Alton H. Maddox, Jr. Telephone: 718-834-9034
FAX: 718-834-1275
16 Court Street, Suite 1901
Brooklyn, New York 11241
April 4, 2007
Sen. Barack Obama
United States Senate
713 HSOB
Washington, DC 20510
Re: Violation of Civil Rights
Dear Sen. Obama:
For seventeen years, I have maintained that the Department of Justice has an important responsibility in ensuring that the conduct of overzealous prosecutors not violate one’s civil rights. This is especially true in the field of legal representation. Prosecutors routinely use their authority to hit competent and zealous defense lawyers, representing unpopular defendants and causes, below the belt.
The media has reported your support for Rep. Walter Jones’ unprecedented call for a federal probe into Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong’s handling of the Duke lacrosse rape case. A North Carolina grand jury accused three, white, Duke University students of kidnapping and raping a Black female. Supposedly, Nifong delayed the production of exculpatory evidence; namely, DNA, to the defense before trial.
This conduct, if true, is small potatoes compared to the facts leading up to my illegal and wrongful suspension from the practice of law in New York in May 1990, without any semblance of due process of law. I was representing Tawana Brawley, a victim of police terrorism, who had been kidnapped by white law enforcement officials in New York on November 24, 1987. I was also representing Rev. Al Sharpton pro bono.
Within two days after Tawana was found, in Dutchess County on November 28, 1987, unconscious, smeared with feces and “nigger” and “KKK” written on her body, federal, state and local officials were attempting to secure her account of the incident while she was still traumatized.
It was unknown, to the Brawley family, at the time, that a girlfriend, Hilda Kogut, of one of the assailants, Steven Pagones, an assistant district attorney in Dutchess County, was an FBI agent in charge of the civil rights investigation. This was an obvious conflict-of-interest and it showed that a cover-up was afoot. The disclosure was made in 1998.
I was unable to agree to represent the Brawley family, pro bono, until after December 12, 1987. In the interim, I did arrange for Tawana to see a gynecologist. She was admitted to the Westchester County Medical Center for tests. The hospital record showed that she had been raped. From these facts, New York would later claim that I had perpetrated a hoax even though I have never met any of the medical personnel.
Pagones’ arson investigator seized the rape kit from a Poughkeepsie hospital on November 28, 1987. No explanation has ever been made concerning the location of the rape kit. New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams would publicly argue later that even if a white man had enjoyed sex with Tawana Brawley in November 1987, it was not statutory rape. Her sixteenth birthday would not occur until December 1987.
Within four days after Tawana had been found, Harry Crist, Jr., a police officer, was found dead in his apartment. Law enforcement officials publicly characterized his death as a suicide after suppressing the autopsy report for more than a decade. The identity of the pathologist was also suppressed for more than a decade. This is a federal crime.
This was an obvious cover-up and Abrams joined in it to protect privileged perps like those in the Duke lacrosse rape case. There was a fear, among Crist’s confederates, that he was mentally unstable and would crack. Tawana would later finger Crist as one of her assailants. Crist had also recently put a .357 magnum to Pagones’ head and threatened to pull the trigger. Pagones never denied it.
By January 1988, the Dutchess County district attorney’s office knew that it had a conflict-of-interest. Instead of the office removing itself from the grand jury investigation, it established a grand jury trap. If I had cooperated with the prosecutor’s office and if a white postman had not been present in the vicinity where Tawana had been dumped on November 28, this machination might have worked.
Instead, the postman’s observation, on November 28, gave the prosecutor’s office sufficient information to suspect that Pagones had previously given false information about Crist and Brawley. Pagones had claimed that he, Crist, a state trooper and a friend were not in Poughkeepsie, near Tawana’s former residence, but in Danbury, CT shopping for Christmas gifts on November 28.
The postman had observed Crist’s car near the Brawleys’ former residence on November 28. The district attorney’s office had subpoenaed the postman in January 1988 to testify about the Brawley’s routine in picking up mail after they had vacated the apartment.
He volunteered the sighting of Crist’s vehicle in Poughkeepsie on November 28. The prosecutor’s office, in the postman’s grand jury appearance, refused to question him about his observations of four white men in Crist’s vehicle on November 28. The grand jury was defrauded to protect Pagones’ identity. Eventually, the postman was fired from the United States Postal Service.
Afterwards, Dutchess County Court Judge Judith Hillery wrote a confidential letter to Gov. Mario Cuomo to requesting the appointment of a special prosecutor. In her confidential letter, she noted that Pagones was a suspect. The FBI was also treating Pagones as a suspect. He retained a lawyer and refused to cooperate with the federal civil rights investigation.
Bill Cosby and Ed Lewis posted a reward on February 11 to ascertain the identity of Tawana’s assailants. Abrams told the media, after the grand jury had been empanelled on February 29, that he knew of no suspect. This was a lie. Gov. Cuomo knew that he was lying. He had received the confidential letter from Dutchess County.
On March 13, I told the media that Pagones was involved in the kidnapping and rape of Tawana Brawley. This was the first, public accusation against Pagones. Cuomo and Abrams went ballistics. They joined with the white media in demanding that Pagones sue me for defamation. I was not supposed to know of Pagones’ identity.
Once I fingered Pagones, to counter Abrams’ misrepresentation to the media, the FBI started moving backwards and Abrams came up with a new target for the grand jury. This information is in the FBI files. It shows that the FBI did lay a glove on Pagones in March, and afterwards, put its investigatory transmission in reverse.
The new mission of the grand jury was not only to discredit Tawana but also to bring myself, attorney C. Vernon Mason and Rev. Al Sharpton under the grand jury’s microscope. Abrams would use the grand jury to bleach Pagones’ involvement in the kidnapping and rape of Tawana Brawley.
White members of the New York Legislature, without precedent, demanded disciplinary investigations against me and Mason because “[t]he behavior of these individuals ... has made a mockery of the state’s legal system.” The complaint also asserts that the attorneys “have made the judicial process of New York State the laughing stock of the nation and indeed the world .... and if the facts indicate a violation of the Canons of Ethics, they should be punished accordingly.”
Previously, this same Legislature had honored attorney Barry Slotnick for his competent and zealous representation of subway gunman, Bernard Goetz, who gunned down four, unarmed Black youth on a New York City subway train. This ceremony took place in Albany.
This political system only gets upset when justice is sought, when the victim is Black and when the perpetrator is white. A Black woman has no right to accuse a white man of kidnapping had raping her and no attorney, afterwards should make a big deal out of it. This has allowed white rapists to go unpunished in interracial sexual assaults.
In October 1988, Abrams would use the grand jury as a backdrop to; issuing a grand jury report exonerating Pagones; defaming Tawana as perpetrating a hoax; and recommending disciplinary actions against me and Mason and a criminal prosecution against Sharpton.
He immediately filed a disciplinary complaint against me with the Second and Eleventh Judicial Districts. Initially, the Grievance Committee told the New York Times that any investigation of the disciplinary complaint would violate the attorney-client privilege. This is true.
Pagones would file a civil complaint against me, Mason Sharpton and Brawley in Dutchess County Supreme. His defamation complaint was modeled on the grand jury report which we would later find out was bogus. Over my hearsay objection, the report was admitted at the trial of the defamation complaint to prove Pagones’ case.
Tawana was a minor and the defamation complaint against her was never served on her mother nor her father. Everyone filed a notice of appearance except Tawana. New York entered a default judgment against her. This outstanding default judgment has given Pagones the potential pretext, if necessary, to harass her.
Essentially, Abrams claimed, in the disciplinary complaint, that I had falsely implicated Pagones in the kidnapping and rape of Tawana and that I had lied when I said that Crist had been murdered. Abrams was in exclusive possession of exculpatory materials to refute Pagones’ claim of innocence and to contradict a claim that Crist had killed himself. He refused to stop a miscarriage of justice.
New York allows for pre-trial discovery in every civil action. An autopsy report is routinely disclosed to a civil defendant early in the civil action. This pre-trial discovery rule was suspended in this defamation lawsuit and for good reason. Ten years later and during the defamation trial, I was finally able to extract Crist’s autopsy report.
It showed that Abrams had lied when he claimed that Crist had killed himself. The identity of the pathologist was finally disclosed to me. I put him under oath at the trial. He testified that Abrams never contacted him to give grand jury testimony and that Crist had been murdered.
The pathologist, Dr. Alexander Aplasca, was never given a suicide note nor a weapon allegedly used in the shooting. He found no gunpowder residue on Crist’s hands. When Abrams fashioned the disciplinary complaint successfully suspending me from the practice of law, he made sure that the autopsy report would be suppressed for at least a decade.
A petit jury in Dutchess County Supreme Court, composed of five whites and one Black female, found, in its verdict sheet, that I had not defamed Pagones. In fact, William Stanton, Pagones’ attorney, asserted that he and Pagones never believed that I had made the accusations without an arguable, factual foundation. Stanton refused to call me as a witness during Pagones’ case. He did call Mason and Sharpton.
Nonetheless, Justice S. Barrett Hickman ordered me to pay Pagones despite the jury’s verdict sheet finding non-liability. In appointing Justice Hickman to preside over the defamation lawsuit, New York went forum shopping. The voters of Putnam County elected Justice Hickman to the Supreme Court, Putnam County. No reason existed for him to be assigned to hear Pagones’ lawsuit in Dutchess County Supreme Court.
On September 11, 2000, I found a Brawley grand juror in Boise, Idaho. He signed an affidavit stating that Abrams, rather than the grand jury, had written the grand jury report. This is a violation of Article 190 of the Criminal Procedure Law. He questioned whether Abrams had a quorum when the grand jury voted on the grand jury report and that the grand jury never said that Tawana’s claim was a “hoax.”
Because a grand jury proceeding is secret in New York, a prosecutor can frame and railroad a person easily, especially under the circumstances herein. This suspension could have never occurred but for the secrecy provisions of New York law. Abrams used these provisions to destroy my reputation and to deprive me of a right to earn a living for seventeen years. Tawana Brawley is also suffering from state-sponsored defamation.
The Brawley case is far more egregious than the Duke lacrosse rape case. Assuming arguendo that Nifong conduct delayed the disclosure of DNA evidence, this omission never led to a criminal conviction and probable cause certainly existed for the arrest and prosecution of the three students. Moreover, the delay in providing exculpatory material to the defense is a matter that can be addressed by the trial court.
Amid my pro bono representation of Sharpton in a 67-count indictment in Manhattan Supreme Court, the Grievance Committee for the Second and Eleventh Judicial Districts, which was allegedly investigating Abrams’ bogus complaint, put me in a Catch-22 situation. I could either assist Abrams in convicting Sharpton and save myself or I would take a hit. In short, I was asked to violate the attorney-client privilege and the work product privilege. I refused.
In 2004, I filed a civil rights action, against the justices of the Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department which governs the discipline of attorneys in Brooklyn. The action is styled Maddox v. Prudenti et. al., Civ. Action. No. 5444 (U.S.D.C.,E.D.N.Y. 2004).
Judge Carolyn B. Amon was initially assigned to hear the case. I was never given an opportunity to be present during this selection process and I, therefore, strenuously objected to her selection. The selection of a judge may affect the outcome of a case. My objection was sustained.
Judge Nina Gershon was randomly selected to hear the case in accordance with law. At a pre-trial conference, the defendants claimed that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine was a bar to the prosecution of the case. This issue was fully briefed, by both parties, before Judge Gershon.
This was the defendants’ only legal objection to the civil rights complaint. It was clear that no legal objection existed to ban my claims. Without an application by either party and without explanation, Judge Gershon, in October 2006, recused herself. This was wrong.
I was informed through Judge Gershon’s letter that Judge Bryan M. Cogan, without my knowledge, had been assigned to replace Judge Gershon. Judge Cogan, until his judicial appointment to the federal bench in May 2006, had been a law partner of Robert Abrams. I obtained this information through research. It was not made known to me..
Obviously, I smelled a rat and complained that this assignment was not made in accordance with law and had the appearance of impropriety. I demanded that Judge Cogan recuse himself. I received no response from my objection under Easter District Rule 50.2 (F). Instead, I received a decision dated December 14, 2006 from Judge Allyne R. Ross.
I was never aware that Judge Ross had been assigned to hear the case. I have a right to be present when a judge is randomly selected to hear the case under Eastern District Rule 50.2(b) and I have a right to know the identity of the assigned judge and the date of the unlawful assignment.
Judge Ross decided that I had overcome the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, which has generally prevented disciplined attorneys from seeking relief in federal court but Judge Ross found, sua sponte, that I lacked standing. This is a violation of due process. I am entitled to notice and opportunity to be heard. I have never met Judge Ross.
No one but Judge Ross saw standing as a legal problem. If standing was an issue, I should have been given an opportunity to address this issue after defendants had made a written motion to dismiss my complaint for lack of standing. The defendants know that standing is not an issue.
This is supposed to be an adversarial system. The judge is supposed to referee the argument of the parties. There was no standing argument. I am the aggrieved party and I clearly have the right, alone, to complain about my suspension. This is the essence of standing up.
This same Federal District Court, in Brooklyn, has permitted a white felon who is forbidden from practicing law in New York State to practice law in the Brooklyn Federal Court. Another white felon who was convicted of armed robbery was permitted to practice law in New York by the Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department. He has also been admitted to the Brooklyn Federal Court.
Chief Judge Sol Wachtler was later sentenced to federal prison. He was automatically disbarred in New York after I was permanently suspended from the practice of law. The Appellate Division Second Judicial Department is vetting his application for reinstatement to practice law.
Similarly, former Westchester County district attorney’s husband, Albert Pirro, was sent to federal prison some time after my suspension. He was supposed to have been disbarred. The Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department recently reinstated him to the practice of law. Jeanine Pirro is his wife.
My application for the same relief has been denied in state and federal courts. I was the victim of prosecutorial misconduct. I was never given an opportunity to defend my right to continue to practice law in federal court after I was suspended in New York. Instead, I was summarily suspended from the practice of law in Brooklyn Federal Court in December 1990. Judges Jack Weinstein and Charles Sifton dissented on due process grounds.
In my case, the Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department had previously ruled that I had no right to challenge a disciplinary action even if newly-discovered evidence would show prosecutorial misconduct and my actual innocence.
The Brooklyn Federal Court has now ruled that I am incompetent to challenge, in federal court, the misconduct which gave rise to my illegal suspension to practice law in New York. The federal and state judicial systems have gone to great lengths to keep the circumstances leading up to my suspension hidden from public view.
Plessy v. Ferguson is the de facto law on race in the United States. In 1991, a blue-ribbon commission, formed by the New York Court of Appeals, found that New York’s judicial system is “infested with racism.” Despite this serious finding, New York has made no effort to implement any of the recommendations. This state’s judicial system is victimizing Blacks daily.
Very truly yours,
AHM:sr
FAX: 718-834-1275
16 Court Street, Suite 1901
Brooklyn, New York 11241
April 4, 2007
Sen. Barack Obama
United States Senate
713 HSOB
Washington, DC 20510
Re: Violation of Civil Rights
Dear Sen. Obama:
For seventeen years, I have maintained that the Department of Justice has an important responsibility in ensuring that the conduct of overzealous prosecutors not violate one’s civil rights. This is especially true in the field of legal representation. Prosecutors routinely use their authority to hit competent and zealous defense lawyers, representing unpopular defendants and causes, below the belt.
The media has reported your support for Rep. Walter Jones’ unprecedented call for a federal probe into Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong’s handling of the Duke lacrosse rape case. A North Carolina grand jury accused three, white, Duke University students of kidnapping and raping a Black female. Supposedly, Nifong delayed the production of exculpatory evidence; namely, DNA, to the defense before trial.
This conduct, if true, is small potatoes compared to the facts leading up to my illegal and wrongful suspension from the practice of law in New York in May 1990, without any semblance of due process of law. I was representing Tawana Brawley, a victim of police terrorism, who had been kidnapped by white law enforcement officials in New York on November 24, 1987. I was also representing Rev. Al Sharpton pro bono.
Within two days after Tawana was found, in Dutchess County on November 28, 1987, unconscious, smeared with feces and “nigger” and “KKK” written on her body, federal, state and local officials were attempting to secure her account of the incident while she was still traumatized.
It was unknown, to the Brawley family, at the time, that a girlfriend, Hilda Kogut, of one of the assailants, Steven Pagones, an assistant district attorney in Dutchess County, was an FBI agent in charge of the civil rights investigation. This was an obvious conflict-of-interest and it showed that a cover-up was afoot. The disclosure was made in 1998.
I was unable to agree to represent the Brawley family, pro bono, until after December 12, 1987. In the interim, I did arrange for Tawana to see a gynecologist. She was admitted to the Westchester County Medical Center for tests. The hospital record showed that she had been raped. From these facts, New York would later claim that I had perpetrated a hoax even though I have never met any of the medical personnel.
Pagones’ arson investigator seized the rape kit from a Poughkeepsie hospital on November 28, 1987. No explanation has ever been made concerning the location of the rape kit. New York State Attorney General Robert Abrams would publicly argue later that even if a white man had enjoyed sex with Tawana Brawley in November 1987, it was not statutory rape. Her sixteenth birthday would not occur until December 1987.
Within four days after Tawana had been found, Harry Crist, Jr., a police officer, was found dead in his apartment. Law enforcement officials publicly characterized his death as a suicide after suppressing the autopsy report for more than a decade. The identity of the pathologist was also suppressed for more than a decade. This is a federal crime.
This was an obvious cover-up and Abrams joined in it to protect privileged perps like those in the Duke lacrosse rape case. There was a fear, among Crist’s confederates, that he was mentally unstable and would crack. Tawana would later finger Crist as one of her assailants. Crist had also recently put a .357 magnum to Pagones’ head and threatened to pull the trigger. Pagones never denied it.
By January 1988, the Dutchess County district attorney’s office knew that it had a conflict-of-interest. Instead of the office removing itself from the grand jury investigation, it established a grand jury trap. If I had cooperated with the prosecutor’s office and if a white postman had not been present in the vicinity where Tawana had been dumped on November 28, this machination might have worked.
Instead, the postman’s observation, on November 28, gave the prosecutor’s office sufficient information to suspect that Pagones had previously given false information about Crist and Brawley. Pagones had claimed that he, Crist, a state trooper and a friend were not in Poughkeepsie, near Tawana’s former residence, but in Danbury, CT shopping for Christmas gifts on November 28.
The postman had observed Crist’s car near the Brawleys’ former residence on November 28. The district attorney’s office had subpoenaed the postman in January 1988 to testify about the Brawley’s routine in picking up mail after they had vacated the apartment.
He volunteered the sighting of Crist’s vehicle in Poughkeepsie on November 28. The prosecutor’s office, in the postman’s grand jury appearance, refused to question him about his observations of four white men in Crist’s vehicle on November 28. The grand jury was defrauded to protect Pagones’ identity. Eventually, the postman was fired from the United States Postal Service.
Afterwards, Dutchess County Court Judge Judith Hillery wrote a confidential letter to Gov. Mario Cuomo to requesting the appointment of a special prosecutor. In her confidential letter, she noted that Pagones was a suspect. The FBI was also treating Pagones as a suspect. He retained a lawyer and refused to cooperate with the federal civil rights investigation.
Bill Cosby and Ed Lewis posted a reward on February 11 to ascertain the identity of Tawana’s assailants. Abrams told the media, after the grand jury had been empanelled on February 29, that he knew of no suspect. This was a lie. Gov. Cuomo knew that he was lying. He had received the confidential letter from Dutchess County.
On March 13, I told the media that Pagones was involved in the kidnapping and rape of Tawana Brawley. This was the first, public accusation against Pagones. Cuomo and Abrams went ballistics. They joined with the white media in demanding that Pagones sue me for defamation. I was not supposed to know of Pagones’ identity.
Once I fingered Pagones, to counter Abrams’ misrepresentation to the media, the FBI started moving backwards and Abrams came up with a new target for the grand jury. This information is in the FBI files. It shows that the FBI did lay a glove on Pagones in March, and afterwards, put its investigatory transmission in reverse.
The new mission of the grand jury was not only to discredit Tawana but also to bring myself, attorney C. Vernon Mason and Rev. Al Sharpton under the grand jury’s microscope. Abrams would use the grand jury to bleach Pagones’ involvement in the kidnapping and rape of Tawana Brawley.
White members of the New York Legislature, without precedent, demanded disciplinary investigations against me and Mason because “[t]he behavior of these individuals ... has made a mockery of the state’s legal system.” The complaint also asserts that the attorneys “have made the judicial process of New York State the laughing stock of the nation and indeed the world .... and if the facts indicate a violation of the Canons of Ethics, they should be punished accordingly.”
Previously, this same Legislature had honored attorney Barry Slotnick for his competent and zealous representation of subway gunman, Bernard Goetz, who gunned down four, unarmed Black youth on a New York City subway train. This ceremony took place in Albany.
This political system only gets upset when justice is sought, when the victim is Black and when the perpetrator is white. A Black woman has no right to accuse a white man of kidnapping had raping her and no attorney, afterwards should make a big deal out of it. This has allowed white rapists to go unpunished in interracial sexual assaults.
In October 1988, Abrams would use the grand jury as a backdrop to; issuing a grand jury report exonerating Pagones; defaming Tawana as perpetrating a hoax; and recommending disciplinary actions against me and Mason and a criminal prosecution against Sharpton.
He immediately filed a disciplinary complaint against me with the Second and Eleventh Judicial Districts. Initially, the Grievance Committee told the New York Times that any investigation of the disciplinary complaint would violate the attorney-client privilege. This is true.
Pagones would file a civil complaint against me, Mason Sharpton and Brawley in Dutchess County Supreme. His defamation complaint was modeled on the grand jury report which we would later find out was bogus. Over my hearsay objection, the report was admitted at the trial of the defamation complaint to prove Pagones’ case.
Tawana was a minor and the defamation complaint against her was never served on her mother nor her father. Everyone filed a notice of appearance except Tawana. New York entered a default judgment against her. This outstanding default judgment has given Pagones the potential pretext, if necessary, to harass her.
Essentially, Abrams claimed, in the disciplinary complaint, that I had falsely implicated Pagones in the kidnapping and rape of Tawana and that I had lied when I said that Crist had been murdered. Abrams was in exclusive possession of exculpatory materials to refute Pagones’ claim of innocence and to contradict a claim that Crist had killed himself. He refused to stop a miscarriage of justice.
New York allows for pre-trial discovery in every civil action. An autopsy report is routinely disclosed to a civil defendant early in the civil action. This pre-trial discovery rule was suspended in this defamation lawsuit and for good reason. Ten years later and during the defamation trial, I was finally able to extract Crist’s autopsy report.
It showed that Abrams had lied when he claimed that Crist had killed himself. The identity of the pathologist was finally disclosed to me. I put him under oath at the trial. He testified that Abrams never contacted him to give grand jury testimony and that Crist had been murdered.
The pathologist, Dr. Alexander Aplasca, was never given a suicide note nor a weapon allegedly used in the shooting. He found no gunpowder residue on Crist’s hands. When Abrams fashioned the disciplinary complaint successfully suspending me from the practice of law, he made sure that the autopsy report would be suppressed for at least a decade.
A petit jury in Dutchess County Supreme Court, composed of five whites and one Black female, found, in its verdict sheet, that I had not defamed Pagones. In fact, William Stanton, Pagones’ attorney, asserted that he and Pagones never believed that I had made the accusations without an arguable, factual foundation. Stanton refused to call me as a witness during Pagones’ case. He did call Mason and Sharpton.
Nonetheless, Justice S. Barrett Hickman ordered me to pay Pagones despite the jury’s verdict sheet finding non-liability. In appointing Justice Hickman to preside over the defamation lawsuit, New York went forum shopping. The voters of Putnam County elected Justice Hickman to the Supreme Court, Putnam County. No reason existed for him to be assigned to hear Pagones’ lawsuit in Dutchess County Supreme Court.
On September 11, 2000, I found a Brawley grand juror in Boise, Idaho. He signed an affidavit stating that Abrams, rather than the grand jury, had written the grand jury report. This is a violation of Article 190 of the Criminal Procedure Law. He questioned whether Abrams had a quorum when the grand jury voted on the grand jury report and that the grand jury never said that Tawana’s claim was a “hoax.”
Because a grand jury proceeding is secret in New York, a prosecutor can frame and railroad a person easily, especially under the circumstances herein. This suspension could have never occurred but for the secrecy provisions of New York law. Abrams used these provisions to destroy my reputation and to deprive me of a right to earn a living for seventeen years. Tawana Brawley is also suffering from state-sponsored defamation.
The Brawley case is far more egregious than the Duke lacrosse rape case. Assuming arguendo that Nifong conduct delayed the disclosure of DNA evidence, this omission never led to a criminal conviction and probable cause certainly existed for the arrest and prosecution of the three students. Moreover, the delay in providing exculpatory material to the defense is a matter that can be addressed by the trial court.
Amid my pro bono representation of Sharpton in a 67-count indictment in Manhattan Supreme Court, the Grievance Committee for the Second and Eleventh Judicial Districts, which was allegedly investigating Abrams’ bogus complaint, put me in a Catch-22 situation. I could either assist Abrams in convicting Sharpton and save myself or I would take a hit. In short, I was asked to violate the attorney-client privilege and the work product privilege. I refused.
In 2004, I filed a civil rights action, against the justices of the Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department which governs the discipline of attorneys in Brooklyn. The action is styled Maddox v. Prudenti et. al., Civ. Action. No. 5444 (U.S.D.C.,E.D.N.Y. 2004).
Judge Carolyn B. Amon was initially assigned to hear the case. I was never given an opportunity to be present during this selection process and I, therefore, strenuously objected to her selection. The selection of a judge may affect the outcome of a case. My objection was sustained.
Judge Nina Gershon was randomly selected to hear the case in accordance with law. At a pre-trial conference, the defendants claimed that the Rooker-Feldman doctrine was a bar to the prosecution of the case. This issue was fully briefed, by both parties, before Judge Gershon.
This was the defendants’ only legal objection to the civil rights complaint. It was clear that no legal objection existed to ban my claims. Without an application by either party and without explanation, Judge Gershon, in October 2006, recused herself. This was wrong.
I was informed through Judge Gershon’s letter that Judge Bryan M. Cogan, without my knowledge, had been assigned to replace Judge Gershon. Judge Cogan, until his judicial appointment to the federal bench in May 2006, had been a law partner of Robert Abrams. I obtained this information through research. It was not made known to me..
Obviously, I smelled a rat and complained that this assignment was not made in accordance with law and had the appearance of impropriety. I demanded that Judge Cogan recuse himself. I received no response from my objection under Easter District Rule 50.2 (F). Instead, I received a decision dated December 14, 2006 from Judge Allyne R. Ross.
I was never aware that Judge Ross had been assigned to hear the case. I have a right to be present when a judge is randomly selected to hear the case under Eastern District Rule 50.2(b) and I have a right to know the identity of the assigned judge and the date of the unlawful assignment.
Judge Ross decided that I had overcome the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, which has generally prevented disciplined attorneys from seeking relief in federal court but Judge Ross found, sua sponte, that I lacked standing. This is a violation of due process. I am entitled to notice and opportunity to be heard. I have never met Judge Ross.
No one but Judge Ross saw standing as a legal problem. If standing was an issue, I should have been given an opportunity to address this issue after defendants had made a written motion to dismiss my complaint for lack of standing. The defendants know that standing is not an issue.
This is supposed to be an adversarial system. The judge is supposed to referee the argument of the parties. There was no standing argument. I am the aggrieved party and I clearly have the right, alone, to complain about my suspension. This is the essence of standing up.
This same Federal District Court, in Brooklyn, has permitted a white felon who is forbidden from practicing law in New York State to practice law in the Brooklyn Federal Court. Another white felon who was convicted of armed robbery was permitted to practice law in New York by the Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department. He has also been admitted to the Brooklyn Federal Court.
Chief Judge Sol Wachtler was later sentenced to federal prison. He was automatically disbarred in New York after I was permanently suspended from the practice of law. The Appellate Division Second Judicial Department is vetting his application for reinstatement to practice law.
Similarly, former Westchester County district attorney’s husband, Albert Pirro, was sent to federal prison some time after my suspension. He was supposed to have been disbarred. The Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department recently reinstated him to the practice of law. Jeanine Pirro is his wife.
My application for the same relief has been denied in state and federal courts. I was the victim of prosecutorial misconduct. I was never given an opportunity to defend my right to continue to practice law in federal court after I was suspended in New York. Instead, I was summarily suspended from the practice of law in Brooklyn Federal Court in December 1990. Judges Jack Weinstein and Charles Sifton dissented on due process grounds.
In my case, the Appellate Division, Second Judicial Department had previously ruled that I had no right to challenge a disciplinary action even if newly-discovered evidence would show prosecutorial misconduct and my actual innocence.
The Brooklyn Federal Court has now ruled that I am incompetent to challenge, in federal court, the misconduct which gave rise to my illegal suspension to practice law in New York. The federal and state judicial systems have gone to great lengths to keep the circumstances leading up to my suspension hidden from public view.
Plessy v. Ferguson is the de facto law on race in the United States. In 1991, a blue-ribbon commission, formed by the New York Court of Appeals, found that New York’s judicial system is “infested with racism.” Despite this serious finding, New York has made no effort to implement any of the recommendations. This state’s judicial system is victimizing Blacks daily.
Very truly yours,
AHM:sr
posted by Attorney Alton Maddox at 3:01 PM
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