When a judge calls you a sack of jigaboos,
you know justice isn't around the corner
There is a lot of attention being directed to the White House and the U. S Attorney appointment system these days. Charges of political corruption, abuse of power, manipulation of appointments for political or financial gain and malfeasance are flying around faster than a herd of mosquitos can dive bomb a summer picnic.
As much as the question of whether the federal prosecutor appointments were based on a far reaching plot to taint the system, we need to look at the courts as a whole, including abusive judges who have far more impact than the handful of U. S. Attorneys currently being scrutinized.
Many Americans still believe in the sanitized, simplistic civics lessons that we learned in childhood. Everything was in black and white; justice was meted out evenhandedly, and the Constitution was the Law of the Land.
In that sanitized world, there was no such thing as Jim Crow and pocket book priviledge, when black citizens and poor whites could not find justice in local, state, or even federal courts. In that world, judges weren't corrupt, criminal or incompetent. In that world, judges, prosecutors, sheriff's deputies and cops didn't cover their uniforms with sheets and hoods and join in lynching, arson and murder. In that sanitized world, one wonders just how it came to be that "blacks had no rights that a white man was bound to respect."
While that world is gone, from the statute books anyway, justice is not as easily obtained as many people think it is, for anyone–black, white or 'other'. Sometimes, you know you're going to get short end of the stick the moment the judge opens his mouth.
A woman goes to court to obtain a restraining order against her abusive husband. The judge refuses and suggests she obtain marriage counseling. Shortly after she was slapped upside the head with the judge's outrageous refusal to issue a restraining order, the victim's husband turns her into a human barbeque. He doused her with gasoline and set her afire.
A judge in a civil case bent over backwards in favor of a large software company, then switched channels and became one of the company's biggest critics–in court, no less. The company's attorney's appealed the judge's rulings, based on transcripts replete with trash talk and insults from the very judge who was once solidly in the company's court.
Moving a thousand miles south west, a black family went to court to try to stop a local company from encroaching on land that had been in their family for over a century. When the judge called them "a sack of jigaboos", they knew right off that justice would not be forthcoming.
Another black farmer continues his battle against the federal government. He still maintains that the foreclosure and sale were based on false information and that he had paid off the loan in question. However, the court has reportedly refused to act on demands for discovery of documents from the Farm Service Administration. According to insiders, the farmer's attorney filed a demand for documents years ago, and that demand has not been honored as of this date.
According to the farmer, the federal government never answered demands for these documents, a fact which attorneys who have seen the file, say should have generated a contempt citation against the federal attorneys handling the case. Attorneys who have examined the file point to a number of egregious errors, not including the non-existent contempt citation.
The 80 year old farmer refuses to shut up, give in or give up. He has filed so many court briefs that the federal district court has reportedly refused to accept any more of his demands for justice. Despite the fact that the court has figuratively told him to get lost, he has filed a 600 page class action civil suit (Case no. 4:06 cv 138-M).
Referring to the allegation that the farmer had not paid anything on his farm loan since 1978, the suit responds that the farmer did pay on his loan and that an analysis of those payments showed that the loan was paid off. The class action lawsuit claims that federal employees financially benefitted from this case. According to the lawsuit, the case "points to false loan and illegal enrichment of FSA (Farm Service Administration) personnel as has happened in several cases...."
So far, we have a federal judge trash talking a business, a local judge insulting a domestic violence victim and another judge neglecting to cite a federal prosecutor for contempt for refusing to produce documents proving the government had a right to foreclose and auction personal property.
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