This so-called “mom” is suing New York City (MTA) for the death of her 15-year-old son when the city should be suing her for parent malpractice.
That teen climbed on top of a subway car to dodge obstacles as part of a new recreational diversion from neglected homework. He missed one and it won the game with no second tries allowed.
It’s a profound hypocrisy in today’s sick fatherless society bent on replacing traditional family structures with single parent households so overwhelmed as to facilitate “subway surfing.”
I mean, what more could rational-minded city officials do to insulate this kid from his own stupidity? Are parents today being held to a bizarre standard of cautioning their teen children every morning to ride IN these subway cars and not ON TOP of them?
It’s no wonder basic grammar, religion and history teachings at taxpayer expense are proving to be such failures in a workforce now dependent on AI (Artificial Intelligence). This latest human substitute is being mindlessly applauded in addition to the parental substitutes that have overtaken our family courts in recent decades.
So what are you, as a concerned citizen, going to do about any of this? Join the keyboard warriors from the comfort of your couches? Pontificate among useless gossipers at coffee shops? Engage in your own form of wasteful “surfing” on the internet? Spew more vu-do legal advice with your GED law degrees? Troll around to attack the few brave souls actually taking meaningful action?
As they say, you reap what you sow. Americans are now paying the price for their apathy with higher taxes, escalating crime, domestic violence, parental alienation, murder-suicides, drug abuses, and so many other maladies each day. Such laziness represents an insult to those who sacrificed their lives to preserve such rights.
In short, you are taking your constitutionally protected freedoms for granted. As our Supreme Court has repeatedly declared, parenting is the “oldest” liberty protected by that venerable document, see i.e. Santosky v Kramer, 455 US 745 (1982). And free speech is more than mere expression, it is the very heart of a self-governing nation, Snyder v Phelps, 562 US 443 (2011).
SO JOIN OUR CAUSE THAT HAS BEEN SO CENSORED, SUPPRESSED AND DEFAMED BY BIG TECH, BIG PHARMA AND BIG COURT INDUSTRIES. DONATE NOW FOR PAID LOBBY STAFF AND TRAVEL SO THAT WE MAY TAKE OUR VITAL EFFORTS TO THE NEXT LEVEL.
NONE OF MY DETRACTORS CAN TAKE ISSUE WITH THE SOPHISTICATED ANALYSIS OF THIS GROWING EPIDEMIC AS PRESENTED IN MY NEWLY RELEASED “LAW REVIEW AND WHISTLEBLOWER ALERT.” ITS 13-PAGE EDUCATIONAL TEXT CAN BE FOUND AT www.leonkoziol.com.
HELP US ACCESS YOUR COMMUNITIES AND COURTS SO THAT OUR KIDS RESORT TO MORE CONSTRCTIVE ACTIVITIES.
This document contains suppressed, censored and alarming facts preserved in a 25-year record.
Contents
Introduction………..
A controversial case is filed by conscientious attorney….
Systemic judge bias emerges to sabotage good-faith litigation….
Judicial policy is exploited to avert recognition of a growing epidemic….
A special master is avoided for navigating a precedent-seeking case…….
Extreme retributions target a whistleblower’s family and livelihood……..
Free speech exposes a pedophile custody judge and racist city judge……
Physical threats prompt attorney-whistleblower to seek asylum in Paris….
Family harm and collateral damage to society reach a breaking point……..
A blind eye to an epidemic is verified by faulty treatment of defendants….
Duty-bound jurists squander opportunities to set overdue precedent……….
Conclusion: An open message to our federal government……………………..
Introduction
This law review alerts media, public officials and oversight advocates to a silent epidemic that continues to escalate in America today. It must be confronted by those genuinely concerned with the ongoing erosion of parental authority and its threat to civilized society. As a prominent civil rights attorney, I did exactly that but was persecuted to a point of death. This is my story.
There are 94 federal district courts originating with the Judiciary Act of 1789. Their paramount duty is to decide violations of the U.S. Constitution. Historically, reliance on these courts was made necessary to counter state abuses and a refusal or failure to honor federal rights. Among them is the “oldest” liberty interest in parenting, Santosky v Kramer, 455 US 745 (1982).
However, beginning with Troxel v Granville, 530 US 57 (2000), the Supreme Court made a stark departure from longstanding precedent by issuing a plurality decision with six different opinions on the continued status of this “fundamental right.” It is an ominous trend following the lead of the abortion right terminated in 2022. Both rights have no textual source in our Constitution.
But the two are highly distinguishable in that one preserves life whereas the other terminates it. One can be traced to the beginning of mankind which is impossible for the other. A gradual replacement of child rearing by the state is now leading to catastrophic criminal activity, diverse addictions, unwanted pregnancies, domestic violence and needless separation of parent and child.
A controversial case is filed by a conscientious attorney
On February 26, 2009, as an aggrieved father and accomplished attorney, I filed a watershed case, Parent v State, 786 F. Supp. 2d 516 (NDNY), in federal court to establish a constitutional limit upon the expanding power of the state to impair the decisional authority of parents. This analysis and news alert will show how it was converted into a tragic assault on human rights.
Originally framed as a class action, resort to federal court was made inevitable by a growing number of state agents acting on childrearing liberties in my divorce action. They were part of an ominous trend in domestic relations courts carried out under pretext of the “best interests of the child.” Such authority had morphed beyond its original purpose into a trillion-dollar industry.
Prior to filing, I tested the divorce process to conclude that state courts were failing to honor constitutionally protected rights. They were exploiting children for profit and revenues under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act (child support grants), hence the emergence of a judge bias against litigants. Needless forensic evaluations and excessive support orders were examples.
My first-assigned divorce judge refused to entertain such arguments, referring me to appeals or the legislature. I therefore initiated a reform movement featuring assemblies, lobby initiatives and news conferences critical of this systemic bias making judicial recourse a gesture in futility. This had the effect of stigmatizing me a whistleblower which, in time, led to horrific retributions.
Because they too were systemic, I was forced to move for recusal of each assigned jurist after my motion for a change of venue (location) was denied. Then, in the Parent case, it necessitated the naming of state actors in both individual and official capacities to overcome state sovereign immunity in federal court under the Eleventh Amendment, Ex Parte Young, 209 US 123 (1908).
I was simply complying with the law, my rights of recourse and free speech. Jurists already engaged in the challenged proceedings were included on grounds that they were “acting under color of law” and not above the law pursuant to 42 USC 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871). They were also named to acquire legal standing for personal liability and a comprehensive outcome.
Systemic judge bias emerges to sabotage good faith litigation
As the number of state actors and co-conspirators grew, so did the complaints I was forced to lodge. Less than two years after filing my 2009 “lead” case in Parent, police and state tax agents acting under authority of child support collection converged on my home in a swat-like manner to seize automobiles. Driver and law licenses were suspended to undermine support capacities.
This seizure violated the First, Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments to supplement the lead claims. It was executed contrary to a state court order issued two months earlier which limited enforcement authority to a home foreclosure. This necessitated filing of the 2010 “member” case identified and decided together by the federal court in an elaborate opinion on May 24, 2011.
Failure to add or originate timely complaints will result in a permanent waiver of rights. Indeed, the complexities in civil rights cases have proven sufficient to terminate countless valid claims. In my case, I added a due process violation based on an antiquated trial court structure featuring 11 tribunals which, according to a 2017 New York bar report, could confound any attorney.
Formal complaints in federal court are evaluated at the outset in a light most favorable to the filer. Such treatment is mandated under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), (6) and 56 to avert rash and wrongful dismissals. If the review of pleadings nevertheless results in the finding of a frivolous action, the complainant is typically fined and made to bear defense costs.
This was the outcome of a Donald Trump filing in 2022, but here none of the defense firms, government attorneys or the presiding judge raised the issue. In short, there was plausible merit to my action. Unfortunately, it fell victim to technical obstacles such as judge, state and law enforcement immunities. This precluded mandatory disclosures needed to prove my case.
But no obstacle was more sweeping than systemic judge bias. This form of ethics and due process violations is highly elusive and treated more extensively in another publication. There I make the case that circumstantial inference must be accorded greater weight in evaluating dismissal motions given the undue burdens that such bias wields on disadvantaged victims.
Systemic judge bias has no clear definition and is typically cast aside as a fringe accusation to protect the integrity of the judiciary. It does not arise in some clandestine fashion in chambers although it can be. More commonly, offensive speech or a damning record is the culprit rooted out by facts which compel a conclusion that an unjust outcome was prearranged.
Here the federal judge, David N. Hurd, acted on such bias. There is no direct evidence of this, but it is proven by suspect circumstances and a glaring omission of crucial cases in his ultimate decision. The parenting right is nowhere analyzed or respected. This would be akin to omitting the abortion right in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 US ___ (2022).
Put simply, this federal judge diluted a fundamental right overriding all others raised by treating both the lead and member complaints in a light most favorable to the violators. Constitutional principle was sacrificed for political gain to achieve a miscarriage of justice harmful to a much larger segment of the population than the victims narrowly represented by this particular case.
Judicial policy is exploited to avert recognition of a growing epidemic
In broader terms, again from a circumstantial standpoint, no federal judge right up to the Supreme Court was going to unleash a highly experienced, personally aggrieved, and untethered attorney to investigate and expose an unknown number of potentially corrupt colleagues. Only with this unwritten policy can readers acclimate to a better understanding of this watershed case.
The immunities and jurisdictional defenses referenced above are typically raised by government defenders in civil rights cases that require the naming of violators in alternate capacities. When challenging constitutional abuses overlooked in domestic adjudications, access to federal court is plagued further by such written policies as Younger doctrine and domestic relations abstention.
Access is more daunting for pro se victims fleeced of resources in contentious divorce cases. Such obstacles handicap our federal courts from satisfying their duties independent of state bias. A hypocrisy emerges when municipal liability is evaluated from the top whereas wrongdoers who establish policy here are immunized, Koziol v Hanna, 107 F. Supp. 2d 170 (NDNY 2000).
This was the main workhorse exploited in Parent to dispose of a controversial case. Facts and law were marshaled to concoct a narrative that averted recognition of a growing epidemic while defaming a qualified whistleblower. That a gang assault on a dedicated father and conscientious attorney could be so grossly overlooked today has resulted in a disgrace to our system of justice.
It has thus become a rallying cry for reform as this judge was duty-bound to view a “totality of facts” before issuing his dismissive edict. Greater respect for my successive filings was required to assess whether state actors were dismantling a fundamental right. The Supreme Court has long applied this standard to Fourteenth Amendment cases, Rochin v California, 142 US 165 (1953).
But the restrictive approach was substituted for an expansive one instead, providing yet another fact corroborating a systemic bias carried over from the state court system. It was no doubt moved by a practical consideration of litigating complex matters against prominent figures and colleagues, this at the lead of a civil rights attorney driven by a quest for justice and reform.
In my case, the complexity of litigation arose through no fault of its filer. Presiding jurists, both federal and state, were well aware of this. But knowing that oversight was lacking and media could be duped, they exploited that complexity to shift focus and blame on the public messenger.
A special master is avoided for navigating a precedent-seeking case
If Judge David Hurd was truly committed to his oath of office, he would have dispensed with political complexities by appointing a special master to investigate this case while proceedings were held in abeyance. Precedent already existed in the one belatedly appointed to the highly lawyered Oneida Indian land claim spanning more than forty years in the same district court.
Assigned to a different presiding judge, that claim began as a widely neglected filing deemed to lack merit due to demands over tracts of land as large as 6 million acres and based on treaties violated as early as the 18th century. But its status changed dramatically when the Supreme Court gave approval in a 5-4 ruling in County of Oneida v Oneida Indian Nation, 470 US 226 (1985).
That change morphed into a complex case and a string of Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) gaming facilities across upstate New York authorized by the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. The first among them was the Oneida Nation Turning Stone Casino constructed by the only tribe of the six-nation Iroquois Confederacy which sided with the patriots during our Revolutionary War.
Opened in 1993, Turning Stone was marketed to surrounding landowners as a modest enterprise serving no alcohol and committed to weeding out criminal activity and gambling addictions. However, like the broken treaties at the core of its land claim, these promises were soon cast aside in favor of the Vegas-style, mega-resort with state-of-the-art sports betting that it is today.
Meanwhile, the 250,000-acre land claim languished with state and local officials balking at such high settlement figures as $500 million and 15,000 acres taken off the tax rolls after transfer to the Oneidas. Emboldened by their 1985 Supreme Court decision and growing influence, they moved to convert their federal suit into a class action to eject 20,000 landowners from that tract.
Outraged occupants countered with an intervention motion and later an original action in state court challenging the validity of the 1993 gaming compact. Like the 1794 land treaty violated by New York due to lack of federal approval, the counter-suit was based on the compact’s lack of approval by the state legislature. That compact had been financing the high cost of litigation.
As a prominent attorney beholden to no political interest, I was retained solely to strategize this counter-move. However, knowing the ominous challenges, I organized landowner assemblies to update thousands of organizational clients on our proceedings. This grew exponentially into protest caravans that surrounded the resort and, months later, the steps of the state Capitol.
It resulted in a 60 Minutes feature and the collapse of a pending settlement being nursed by this court-appointed special master, dean of Seton Hall law school, who had joined me on a tour of the region. The Indian-landowner war then escalated with Nation and United States attorneys moving to extinguish my challenges to the gaming compact in their now complex federal action.
In a highly unexpected decision, the judge denied that move and authorized me to proceed with my state case, Oneida Indian Nation v County of Oneida, 132 F. Supp. 2d 71 (NDNY 2000). But the success did not come without its elitism. I was inaccurately aligned with the law firm, Bond, Schoeneck and King, in that decision when published. This has remained a mystery to this day.
Extreme retributions target a whistleblower’s family and livelihood
My success also did not come without its devastation to my 2004 divorce and father-daughter relations particularly after I won a judgment the same year invalidating that 1993 (billion dollar) compact. Ultimately, collective litigation led to a 2011 extinguishment of the entire land claim and a global settlement in 2013, the same year my daughters were permanently alienated.
The casino litigation in Peterman v Pataki, 4 Misc 3d 1028(A) (2004) had been pending for years, producing a cloud on investments much like the land claim did to landowner deeds. State Supreme Court judge, John Murad, was assigned, a jurist that I had well known in city, county and other courts. He was part of that dysfunctional structure I later challenged in the Parent case.
To illustrate, after my venue change was denied in 2007, my child support case was litigated before an elected supreme court judge in an “acting family court” capacity who questioned his own jurisdiction on the record while my parenting rights were on trial before an “acting supreme court judge” elected to a limited jurisdiction family court in Syracuse 70 miles away.
All too common, split jurisdictional chaos becomes a due process nightmare for litigants but a gold mine for service providers. Over time, after undisclosed conflicts, more than 40 jurists were assigned to my domestic matters. Indeed, Judge Murad’s son, later elected to a judgeship, was among them. He properly declined his role in an assignment system that has no transparency.
Turning Stone was now boasting thousands of jobs being doled out to applicants in a depressed region. Judge contacts were no exception. But as my client citizens group continued to expose corruption, the pressure to maintain ethics grew with it. Judge Murad had imposed a stay on the casino case but lifted it after the federal decision. He then stepped down without explanation.
Judge Murad resurfaced after retirement to challenge me in a Democrat primary for state senate in 2006 despite a near unanimous endorsement. My candidacy was arranged to prevent a primary against District Attorney Michael Arcuri elected that year to Congress in a Republican district. Despite predictions of a landslide Murad victory, results were too close to call on election night.
Then Oneida County executive, Joseph Griffo, ended up victorious, and he holds that senate seat without challenge to the present day. However, in a bizarre twist of events, the retired judge contacted me the next year to challenge Anthony Picente for the office vacated by Senator Griffo, citing my professionalism in the primary and his offer to manage my campaign.
Unfortunately, opposition was already lining up on both sides of the aisle. As the Peterman decision detailed, the Oneidas were asserting their economic muscle in the region to dismiss my casino challenge. It forced me to invest six figures in both campaigns when donors dwindled. This, in turn, impaired my support proceedings being obsessively pursued by a scorned ex-wife.
After my lead and member cases in Parent v State were dismissed in 2011, retaliation on all fronts escalated. Even my long time, trusted office manager, was influenced to embezzle another six figures from my office which led to suspensions of my law licenses. Police and prosecutors refused to act until she was jailed in 2016 for identical crimes on later law office employers.
Free speech exposes a pedophile custody judge and racist city judge
Despite all this, I continued to press for accountability against judges, lawyers and officials. They included my pedophile custody judge, Bryan Hedges, 20 NY3d 677 (2013), publicly censured city judge, Gerald Popeo, and even ethics lawyers in the witch hunt against me allowed to resign for falsifying their time sheets (Peter Torncello, Steven Zayas and Elizabeth Devane).
The consequential persecution violated all manner of human rights. In two federal cases filed after the Parent decision, I was sanctioned for bringing frivolous actions. Once again, instead of a comprehensive review of a 10-year record (totality of circumstances), both assigned judges of the same district court manipulated, inter alia, preclusion rules to deflect all blame on me.
With courthouse doors now effectively closed, I was made an open target while leaving me to take the law into my own hands. The targeting was so relentless that I was summoned for one hearing and a 170-mile round trip to a remote family court to receive a decision that had already been issued. On nearly every occasion, judges humiliated me before the ex-wife and colleagues.
Other examples include a “prohibited alcohol related gesture” (wedding toast) in a December 2, 2013 decision when unfit parenting could not be established after a so-called “mini-hearing” without notice, college degrees never cited or earned that were used to elevate support orders for jail purposes, and conflicting child access conditions creating a risk of “contempt by ambush.”
In short, I was forced to “fight for custody” or surrender parental rights to avoid confinement in a human cage located in the county jail. The prior Sheriff there had settled a case for $300,000 that I filed on behalf of an African-American corrections officer. My choice was stressed further by a continuing lack of reliable standards in support cases, Turner v Rogers, 564 US 431 (2011).
With developed contacts, I became privy to inside information advising me to expect serious mistreatment. Jail terms were quickly imposed, but these were forestalled by payments from outside sources. When exhausted, I was forced to flee my lifelong home to Paris where I sought asylum. My ordeal was ultimately captured in my 2021 published book, Whistleblower in Paris.
Physical threats prompt an attorney-whistleblower to seek asylum in Paris
This incredible ordeal compares tragically with that of Chinese civil rights attorney Chen Guangcheng. He successfully obtained asylum here after being stripped of his livelihood, child contacts and basic liberties in retaliation for his public criticisms of China’s human rights record. Judge Hurd was not unaware of this and could have retained jurisdiction over my later filings
More compelling than Roe v Wade, 410 US 113 (1973), my filings implicated countless parents, families and unborn children with no capacity for preserving an existing human right in Congress or our legislatures. This much was proven by my public forums, lobby initiatives and reports culminating in a 2019 event featuring a march down Pennsylvania Avenue under police escort.
Any rational jurist, whether life tenured in federal court or elected in state court, could see that I was being persecuted beyond human capacity due to my lawful exercise of First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. But through the cover of systemic bias, they were able to appease any moral conscience. In only one instance did an assigned judge attempt to mediate an end to the chaos.
Briefly, this judge, in my presence, reached out by cell phone to a family judge in 2015 to solicit a “global” settlement. A temporary stay of arrest was agreed upon so that home foreclosure could finally satisfy all support arrears pursuant to that 2010 state court order that my adversaries were circumventing to orchestrate incarceration. Only by chance did I discover this to be a set-up.
That family judge had been the subject of adverse website exposures at Leon Koziol.com. So offensive did he find them when raised in court that he issued a gag order on that site disguised as a protection order. It was removed when I challenged it at a higher level under circumstances showing a collusion between two courts to end a “colorable” First Amendment violation.
This humiliation only fueled more ire when that judge, Daniel King, stepped down days later and was replaced by city judge, Gerald Popeo. Anxious to avenge a 2015 public censure, judge # 40 secured center stage in a scheme to incite an innocuous emotional reaction to the growing abuse. It resulted in a secret bulletin which one traffic cop treated as a “shoot on site” support warrant.
Family harm and collateral damage to society reach a breaking point
On September 28, 2009, Joseph Longo, a police investigator in Utica, New York, left divorce court after an excessive support order to commit a murder-suicide at the marital home. It left four children without parents and the city with a $2 million wrongful death liability. The horrific crime was executed with a kitchen knife despite protection orders and confiscated weapons.
On June 15, 2011, Thomas Ball burned himself alive on the steps of a family court in Keene, New Hampshire to protest abusive custody, support and child protection laws that severed all meaningful ties with his daughter. It originated with a slap on the face intended as a disciplinary matter. No reform came of this horrendous event. They merely washed his ashes into a sewer.
On April 4, 2015, Walter Scott, an unarmed black father in South Carolina, was shot dead in the back five times by a white cop while fleeing a support warrant at a traffic stop. The scene was recorded by a concealed by-stander and motivated by revolving door jail terms on a civil debt according to a New York Times article. That cop is now serving a prison term for murder.
On April 28, 2018, two-year old Gabriella Boyd was murdered by her mother rather than give in to a custody change order that had not been timely enforced. And on January 17, 2020, eight-year-old Thomas Valva was left to freeze to death by his father in a garage after a custody judge callously dismissed the mother’s warnings without a hearing. Both are serving life sentences.
These five publicized cases are a mere sampling of the carnage occurring on an increasing scale in domestic relations courts. They have their common source in the custody and support orders mandated by the federal support standards act and incentive grants. These laws have discouraged private parental resolution in favor of an incendiary contest reminiscent of the Roman Coliseum.
These laws have also sabotaged shared parenting legislation across the country while subjecting children to an inverted order of co-parenting with the state fixated on custody. This, in turn, has aggravated criminal activity, unwanted pregnancies, drug addictions, disrespect for authority and unprecedented parental alienation. Suicides among both parents and offspring keep escalating.
On December 22, 2020, I was rushed by ambulance from an upstate emergency room to the Albany, New York medical center for a life-threatening condition caused by years of sadistic treatment at the behest of court beneficiaries. Murder can be committed directly by use of a weapon or indirectly through reckless abandon of duty to one’s children, livelihood and dignity.
The reckless abandon here was shared by all defendants named in Parent v State despite the means used to conceal and excuse it. There can be fewer devastations to constitutionally protected rights than the needless separations of parents from their children and fewer still when arrest and jail terms are employed for this purpose on a civil debt in violation of due process.
I lived daily under threat of demise given the examples set by such support obligors as Walter Scott. State police discovered my identity at a sobriety checkpoint on July 31, 2020, pressed false charges, assaulted me to a point of hospitalization, and concealed all events investigated by Internal Affairs. Although the charges were thrown out, my vulnerability was proven.
It was also predicted in a 2015 report to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch who testified with me at New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s Moreland Commission on Public Corruption in 2013. Protests over the George Floyd tragedy on May 25, 2020 induced Cuomo to generate a law which required all state police to wear body cameras on duty. None was used in my case.
Far more tormenting was the kidnapping of my precious daughters under the guise of legitimate authority and euphemism of parental alienation. Not a sunrise occurred without my fixation on their well-being. For over a decade, I had taken advantage of my weekend warrior status to share such enjoyments as boating, hiking, Disney World, water parks, the ocean and even parasailing.
Then, suddenly, they were gone like the flicker of a candle. Making matters worse, after ten years of contempt threats regarding my presence at school activities, the mandated “custodial parent,” Kelly (Hawse) Usherwood, crafted an exit strategy from our region without notice of my daughters’ residence or college locations. I have spent no time with them since 2014.
How such a maternal human being came into existence is a question which defies all moral fiber. She spent years plotting this exit against a loving dad who sacrificed everything to be in his children’s lives. After exhausting all rational explanation, it can only be deemed satanic. Any justice system which could conspire with this invites a new world order bent on self-destruction.
A blind eye to an epidemic is verified by faulty treatment of defendants
Somehow an ominous trend managed to escape the learned review of a damning record by Judge Hurd. It can be summed up in a desperate defense he adopted that was concocted by a low-level support investigator, Darlene Chudyk. She was seeking quasi-immunity from liability for the home invasion. This defense applied only in the absence of an established constitutional right.
Here multiple rights were undeniable. They included free speech retaliation, Fourth Amendment unlawful seizure, and usurpation of my parenting interests at the core of her duties. Judge Hurd had already denied the dismissal motion of Charlotte Kiehle (erroneously “Kerr”) state tax agent, who joined Chudyk at my home on October 19, 2010, thus showing merit to the “member” case.
But the overriding parenting right, indeed my entire action, was mis-stated when Judge Hurd declared that “there is no right to refuse to pay child support.” This left-field adoption bordered on the insane, and it set the stage for dismissal of remaining claims. More than that, it maligned a proud, loving dad who had voluntarily increased support by 50% prior to state intervention.
The vast majority of jurists perform their crucial functions with dedication, qualification and ethics. Shamelessly, however, others assume a level of omnipotence that reflects no regard for the harm they inflict before moving on to their next hapless victims. It is the duty of our judicial commissions to assure oversight, but they have proven to be impotent and politically constituted.
Hence that duty falls upon qualified mavericks inside the system. But these are few and dwindling after the magnitude of retaliation I endured. Indeed, in my filings and publications, I compared my ordeal as a civil rights attorney to a Rodney King beating with the fists and batons replaced by orders and edicts. I did so again in Parent by reference to the Ku Klux Klan.
Judge Hurd took offense to this and may have therefore applied a further bias to his analysis. But ethics codes require jurists to exhibit restraint to assure consistent impartiality. This promotes a requisite high esteem for such office holders. Regardless, in the end, they remain public servants, and sadly, this base function was abandoned in the Parent deliberations throughout.
To be sure, the federal judges here betrayed a level of elitism that blinded them to rendering just and timely outcomes. They refused to treat each named party as a “person acting under color of law” to violate federal rights pursuant to the statute that gives victims recourse, 42 USC 1983 (Civil Rights Act of 1871) also known as the “Ku Klux Klan Act.” A few examples are in order.
Judge Hurd failed to recognize that each defendant had played a role, however remote, in harming a relationship with my daughters. Child support was merely a distraction. So when a “person” as high as a U.S. cabinet member, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services is named, she cannot be said to lack “personal involvement” for dismissal purposes.
At the time of relevant events, Ms. Sebelius was perhaps the most impacting “person” as she implemented draconian support enforcement practices that led to the kind of carnage cited here. She need not be present for court proceedings in countless civil rights cases, but like the staff lawyers sent to litigate them, a designee can be made routine to reconcile congressional intent.
The same is true for state end actors. A motorist is not disgorged of driving privileges in a vacuum. Here, defendant David Swarts, Commissioner of Motor Vehicles, is ultimately the director of his agents on the scene who impact child support capacities. Law enforcement is no exception when punishing civil rights lawyers without disciplinary responses from policymakers.
As for tax agents like Donna Costello and Charlotte Kiehle, they had no authority to aid the county support agent in charge of events at my home. Indeed, as stated, all three were acting contrary to a state court order in their prior possession and handed to one at the scene which limited support collections to a separate foreclosure procedure. That made them trespassers.
This raised a far greater issue than the seizure of automobiles. If aggrieved citizens cannot rely upon the effect and respect to be accorded to a state supreme court order, it invites self-help remedies and ultimately anarchy of the kind which manifested itself at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. As exemplified by the local land claim protests, the people have their limits.
Retaliation by ethics lawyers was not only anticipated, but their own misconduct corroborated a two-class disciplinary system. They were allowed to resign quietly by their employers and ultimate decision maker, defendant Third Department appeals court, for falsifying time sheets. These are the standard-bearers of attorney ethics charged with oversight of billing practices.
Lumping all attorney disciplinary actors into a single category of judicial status for “absolute” immunity purposes created a decisional anomaly insofar as a separation between prosecutor and impartial decision maker was compromised in further violation of due process. It harkened back to a day when “star chambers” beholden to the King dispensed justice in feudal England.
Absolute judicial immunity has no source in the Constitution or legislated law here in America. Like parens patriae doctrine (child’s best interests), it was given life by the Supreme Court in Stump v Sparkman, 435 US 349 (1978) as a carry-over from British common law. Such elitism strikes at the core of our Constitution drafted to cement a clean break from our mother country.
A lingering omnipotence was therefore allowed to contaminate extended litigation in Parent v State. The second federal judge to take up my constitutional challenges, Thomas McAvoy, applied an anti-civil rights disposition to dismiss my 2012 complaint, i.e. Lopez v Metropolitan Life, 930 F.2d 157 (2nd Cir. 1991)(an early case of mine focused on employment discrimination).
Finally, judges Gary Sharpe and Glen Suddaby, in a tag team beating, imposed sanctions and a conditional filing order. They overrode recusal sought, in part, on a human gene to be discovered “in another fifty years” to make decisions. I decried Judge Sharpe’s omnipotence as Hitleresque based on his rare and resulting removal in United States v Cossey, 632 F. 3d 82 (2nd Cir. 2011).
Duty-bound jurists squander opportunities to set overdue precedent
The Parent v State record and sequel opened the door for precedent in a number of crucial contexts. These included judicial and sovereign immunities, father discrimination, Title IV-D funding abuses, court structure, and attorney whistleblower protection. All were overlooked by jurists I metaphorically criticized “like zombies marching in an Independence Day parade.”
For too long, I have labored to secure legal protection for conscientious attorney whistleblowers, most recently a precedent-seeking case filed with the Supreme Court under docket no. 18-278 and captioned Leon R. Koziol v Chief Judge Janet DiFiore. Ahead of its time, it sought to permit circumstantial proof as a conventional means for establishing unlawful retaliation by judges.
Presently, even in misconduct cases, a tiny percent of which are actually investigated, two unwritten rules of evidence invariably emerge, one for judges and the other for complainants. Under the first, damning evidence is blocked in both overt and discreet ways to protect judicial stature. For the same reason, under the second, a higher burden of proof is effectively imposed.
Adherence to consistent proof standards would promote fearless reporting by those most qualified. Alternatively, an exception to the doctrine of judicial immunity would exclude malicious acts from its broad reach. Under current law, a judge could announce a hazard-causing decision against a litigant-adversary, yet remain protected from liability for any damage.
The DiFiore filing sought to remedy these dysfunctions, representing a check on the persecution of attorney whistleblowers. The protracted and depraved manner in which unlawful retaliation was carried out against me presented itself as an ideal case. As detailed in my book, the attorney disciplinary process was weaponized to achieve outcomes harmful to a civilized society.
To be sure, my disclosures were so justifiably offensive that the wrongdoers went to the extreme of sabotaging parent-child relationships in then pending family court proceedings. My petition for declaratory relief eventually fell victim to the Supreme Court’s practice of denying roughly 99% of all that are filed included a stay motion decided by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Despite these set-backs, I was later vindicated when the main defending party, New York Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, was forced to resign after investigation by a judicial commission. DiFiore was reported for a letter she sent to a disciplinary judge seeking the harshest outcome against the head of a court officer’s union in retaliation for his criticisms of her pandemic safety practices.
This audacious act shows how readily a judge will misuse authority behind the scenes to punish public critics. It is far from isolated. A predecessor chief judge, Sol Wachtler, may have mentored such elitism with brazen crimes committed 30 years earlier. He served a mere seven years in a medium security facility after being arrested for extortion, racketeering and blackmail.
Like DiFiore, Wachtler used high office to interfere with a licensing process of the attorney exposing his misconduct. It featured Wachtler’s mistress. Under a fictitious name, he made false reports to the FBI and threatened to kidnap her child. Ironically, Judge Wachtler was renowned for an opinion criticizing prosecutors who could “indict a ham sandwich” if they so targeted.
Wachtler was reinstated after his disbarment, hired as a law school professor, and rewarded with book royalties from his prison memoir, After the Madness. In it, he defended his misconduct because judges are supposedly trained to think of themselves as gods. This was a man being groomed for a Supreme Court appointment. It remains an untenable thought process today.
Continuing with our precedent-setting contexts, father discrimination remains subject to lip service despite Census Bureau reports still showing that some 80% of support obligors are men. A suspect class added to race and gender laws would promote genuine equality. Until serious institutional changes are implemented, we will continue down a path toward a fatherless society.
Chaotic court structure combines with funding abuses to require an overhaul in our domestic relations laws. Due process is a fluid concept, always a work-in-progress particularly when confronted with modern day challenges. Taken individually or collectively, precedent on this prong of our Constitution would go a long way toward ridding our society of systemic bias.
Sovereign immunity from suit in federal court derives from an outdated 11th Amendment drafted to retain state integrity in the 1700s. Even without an arduous repeal process, Congress has constitutional authority to legislate exceptions to that immunity which should occur more often. Absent that, I urged that state acceptance of Title IV-D funds operated as a waiver of immunity.
Next, circumstantial proof should be allowed to show lawless retaliation by judges. This overdue precedent was patently ignored in all decisions related to the Parent case, leaving countless victims without cause for treating these public servants above others evincing similar conduct. Yet another example of unmitigated elitism, it yielded yet another miscarriage of justice.
Here, an ethics probe was initiated on the same day as my appeals court arguments featuring protected lawyer misconduct. That court appointed ethics committee members which included my divorce opponent. It led to escalating false charges after 23 years of unblemished practice. Together with the foregoing, it allowed for a conclusion that judge corruption was widespread.
Despite its ultimate adverse outcome, Parent v State set unofficial precedent demonstrating the fallacy of judicial supremacy. On appeal to the U.S. Second Circuit, Judge Hurd’s dismissal was affirmed, but only after he was corrected on proper grounds in accord with the Supreme Court’s longstanding judicial policy of deference to state courts under the Younger abstention doctrine.
Then, only one year later, in Sprint Communications v Jacobs, 571 US 69 (2013), that policy was clarified to discredit the Second Circuit correction. The same high court admonished lower ones for abusing Younger to dismiss meritorious filings. Its three-part test was emphasized to apply only to exceptional cases where the state was essentially prosecuting an important function.
Conclusion: An open message to our federal government
This year will mark the 100th anniversary of the landmark decision which recognized the right of parents in the “care, custody and control of their children,” labeling it the oldest liberty protected by our Constitution, Meyer v Nebraska, 262 US 390 (1923). Supreme Court rulings since then have acknowledged the changing nature of family units but remained loyal to this natural right.
One need go no further than the court caption in Parent v State to verify the sheer number of persons and entities now engaged in the dismantling of this right as parental substitutes. A fair analysis of the Parent case here has shown how each was necessarily named for a complete outcome under our dual system of government. It cries out for action by all three branches.
Congress is called upon to convene oversight hearings to gain direct input from the countless victims of federal funding abuses in our domestic relations courts. The Justice Department is duty-bound to investigate civil rights violations that have been long neglected in these same courts. And it is high time for the Supreme Court to grant protection for attorney-whistleblowers.
The People of the United States have expressed time and again their contempt for the manner in which our nation has been governed in recent years. It is not a contempt based on gender, race or party affiliation. It is one demanding an honest performance of sworn duty when hardly a day goes by without some scandal or mass reaction by a disgusted constituency.
Herein lies an extraordinary opportunity for leaders to reverse this trend.
Founder and president, Citizen Commission Against Corruption, Inc.
In his ominous concurring opinion in Dobbs v Jackson, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas declared that other landmark rulings should also be overturned based on the reasoning used by the Court’s majority in striking the right to an abortion. He cited gay marriage and contraceptives as some of his targets given their lack of any textual source in our Constitution. Unlike the right to bear arms enshrined by our Second Amendment which the same Court reaffirmed only one day earlier, these rights are not found in any amendment or bill of rights.
This should deeply alarm all parents because the right to raise one’s offspring is also devoid of any textual recognition in that same venerable document, making it ripe for judicial assault. Indeed, like prey evading the shark, it is a right that may be said to be hiding among those targeted for review. Moreover, it is one that is already being bitten apart in our schools, homes and communities. Simply stated, we parents have taken it for granted much like abortion advocates had for a half century.
However, the parenting right derives from a different source than privacy or that “penumbra” of rights found elsewhere in our Constitution which the high court used to rationalize its shaky decision in 1973. The parenting right exists solidly within the “traditions and history” of our republic, and it was unquestioned by the framers of that Constitution in 1787. It was first given formal recognition 75 years ago in the landmark case of Meyer v Nebraska, 262 US 390 (1923) and expanded to countenance grandparent rights in Troxel v Granville, 530 US 57 (2000).
In the latter case, writing for a plurality of the Court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor declared this right to be the “oldest liberty interest protected by the Constitution.” Hence it may be assumed that this right will remain protected for the foreseeable future because it rests upon a different prong than abortion and privacy. But given the whirlwind of recent Supreme Court rulings, the renewed drive to pack the Court, and outright bedlam across America, we parents must stand guard.
Here at the Parenting Rights Institute we have been acting aggressively to promote fathers’ rights and parental rights generally since 2010. This is largely due to our growing status as a “fatherless America” which, in turn, has triggered widespread violence and declines in our moral fiber as a nation. To that end, as a victim and civil rights attorney, I have exposed judicial corruption that is destroying our families.
This 12-year crusade for overdue reforms led to severe retributions by my profession leading to the loss of all contact with my precious daughters, closure of my law practice and ultimate hospitalization in 2020 for a life-threatening condition. This is the price to be paid by whistleblowers in our third branch of government while the band plays on.” Hopefully my sacrifices will be a beacon of light for parents immersed in the same crusade who are being ignored and censored by our government.
As a civil rights attorney, I spent over two decades litigating for victims of race, gender, religion and ethnic discrimination. This included sexual harassment cases when they were unpopular. Many successful verdicts, monetary recoveries and precedent outcomes resulted. But my crusade for justice was not limited to minorities. It also extended to white landowners wrongfully threatened with eviction in the Oneida Indian land claim. Police brutality cases were similarly prosecuted for diverse victims, and I represented a public safety commissioner, police chief and rank and file officers whenever they were falsely accused.
In short, I was motivated to correct injustices to a point where I managed to have a billion-dollar casino compact invalidated on constitutional grounds in New York Supreme Court. The Las Vegas Sun reported it as a David-Goliath battle won by a “small law office” in upstate New York. Among the defense firms in that case was Cravath, Swaine and Moore, one of the most powerful in the world. These achievements earned me praise from federal and state judges. The court transcripts, headline news and published opinions bear this out.
However, when I turned my energies to correcting human rights violations in divorce and family courts, I was viciously targeted. Suddenly, my arguments were incomprehensible, rambling and frivolous after 23 unblemished years. Even I underestimated the wrath of a corrupt regime bent on retaliation for my exposure of corruption involving a judge-lawyer gold mine. In numerous public statements, I cited federal funding abuses and lucrative custody battles that were inciting child murders, veteran suicides and needless parental conflict.
As a consequentially victimized parent, I was then forced to assume the mantra of a judicial whistleblower devoid of legal protection. The horrific ordeal which followed remains unprecedented in modern times. Due to its complexity over a twelve-year period resulting in deprivations of my law practice, father-daughter relationships and a full range of constitutional rights, I was compelled to summarize this ordeal in a recently published book entitled Whistleblower in Paris.
Among the court practices I condemned in that book was the abuse of forensic custody evaluations. Only last week, a blue-ribbon panel appointed by New York’s governor voted to eliminate these evaluations altogether. I made a presentation at a virtual public hearing sponsored by that panel asking for this very outcome, but like the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption (where I also made a presentation), it is doubtful that any genuine reform will be implemented. That is how powerful this gold mine has become.
So, in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, I sponsored a three-day event at our nation’s capital in May, 2019. Its goal was to elicit a Justice Department investigation and congressional hearings into the rampant human rights violations and federal funding abuses which continue to be ignored in these custody and support courts. We featured planning sessions, a lobby day among the offices of Congress, expert speakers at a hotel ballroom, a candlelight vigil in front of the U.S. Capitol, and a march down Pennsylvania Avenue under police escort from the White House to the Supreme Court.
All of this was accomplished without incident on a shoestring budget. At least four necessary permits were obtained together with regulatory compliance. Parents came from all parts of the country to register their peaceful protest against divorce and family court corruption. Yet not a single member of Congress responded. Then-president Donald Trump never materialized in front of the crowd assembled at the White House. Not even a representative was sent. The Justice Department weighed in with the same message that parental rights were not even on their radar.
So what is the lesson to be realized from all this? Peaceful protests to benefit parents, children and families of all races, religions and ethnic backgrounds will be ignored. They yield no respect whatsoever while the same politicians beg for our support on election day. Therefore, it’s time for my dear friends struggling against parental alienation, custody abuses and support debtor prisons to take matters into your own hands. Stay away from lawyers and these courts, set aside your custody and support disputes, and keep abreast of fellow victims who need help.
In this way at least, we might succeed in closing the gold mine.
For more information on our cause to preserve parental rights and promote judicial accountability, visit the Citizen Commission Against Corruption website at http://www.citizencommissionagainstcorruption.org, a nonprofit organization seeking to do the job which oversight agencies are not. The office number is (315) 864-8176 or contact Dr. Koziol directly at (315) 796-4000.
And help share this vital message as it is beinghighly censored.
My name is Leon Koziol, a parent advocate who practiced law in federal and state courts. I am also a parent victimized for my exposure of court corruption. As a result, my livelihood was destroyed and my precious daughters alienated from me.
I am therefore well positioned to address this phenomenon known as parental alienation, and I am here today to give hope to fellow victims. So stay with me, it’s worth your time.
This video may lead to parent-child reunions or, at the very least, prevent harm to families and future generations. It verifies that you are not alone in your struggles. Parent alienation is now a national crisis, and the courts that caused it require overhauls.
But it requires much more. We must unite to get our Justice Department to open a human rights investigation. Because federal funds deliver such outcomes, Congress must also step up with public hearings to study misappropriations. Child custody has become a pay-to-parent scandal as I will elaborate.
To that end I need your help to bring parental alienation to the forefront of national policy. All of us have a stake in this, whether or not a parent, because the injustices harm our extended families, health care systems, community interests, worker productivity, education and law enforcement.
Yes, parental alienation has reached crisis levels, but it is being ignored as part of a lucrative framework for adjudication which still infects our divorce and family courts. Judges there end parent-child relationships with little or no cause to serve the growing demands of a lawyer glut that has invaded our society.
There are now more than 300,000 lawyers in California and New York alone anxious to advance their fee interests. There is scant accountability for the greed they generate through needless conflict, and the resulting carnage is ripe for public outrage. But we have to channel that outrage to achieve overdue reforms.
To begin with, it should be no shock that any conscientious attorney who makes a stand against his profession will be targeted. My whistleblower activity elicited horrific retributions which I seriously underestimated. Their brazen nature can be explained by the gold mine I was threatening.
Despite my unblemished reputation and principled litigation for more than 23 years, I was deprived of my children, assets and income capacity while subjected to inflated support obligations to justify a jail term for violations. It left me alone to pursue recourse in creative ways including a stint in Paris, France.
With that behind me, I can now proceed with undivided loyalty to a joint mission because there is little else that can be done to scare me off. I will get to the hypocrisy of family judges shortly. But for now, let us look at those who facilitate parent alienation.
Despite being charged with a duty of dispensing justice, protecting our liberties and assuring equal treatment, there are too many judges violating that duty when they turn a blind eye to this crisis. But make no mistake, parent alienation is a legalized form of child abduction fueled by profits and revenues.
If you’re a victim, you already know that these abductions are real. When your offspring are seized by your own government, a part of you goes with it. You then become isolated, dreading these festive holidays because of the pain they bring.
Like a solar eclipse, the lack of love or contact with your children darkens your spirits and may lead to dire reactions. Parent suicides, homicides and child murders are on the rise.
This carnage stems from an antiquated child custody system derived from a day when moms stayed home and dads worked. In contrast with shared parenting models, custody laws require parents to fight over their offspring for a winner-take-all award. It can become a brutal contest that pits loved ones against each other and their government, breeding new forms of evil.
Despite a professed concern, judges welcome these battles because they are rewarded by the number and size of support orders they issue. This comes in the way of federal grants that few know about under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act.
We’re talking billions of dollars annually in revenues for the states and astronomical fees for service providers. Like the tobacco, drug and tech industries, you are merely their pawns, collateral damage to quench unmitigated greed. Sure, you can complain endlessly on social media to wanna-be lawyers with voo-doo advice, but no one with influence is paying attention.
So why aren’t these judges, lawyers and service providers being held accountable? Well for starters, you have to recall that judges are lawyers on the bench. Because they wear robes and enter tribunals with great fanfare does not eliminate that reality.
As for oversight, a single statewide commission that meets sporadically is routinely overwhelmed. Reports show that California and New York investigate only ten percent of complaints. It’s mostly window-dressing as the band plays on.
Beyond that, it would be a hypocrisy for judges to admonish their own, a blemish on high office. So let’s examine a much greater hypocrisy about that high office and its ethics.
My custody judge, Bryan Hedges, was banned from the bench after admitting to sexual abuse of his handicapped five-year old niece. What sort of thought was he harboring while interrogating children in private chambers? I was fortunate to have him removed from my case before my girls could be traumatized.
His replacement, Michael Hanuszczak, was then exposed for sexual harassment of his court clerks. Yet another, Gerald Popeo, was censured for threats and racist remarks from the bench. A record forty trial jurists were removed from my originally uncontested divorce.
Although much of this can be explained by proper self-recusals, others abused office to discredit my public message. Mine is only one case. How can you know if your judge is taking a bribe to fix a custody case as Gerald Garson and Thomas Spargo were in New York? Both were apprehended by chance and convicted.
Or how about Michigan Judge Wade McCree who impregnated a litigant in chambers. He was exposed only because he was a married man. The adversary in that case then sought recourse but was denied on grounds of judicial immunity. It begs the question: Is judge adultery in court a protected act? Seriously?
Then there’s the kids for cash scandal in Pennsylvania and the list goes on. But now let’s turn to the victims. Thomas Ball, a father and veteran, burned himself alive on the steps of a court to protest extended separations from his child. No major outcry, no national exposure. They merely swept his ashes into a sewer.
Joe Longo, a police investigator exited support court only to secure his own justice by committing a murder-suicide at the former marital home using a common kitchen knife. It left four children without parents and a permanent end to child support.
Walter Scott could no longer endure recurring terms in a debtor prison, so it was no surprise that he ran unarmed from a support warrant at a traffic stop. But it was a shock when the cop gave chase and elected to shoot his target dead five times in the back.
That cop is now doing time in a federal prison. Police officers should be doing police work. Instead, they are being exploited as debt collectors. It raises another question of whether government is now killing for money. Without a concealed by-stander and video, this cop would have gotten away with his false reports.
Only last month, Chad Read was also shot dead unarmed by the boyfriend of his son’s mother. That killer interrupted an argument between the parents during a child exchange at her home. Such arguments occur every day across the country.
But now, picking up your children can become a scene from the wild west as the killer’s lawyer claims self-defense under a no-retreat law in Texas. Is it any wonder that many parents today are walking away from their responsibilities, yet another form of alienation? A human being can handle only so much court insanity only to be blamed for it with costly psychiatric exams.
And how about the children who are supposedly being protected by those courts? Two-year old, Gabriella Boyd, was murdered by her mother in 2018 rather than surrender to a custody change order. She is now serving a life sentence.
Eight-year old, Thomas Valva, died of hypothermia due to the abuse of his NYPD father last year, and two-year old, Kyra Franchetti, was victim of a murder-suicide by her father who burned down their home. A news reporter disclosed that more than 700 deaths are not publicized by child protection agencies.
This holiday season, countless moms and dads will be denied contact with their little ones. Meanwhile parent alienators will be working overtime to brainwash them to hate the other parent. Their motivations are boundless and often psychotic.
Here at my websites, You-Tube channel, publications and reform events around the country, you can obtain highly qualified options for taking action to stop the carnage. Judges, lawyers and politicians only respond to numbers and influence.
First, visit my personal site, Leon Koziol.com for updates and valuable information. There is no legal fee for this. You can also subscribe to my talk program, Leon’s Library, on YouTube.
Second, log on to the Parenting Rights Institute website. The programs there focus on mediation, self-help and strategies to keep you out of these courts. It may save you thousands in fees.
Third, in dire matters, contact the Citizen Commission Against Corruption, a nonprofit doing the job of oversight agencies. Precedent litigation is among our weapons. Your donations are tax deductible, without which we cannot fight special interests.
Fourth, my newly published book, Whistleblower in Paris, provides education and intrigue. It can be obtained at any Barnes and Noble store, Amazon or major bookseller on-line.
Fifth, I have published a citizen petition against parent alienation on Change.org. All you have to do is sign it, short and simple.
Finally, you can join any of the reform events I sponsor around the country. They include a three-day gathering known as the Parent March on Washington which I hope to repeat.
In 2019, it featured a lobby day in Congress, expert speakers at a hotel ballroom, a march down Pennsylvania Avenue under police escort, and a candlelight vigil for the lives lost in these matters. Currently a networking program, Amber Appeal, is underway to provide information regarding absentee children.
Spread this holiday message, a genuine gift for countless victims. You can also contact me directly at (315) 796-4000.
Judge Daniel King’s hangout near his family court in Lowville, New York where he commits “alcohol related gestures.”
On November 25, 2013, Lewis County Family Judge Daniel King was prepared to throw a judicial temper tantrum. He was eager to avenge public exposure of his gross incompetence by Leon Koziol two months earlier before the state’s Moreland Commission on Public Corruption. Among other things, King had used two college degrees that this attorney-father never earned to raise his support obligations in a family court case then pending.
Some background is in order. Judge King was newly elected, demonstrably inexperienced and assigned to an outside case. That assignment was exploited to concoct degrees as a means for punishing a qualified whistleblower of court corruption. This would please other judges similarly exposed, and Dan was anxious to be a part of their club. He would issue the highest of obligations to justify a jail term for support violations while income was being deprived through similarly orchestrated license suspensions.
Now, on this day, November 25, 2013, King was hearing a custody matter involving the same targeted father of two girls. Based on the slightest allegations of a scorned ex-spouse bent on replacing this father with a substitute boyfriend, he issued an order directing both parents to refrain from any alcohol use in the presence of the children. He also directed that these same children be lodged in separate rooms at any hotel near the location of a wedding reception involving the dad’s niece one week earlier.
The nefarious agenda of this judge came into focus again when the attorney-whistleblower-dad was accused of alcohol consumption at that reception. A so-called “mini-hearing” was therefore held on a first appearance that day to decide whether King’s conditions for attending this reception were violated. Because the proceeding was not duly noticed consistent with due process requirements, no witnesses or evidence could be provided.
Nevertheless, Judge King concluded that a champaign toast, even if never consumed, constituted a “prohibited alcohol related gesture” sufficient to justify a suspension of parenting time, one that would extend over an ensuing eight-year period to the present day. To further support that barbaric outcome, he found that the girls, aged ten and eleven at the time, although lodged in separate bedrooms of a hotel suite, were not technically in a separate location from the dad’s then fiancee.
An appeals court temporarily blocked that bizarre decision unsupported by any unfit parenting. Indeed, there had never even been a complaint to any protection agency, no alcohol related event, and no criminal record while prison inmates were being favored. However, for reasons never disclosed, the same appeals court allowed a second fully noticed hearing to go forward one month later. In that proceeding, Judge King simply set aside basic trial protocols to orchestrate a record that could support his earlier bizarre rulings. It forced the victim to walk out of that hearing after undue threats were made from the bench.
It was all simply a foregone conclusion that this so-called family judge would abuse public office for illicit reasons. Accordingly, the victimized father commenced his own inquiry into the hypocrisy of this judge based on his rumored alcohol use in the presence of his own children at a bar near the family courthouse in Lowville, New York. Together with other court victims, he was able to find that Judge King was a regular at Jeb’s Restaurant.
The interviewed bar staff even had King’s standard cocktail committed to memory with his own children seated at a nearby table. It was much more than a “prohibited alcohol related gesture” because his subjects in the courtroom could not possibly know what such a gesture might be for violation purposes. Beyond the obvious, Daniel King was a judge held to the highest standards of public office exhibiting a hypocrisy of monumental proportion.
There is so much more to the abuses of judicial office not only by King, but by many of the forty trial level jurists removed or disqualified from Leon Koziol’s 15-year proceedings. The human rights violations and whistleblower punishments over this needlessly protracted period are more than sufficient to justify an investigation by the Justice Department and Civil Rights Bureau of the New York Attorney General. Complaints before both have been filed. The ordeal is detailed in a newly published book, Whistleblower in Paris, available at any Barnes and Noble store, Amazon, publisher Author House or major bookseller on-line.
If you are a resident, litigant or voter at Judge King’s upcoming re-election in 2022, you should make your own inquiry into this judge and his protected misconduct. Many readers have expressed doubt that such bizarre orders and outcomes could be real. But a copy of the December 2, 2013 decision containing them is available for inspection. If you have anything more to offer, feel free to contact Leon directly at (315) 796-4000 for the sake of victims, parents and children everywhere.
$5 million was spent in divorce fees by Dr. Eric Braverman, now in bankruptcy, $2 million by Professor Anthony Pappas without child custody issue, both in NYC, and another $2 million from small business owner, Mike Seale, to become a record for upstate Warren County. That’s nearly $10 million for three clients alone. Unlike other professions, there’s no insurance for this.
As I continue to warn such victims, if you have the resources, they’ll take every last dollar for every needless service they can concoct. They will remind you that “it’s the law” (which they created) that requires filings, petitions, motions and appeals. They dupe you into believing they are acting in the “best interests” of your children even though they know nothing about them, never conceived or birthed them, and had nothing to do with the demands of upbringing.
Indeed, many of these court predators never had children after exiting law school during a lawyer glut hungry to find anything for a fee. And yet, time and again you fall prey to their slick sound bites, only $5,000 up front before they bill you to death. You have fallen into the web of a black-widow spider, and you can’t do anything to escape, scrambling from one law office to another after regular disappointments or malpractice in search of elusive justice.
If you are successful in any of this, you might boast of your exploits against your “adversary” (the mom or dad of your own children). But the truth is, in the end, it’s the lawyers on both sides of this barbaric process who are celebrating in chambers or local country club. Come on man, as Joe Biden would say, why do you think they scrutinize your financials? It’s not so much to get you that so-called “award.” It’s to gauge how much they can bill you.
When you are tapped out, it’s suddenly time to settle. Phone calls are not returned so regularly. And your children have been deprived of their college funds, the other parent with an extended family and/or their faith in your example. So why should anyone wonder why a whistleblower like me was so viciously targeted? I’ve been exposing this corruption for more than ten years only to confirm that this is a gold mine beyond reach of accountability.
To be sure, what can a “lone wolf,” victimized dad, and conscientious attorney accomplish without financial or organizational support against bar associations and special interests?
So the best thing we can do in our foxholes is to educate one another on the realities of this epidemic. We must choose private resolution over greed, ego and vendettas. The latter is what these predators crave. Putting them out of business turns out to be your best weapon based on their refusal to restrain and reform their gluttonous practices.
To that end, subscribe to our YouTube channel, Leon’s Library, our highly censored website at http://www.leonkoziol.com, and get vital assistance at www.parentingrightsinstitute.com. If your ordeal is sufficiently outrageous, contact the Citizen Commission Against Corruption, Inc., a nonprofit devoted to keeping our public institutions accountable at (315) 864-8176.
Help us where you can. At the very least we all deserve a thankful greeting card from these unscrupulous lawyers and service providers during the holidays.
A great holiday gift for your lawyer, judge, the unwary litigant and those who properly seek to educate themselves: newly published book, Whistleblower in Paris, available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, publisher Author House, or any major bookseller on-line,
Delmonico’s Italian Steakhouse Restaurants are noted for their superb atmosphere, nostalgic music, fine food and a staff that really makes you feel at home. On Fathers’ Day 2021, I waited patiently for my daughters Kristen and Cassandra to show up for a Fathers’ Day dinner that we had not shared in years. They never showed, not even a courtesy call, thanks to our dysfunctional family courts, Judge Daniel King and vindictive custodial parent, Kelly (Hawse) Usherwood. She worked overtime for many years to alienate them from me.
It’s a standard feature these days when lawyers concoct false petitions as a custody tactic to incite lucrative conflict between cooperating parents. Never mind the consequences to innocent children and families on such occasions, there are easy fees to be collected and federal revenues to be earned in this manner. As a dedicated dad and former civil rights attorney, I can attest to the carnage reflected by my gross mistreatment on this special day, another retribution for a conscientious stand against my profession.
Although unaware of my personal crisis on that day, I was fortunate to receive a Fathers’ Day gift from restaurant management at the Utica, New York location, 147 North Genesee Street, just south of New York Thruway exit 31 (I-90). It brought me a measure of unexpected happiness, and I took advantage of that gift with a fine steak dinner today (Sunday, December 12, 2021) for the holidays. It was a dinner coupon which was soon to expire. What a sweet Christmas present as I will again be denied my precious daughters this holiday season.
We should all thank the Delmonico’s restaurant chain for their ongoing faith in families, American traditions, their loyal patrons and making our days so special. You will see their locations in upstate New York and Orlando, Florida on the gift card attached to this post above. Treat yourself to a visit flavored by the timely photos below. You will be overjoyed at the experience. Stay in touch with our crusade for justice and shared parenting at Citizen Commission Against Corruption and http://www.leonkoziol.com.
Make sure you tell the manager if you’re celebrating a special event at Delmonico’sYou’re never alone with so many famous guestsMy favorite: New York Strip mediumAlways cooked to perfection, never a disappointmentAlways wanted to try a tiramisu after Debra Messing mentioned it in a movie: indescribableName your favorite wine, they got it allProfanity and idiocy are not allowed by the security detail, bring your entire familyEven Andrew Cuomo and his brother Chris are allowed in
An oblivious family judge, Daniel King, issued orders leading to a needless deathMichael Brancaccio, a father of four, dead at age 46
The child support practices in New York and many other states have become so draconian that they are increasingly causing early deaths among their target victims. Such practices are often mindless, revenue- driven and devoid of accountability. In too many cases, they produce jail terms and effectively kill debtor parents without commission of any crimes, thereby ending child support altogether.
Worse yet, debtor parents, desperate to avoid incarceration, surrender their parenting rights to appease underlying goals of their adversaries to secure a substitute particularly in married settings. Such was the case involving Michael Brancaccio, a father of four who was coerced into giving up his daughter in 2018 to avoid a recurring jail term imposed by Lewis County Family Judge Daniel King who is now up for re-election.
Mike had already served a six-month term for child support arrears in 2015, the maximum allowed by law, and he was now facing another identical term involving several thousand dollars. He had been through a number of jobs and could not keep up with the support orders being issued against him. During the first stint, he was committed to toughing it out by doing his time but that turned out to be a nightmare. He was also unaware that his monthly obligations continued to accrue while incarcerated in Lewis County jail.
Unable to reconcile the early release of fellow inmates on serious crimes, he was finally set free after serving a full “sentence.” He fell into a bad state of mind and was soon hospitalized for kidney failure and other complications. He survived that brush with death only to fall victim again to another support violation petition. This time he was coerced into waiving all parenting rights and access to his little girl, then aged nine, in order to have this debt erased and incarceration avoided.
The adversary mom quickly had his daughter’s last name changed to that of her new husband. This outcome devastated Mike who then returned to a depressed lifestyle while entertaining thoughts of serious revenge. On October 11, 2020, he was found dead at age 46 in his Utica, New York apartment. Those close to him who had witnessed his lively parenting periods and regular phone chats with his little girl knew that this debt-induced, permanent separation was the core reason for his downfall and early death.
That little girl cried at the funeral and asked those around her whether it was all “the court stuff” that caused her daddy’s death. She would now suffer his absence from her graduations, birthdays, weddings and other cherished events. In the end, no one in the family court system gave a rat’s ass about this barbaric outcome as they simply moved on to their next victims. Judge Daniel King who presided over it was likely unaware of the early death of the young dad he had sent to a debtor prison.
Instead, Judge King was too busy satisfying performance grants awarded to him (the state) by the federal government based on the number, size and collection of support obligations under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act. Mike was simply another statistic, a means for satisfying pay hikes under the state’s new compensation law. That law was influenced by a highly controversial lawsuit brought by the state’s chief judge and court system against the governor and state legislature, the ones constitutionally authorized to decide state salaries.
It was called the judicial pay raise trilogy, Maron v Silver, 14 NY3d 230 (2010). As a result of that lawsuit, judicial pay raises are now set by an appointed group and virtually automatic. The people would likely be shocked at the judge salaries we see today, and the money had to come from someplace. Federal funding incentives and legal fictions to maximize support orders were a big part of the answer. And it did not matter that impartiality and due process had to be sacrificed to make it happen.
While there is much more to understand about this pay-to-parent scandal, the bottom line here was that a mom got her substitute dad, a little girl lost her real dad for life, that dad got a funeral, and Judge King did his part to make it happen, all in the so-called “best interests of the child.” Greater detail exists in the newly published book, Whistleblower in Paris, available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon and major bookseller sites. Mike’s ordeal can be found in Chapter Five.
No, this is not an apprentice. His name is Daniel King, harming parents, children and families as a judge for nearly a decade. Now comes the opportunity to replace him with a qualified candidate in 2022.
Leon R. Koziol, J.D.
Parenting Rights Institute
Administrator’s Note: This is a column worth reading due to its exposure of court corruption that could harm any potential family court litigant. You will learn of inside practices not revealed elsewhere. Share this with others so that they can avoid similar judge abuses.
Author’s Note: As a practicing civil rights attorney until 2010, I became privy to much concealed misconduct in our courts which I exposed only to incur immense retributions. The following column is a part of my ordeal.
Daniel King had a stint as a lawyer in rural Lewis County, New York before managing to have himself elected to the position of family judge in 2012. Upon taking office, he was assigned to cases in much larger counties of New York’s Fifth Judicial District (Syracuse, Utica-Rome and Watertown). These included criminal court matters beyond the limited jurisdiction of family court under the state constitution. But because of a highly abused assignment provision in that same document, he was able to become assigned to cases normally handled by other specialized judges.
This bizarre assignment process took Judge King away from duties properly committed to his Lewis County constituents but he must have enjoyed all the prestige it was giving to him. It is a court process largely off-record and beyond challenge by impacted parties. It represents only one of many reasons cited by the New York bar for a constitutional convention in 2017 to rectify the state’s complex 11-trial court system. That system was compared to our most populous state of California which has a single trial level court. For the same reason, this judge in a county barely having more than 25,000 residents was able to preside in counties having over 460,000 residents. These were places where he never would have been elected, where the voters now had no say in his assignments.
As corruption or bad luck would have it, Daniel King was assigned to my custody and support matters in Oneida County (Utica-Rome) only six months into his term. It was ordered by District Administrative Judge James (Bond) Tormey. Jim acquired the spy designation because he was named in a successful civil rights lawsuit brought by a chief court clerk who refused to engage in “political espionage” (according to a federal judge). This chief clerk was ordered to spy against judge candidates of an opposite political party and was subjected to retaliation by assignments to remote locations.
This retaliation patterned my family court assignments to many of the same remote locations in retaliation for my whistleblowing activity. The clerk recovered $600,000 because, unlike litigants harmed by comparable wrongs, court employees are not subject to judicial immunity. I know the corruption exposed here at Leon Koziol.com is often hard to believe, but this one can be verified at Morin v Tormey, 626 F.3d 40 (2nd Cir, 2010)(a federal appeals court ruling in Manhattan). Somehow the learned judges who reviewed the retaliation against me could not see a problem with any of this. It was not even mentioned in their subsequent decisions on my state appeals and federal civil rights cases.
Emboldened by those unjust decisions, Judge King began a process of systematically alienating me from my precious daughters. The tactics used are beyond conscience, but you will have to simply brace yourself for the revelations made now, years later, so that one can see how truly corrupt, hypocritical and political these family court processes can be. Daniel King was eventually forced to step down from my support and custody cases but not before irreparable harm was inflicted, the kind that warrants not only millions of dollars in state compensation, but a profound investigation by both the U.S. Justice Department and Civil Rights Bureau of the New York Attorney General.
The voters of Lewis County must be made aware of King’s reign in their family court because any one of them could become victim to his juvenile behavior. This rural county is dominated by Republicans and Conservatives, hence a voting democracy here is best served by a primary candidate. If party leaders are mindlessly committed to an incumbent endorsement, a Republican challenger can easily overcome this by going directly to the people. That much is easy to do here. No media or special interests will prevent a door-to-door campaign. Even a third-party candidate will send the message that we are sick of do-nothing, politically-appointed, window-dressing, misconduct commissions.
To be sure, why not send a profound message that the rest of our nation can applaud and emulate in a state where our country was born, where Revolutionary War sites abound? Judge King exhibited exactly what his name suggests, a petty tyrant too immature to restrain his ego, impressing his judicial superiors so that an endorsement would be a given and his abuses forgotten years later. If anything, the value of our voting power lies in our ability to remember, to exert recourse when our oversight entities fail us. This is such a case, and we must find a judge candidate while time allows, and that time is now.
This judge tyrant acted on his first day of assignment issuing an order based on the one-sided assertions of an ex-spouse hell bent on replacing me with a childless millionaire having questionable motives. The accuser was not present at an event she was describing which warranted no intervention. She cited or produced no witness to back up her self-serving narratives. In short, anything that could be thrown at the lawyer-dad (judicial whistleblower) by a scorned party would be accepted as gospel with no moral compass or remorse of any kind. This King could care less about the grave consequences to wonderful, long-established, father-daughter relations at the time.
When asked in open court what basis was being used to issue his child access limitations, King managed to rationalize that he was somehow “protecting” my children, two girls he had never met, never raised, or made possible in the first place. This “best interests of the child” standard was abused beyond reason with power that had simply gone to King’s head. Only weeks later, he increased a child support obligation using college degrees (PhD and Masters) that I had never received. When called to task in later court filings, he refused to acknowledge his blunder, clear from the record, and dismissed it as “harmless error.”
Because there is no meaningful judicial oversight commission, I was forced to expose that blunder, among others, in testimony before ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Moreland Commission on Public Corruption at Pace University on September 17, 2013 (Constitution Day). Ironically that governor dissolved this commission prematurely when testimony began implicating top state officials in criminality. But fortunately one of the speakers was a federal prosecutor incensed by this maneuver. He seized commission files and ended up convicting the leaders of both houses of the legislature and a top Cuomo aide. Within three months of my highly public and damning exposure, Judge King ended the parenting time granted to me one year earlier by a veteran family judge in Syracuse.
Unlike that judge there was no trial here, and the one King concocted on another first appearance was labeled a “mini-hearing.” Because no advance notice was provided, no proof could be offered. No complaint had ever been filed with any child protection agency and I possessed no criminal record. Nevertheless, an infuriated Judge King suspended all child contact based on an admitted champaign toast at a niece’s wedding with my girls present. He called it a “prohibited alcohol related gesture” which was never prohibited anyway assuming one could figure out what such a gesture could be.
This is not something that can be made up. Despite prison inmates who were being treated with greater respect, this “prohibited gesture” can be found on page five of a December 2, 2013 decision. It was quickly stayed (stopped) on appeal, but when a panel of judges in Rochester got hold of it, my parenting time was again suspended without explanation one day before a properly noticed plenary (full) trial before Judge King. Shortly into that trial, conducted without jury, the sworn narratives of an unrepresented ex-spouse was allowed to proceed without any logical or legal constraint. This presiding judge directed me to cease making objections under penalty of removal so that he could orchestrate a desired record to back up his earlier bizarre rulings.
That plain scheme forced me to exit proceedings early not only due to its gesture in futility but to prevent a clearly biased judge from using me as part of any legitimate process. However, my exit also enabled King to treat the one-sided concoctions as true. Apart from a few holiday hours, I was then denied all parenting time to the present day, eight years later. Judge King was finally removed from my case after I successfully challenged his 2016 gag order on this website, Leon Koziol.com, thereby adding a First Amendment dimension to his combined assault on my parenting right. The Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that right to be “the oldest liberty interest protected by our Constitution,” Troxel v Granville, 530 US 57 (2000).
This is only a portion of my horrific ordeal which prompted me to seek international protection in Paris. It also prompted my September 23, 2021 testimony before Governor Kathy Hochul’s blue-ribbon Commission on Forensic Custody Evaluations. Such evaluations were abused here to carry out the retaliation agenda. This is no John Grisham story but a true human rights odyssey captured in my newly published book, Whistleblower in Paris. Available at any Barnes and Noble store, Amazon (which gave it a five-star rating) or major on-line book seller, this book should be obtained by anyone seeking a candidacy or poetic justice in Lewis County.
Spread the word, kindly contribute to our cause, and many thanks for your support.
Welcome to Leon Koziol.Com 