I have nothing but respect for the judges. Nothing. That’s the problem.

MAL CAMINO MAL DESTINO

No longer permitted to practice law, I wait to one side.

My crimes:

• demands to a miscreant judge to step aside;
• confidential complaints to supervising judges;
• an aborted inquiry into the miscreant’s ties to lawyers with court business - blocked by the miscreant - who bankrupted my solo practice with $15,000 in fines, for complaining about him, confidentially, to the Fifth Federal Court Judicial Council.

My many convictions:

• interference with the administration of “justice” by the miscreant;
• burdening lawyer-witnesses, whom guardians of judicial privilege themselves to decline to examine.

Questions which stop the ears of the guardians of both legal and judicial ethics:

1. How many judges receive money gifts from parties with court business?
2. How many do favors in return?
3. How many such judges are too many? One hundred? Ten? One?

An information asymmetry:

• the robed miscreant accepts the gift(s) and does the judicial favor(s).
• the imprudent, but honest court officer denounces the miscreant.
• One is distinguished; one is tossed aside.

When the conduct of a robed miscreant is placed in issue, plenary investigative tools (under the control of STATE judges) become as flaccid and useless as a third nipple.

You states, LOUISIANA, HAWAII, MARYLAND:

• your judges punish lawyers for not gifting them:
• your Counsels of Discipline blend the power of lions with the prestige of dung beetles.

What are YOU STATES  afraid of? Judicial spite? What do they know that we cannot know? That gifts and favors to/from a robed miscreant are routine?

No Gifts Accepted - All Gifts Returned. 

This was the Cardozo Rule.

The road from Benjamin Cardozo to this moment has been a long, downward strut and shuffle.

I have nothing but respect for the judges. Nothing. That’s the problem.

FROM: RBC, That’s What I’m Talking About, page 51 (Amazon, elsewhere)

The Legacy of Chief Justices Cologero and Moon & Chief Judge Bell

Some years ago, I complained, confidentially, to the Judicial Council of the Federal Fifth Circuit about the documented misconduct of a United Stated District Judge. 

At the Fifth Circuit Judicial Council, my complaints were either dismissed or ignored - without investigation. 

Unjust as this outcome was, I ought not to have been surprised or even bothered to file my complaint. I did not know then that over 99% of complaints about the misconduct of judges are dismissed - by other judges.

But matters did not end for me.

Two years later, I was prosecuted for misconduct by the Disciplinary in three states - none of whom would (1) acknowledge the evidence of judicial misconduct which I presented nor (2) would transfer my complaint about the judge to a US attorney or some other entity empowered to investigate or prosecute. 

Appearing before a committee in Louisiana, whose chair was a member of the organization that had facilitated gifts to the miscreant judge, I was suspended from the practice of law - until I "apologized" - for coming forward.

The three judges, who supervised the ridiculous procedures instituted against me, have each retired. 

They are Pascal Cologero, Ronald Moon and Robert Bell.

Pascal Cologero Jr

Chief Justice

Louisiana Supreme Court, 1991-2009

Photo - Loyola University of New Orleans, Office of Public Affairs

Ronald T. Y. Moon

Chief Justice 

Hawaii Supreme Court, 1993-2010

Photo Credit: Legislative Newsline April 18, 2008

Robert Bell, Chief Judge

Maryland Court of Appeals

1996-2013

Photo: Public Domain

I

Cologero, Moon and Bell protected a Federal Judge from Having to Face the Consequences of his 

own Serious Misconduct.

II

Cologero, Moon and Bell destroyed the career 

of an honest lawyer - a necessary consequence of these judges' decision to protect a federal judge who:

- failed to follow mandatory judicial 

complaint rules 

- failed to transfer complaints 

about his financial affairs to another court

- publicized the name of a confidential 

judicial complainant

- accepted gifts from litigators in his court

etc.

Memo to Mr's Cologero, Moon, Bell and your successors: 

I will NEVER apologize for telling the truth about a federal judge who used his judicial position to enrich himself with gifts from litigators. 

I will NEVER apologize for expecting supervising judges to actually investigate and also regulate the behavior of a berobed miscreant.. 

I will NEVER again believe your courts are free from the shameful consequences of judicial application of two sets of investigative and legal standards:

1. one for litigants, who expect but do not get evenhanded justice in court

and

2. another for judges who receive a wink from you, when they are the subjects of complaints about their misbehavior.

You just look the other way. 

Shameful. 

Good riddance to each one of you in your retirement.