By Dr. Leon Koziol

Parenting Rights Institute

Judicial misconduct is the most censored, least publicized and gravest aspect of our federal, state and local governments. You can simply ignore it and move to your next on-line entertainment, but chances are it will find you especially in our nation’s domestic relations courts. So read on and share this post. It may be the most important one you will read in a long time.

The judiciary is our least accountable branch of government. Anyone who dares to reform it can expect severe retributions with no recourse. Judges enjoy absolute immunity for their reckless and even malicious acts. Judicial conduct commissions from New York to California are window dressing entities influenced by politics, typically investigating less than 10% of complaints.

So what does that mean to you? How do you know if your case is not already fixed, rigged or bought-off? You’re spending thousands, even millions of dollars in lawyer fees while your judge has already decided against you due to a bribe or political influence. Are you shocked by that, naive about the people in robes? Well here at Leon Koziol.com and Parenting Rights Institute, we have generated shocking examples of judicial and lawyer misconduct from our work all across America.

We are an up and coming “Judicial Watch” for divorce and family courts, doing the work where our oversight commissions are failing us. Currently we are soliciting investors and donors to upgrade our effectiveness. We will come into your community, home or court to monitor your case and seek accountability for any misconduct. As Director of Parenting Rights Institute with nearly 30 years of trial experience in both federal and state courts, I am dedicated to exposing corruption. It may be the only way you can secure true justice and turn things around.

Look us up at www.parentingrightsinstitute.com or call our office at (315) 380-3420. Then take a look at this shocking excerpt of misconduct from a book I have written to be published by divorce victim Tamara Sweeney entitled Jurassic Justice:

Examples of court corruption are provided throughout my work for victims nationwide. Many are quietly suppressed and “read like a docket sheet in any criminal court.” That is what I declared publicly time and again. Yet the public continues to hold judges beyond reproach. That was the reply given by lawyers to my petition to have a custody judge removed from my own case due to “political espionage” ordered of a resistant chief clerk of a family court. She sued and recovered $600,000 against him for retaliation, see Morin v Tormey, 626 F.3d 40 (2^nd Cir. 2010).

Fortunately that same judge did step down because he was later removed altogether from the bench for admitting to sexual misconduct on his handicapped five year old niece: In re Bryan Hedges, 20 NY3d 677 (2013). I emphasized that outcome in testimony before the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption at Pace University in 2013. Only weeks later, I was deprived access to my daughters and subjected to a report impairing my law license.

That report by an unethical ethics committee, as I called it, was issued within days of the premature dissolution of that Commission. The lawyers engaged in the witch hunt in retribution for my public criticisms were ultimately fired for falsifying their time sheets. Yet no public charges, criminal or ethical were ever pursued against them unlike the rest of us when we steal from our employers. This can be explained by the greater misconduct which might be exposed during such a prosecution, thereby undermining public trust in our judiciary. Yet these are the standard bearers of lawyer ethics charged with a duty to correct overbilling practices.

The Moreland Commission was dissolved when evidence began implicating top state leaders later convicted of federal crimes (Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Leader Dean Skelos). One of its members was later named Chief Justice of New York’s high court. If we focus only on corruption cases involving children and families, the condition of our divorce system nationally gets really scary, much beyond any erosion of “public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary,” United States v Cossey, 632 F.3d 82 (2^nd Cir. 2011).

One of the shocking cases cited to make my point, and the need for meaningful accountability, involves a New York Supreme Court Judge in Brooklyn caught on camera taking a bribe from a divorce lawyer. It was part of a scam to shift custody from a mother to an influential father. Had the feisty mother not convinced the FBI to act upon her evidence, this judge, Gerald Garson, would still be dispensing “justice.” It begs the question: how many other such judges and cases are there? What can explain Tamara’s bizarre case? We let you decide as our story continues.

The conviction of Judge Garson for federal crimes was actually not the most shocking part of his case. Due punishment was compromised by judges and lawyer colleagues supporting his early release in 2009. Now you have to ponder that for a moment. If Garson’s colleagues are still backing him after a crime which goes to the heart of our justice system, what does that say for their tolerance of corruption generally? Isn’t this where precedent is set and examples are made?

While the “Honorable” “Justice” Gerald Garson was busy generating unreported income through an abuse of judicial office, another New York Supreme Court Judge, Thomas Spargo, was busy securing a bribe against a father arguing a client case before him. At a dinner conversation, he requested $10,000 to help defray the cost of legal fees needed to defend against judicial misconduct charges pending against him at the time.

Like Judge Garson, you have to ponder that as well. Judge Spargo was already being prosecuted for judicial misconduct and resorted to more serious behavior to get out of it. He referenced this lawyer’s own divorce which might be transferred to him. The pressure was not uncomplicated. Play ball or else. I suppose the lawyer could have won his divorce for a nominal “fee” to this judge when compared to a contested case. He was placed in a real quandary, deciding ultimately to report the crime only after taking steps to avoid false claims that could cost his law license.

Chief Justice Sol Wachtler of New York’s high court was imprisoned for numerous crimes during the nineties. In his book, After the Madness, he explained that judges are made to believe that they are gods. Such deep rooted convictions do not disappear. Judge Wachtler went so far as to direct paid court staff to dig up grounds for preventing licensure of a New Jersey lawyer assisting the judge’s mistress to discover a man making extortionist and kidnapping threats involving her daughter. That elusive man turned out to be the judge himself.

Then there’s that family court judge in the state of Michigan, the “Honorable” Wade McCree, whose case defied all manner of ethics. He admitted to adulterous sex in chambers with a litigant mother while presiding over her child support case. Judge McCree was removed from the bench for all sorts of misconduct involving numerous cases only after the affair (and pregnancy) was confirmed. The father, placed on a tether for support arrears during this affair was denied recovery for the horrific misconduct by a federal appeals court on grounds of judge immunity.

These and other cases are easily found on the internet to verify a judicial corruption epidemic of undefined proportion. Most people view judges as honorable office holders committed to justice, equality and all that other good stuff we read about in high school civics classes. But behind the black robes, in the recesses of chambers and among discreet exchanges in restaurants, bars and golf courses, there is often quite another set of characteristics at play.

Bias, coercion, schemes, scams, deal-making and outright crimes are taking place which violate all manner of ethics formally placed in our judicial codes. In our nation’s domestic relations courts, such corruption is taken to the next level under a pretext of family confidentiality, thereby concealing the misconduct and protecting a trillion dollar industry built on needless conflict.