Queens.
F. Police State
The prohibition against double jeopardy does not apply to Blacks. See for example, Judge Alcee Hastings. O.J. Simpson would still be subject to civil liability after the acquittal in the murder case. All of his white friends abandoned him. White supremacists are still waiting to cage him.
The Court Officers Association would not take my acquittal lying down. The gun rules the courtroom. Justice Laura Blackburne found this out the hard way. Criminal courts were once named “police courts” and for good reason. I have always been a thorn in the Association’s side. See Howard Beach.
When I appeared at the grievance hearing with my attorney, the late Hudson Reid, and attorney C. Vernon Mason, as an observer, the Chief Counsel belatedly gave Reid a document to read before the hearing. This document should have been given to Reid well in advance of the hearing.
Once the court officers found out that Reid was a slow reader, he was tossed from the hearing. This left me without an attorney. The hearing never started. Several months later, the Grievance Committee censured me for beating up two court officers and throwing a briefcase at a judge. This censure would be the justification for the permanent suspension.
The indefinite suspension imposed upon me amid the trial of People v. Sharpton was also achieved without a hearing. Four years late, I was accorded a skeleton hearing. Afterwards, the Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department ruled that I should be suspended for another five years because I beat up two court officers and threw a briefcase at a judge. My acquittal on the same charges was meaningless. Time served was not of the question.
G. Conclusion
Now, I am being charged with giving a false account of what happened to me in the trial of People v. Maddox in the New York Amsterdam News. After I received the notice of charges, I asked the Grievance Committee to outline the evidence against me. The response was that it had no evidence against me.
Judge Erlbaum never filed a complaint against me and the Grievance Committee has never read nor is it in possession of the jury instructions. Yet, it announced a sua sponte investigation. This is akin to organizing a lynch mob.
The applicable provision of the NYCRR says that no hearing can be initiated without probable cause. The absence of any evidence is tantamount to racial profiling, the roots of which are in slavery. A lynching also occurs without evidence. Normally, a lack of evidence means dismissing the disciplinary proceeding.
To avoid a lynching, I have had to seek a postponement in order to secure costly transcripts of the 1985 trial to prove my innocence. If I fail to secure these transcripts, I will be officially disbarred since any punishment would push the permanent suspension over the cliff.
Although a lynching is illegal, I know of no politician, leading Black, leading preacher nor leading activist who will step forward to confront the slavemaster. In all of my years in New York, with or without a law license, I have stepped forward to stop an injustice. See, for example, Mumia Abu-Jamal after my permanent suspension. Slavery is alive and well. Black leaders have no tongues.
11/15/06
posted by Attorney Alton Maddox at 1:14 PM
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