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.
President, Citizen Commission Against Corruption, Inc.
This post shows with irrefutable proof how I was ruthlessly persecuted for exposing corruption in New York’s family courts. However, it also shows how a powerful incentive emerged to join that persecution due to my prior successful challenge to the Oneida Indian Nation Turning Stone Casino gaming compact.
Litigation I commenced on behalf of innocent landowners named in a class action lawsuit brought by the Indian Nation led to a judgment in New York Supreme Court in 2004 invalidating that billion- dollar compact. My uncontested divorce, filed later the same year, was then targeted in retaliation for such committed representation.
This post also refutes critics focused on harming me for other illicit or deranged purposes. The ongoing persecution features an attack upon my 23-year, unblemished reputation as a civil rights trial attorney and parenting record which contained no unfit finding or child agency report. In short, the attorney disciplinary process was weaponized against me along with our family courts.
This horrific agenda remains without long-deserved recourse, a veritable “Innocence Project” still awaiting justice. It has been detailed in my book, Whistleblower in Paris, published in 2021, available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon and major bookseller sites.
On February 3, 2023, I released a Law Review and News Alert (12-page summary) intended to generate a mainstream report and docu-series. Already it is under review by a major news medium. A free copy of this highly revealing educational literary work can be obtained by request at leonkoziol@gmail.com or by calling our office at (315) 380-3420. Your assistance in promoting this objective is not only urged but it will benefit victims everywhere. It is an ordeal that cannot be covered up unless we allow it.
The reproduced pages below are taken from official reports published by federal and state courts in New York. As represented in my biographical summaries found on my social and secondary sites, I boldly took on a cause (along with so many others) on behalf of politically disadvantaged constituencies including landowners victimized by the Oneida Indian Nation (class action) land claim in 1998.
As part of my legal strategy, I secured a final judgment invalidating the Oneida’s Turning Stone Casino gaming compact. This opened the door to closure of its billion-dollar, mega-resort. That success required authorization from the federal court where the land claim was pending and state court decision thereafter which declared that compact void. As a sole practitioner, I accomplished both against some of the most elite law firms in America, i.e. Cravath, Swaine & Moore in midtown Manhattan.
The record speaks for itself and months later led to the persecution exposed in my civil rights lawsuits and publications. The first reproduced page shows the federal court decision that denied the Oneida Nation motion to place an injunction upon my state court casino challenge. The two pages below it verify the state court judgment four years later which declared that casino compact void.
Needless to say, this result outraged public officials and private investors dependent on casino operations. However, the strategy was successful in helping end the land claim altogether in 2011, the same year that Parent v State was decided. This was the case I brought (unsuccessfully) to secure ultimate recourse as a conscientious attorney and whistleblower. It is analyzed in my recent news alert.
The Oneida Nation class action litigation sought to eject innocent landowners (my clients) from a 250,000-acre tract found to have been unlawfully seized by the State of New York in violation of a 1794 treaty. Also, needless to say, this highly unexpected outcome made me a target, and it nearly ended my life in 2020. Yes, this is a real-life John Grisham story if there ever was one.
IN ANOTHER PREDICTIVE POST A FEW WEEKS BACK, I HIGHLIGHT SAM BANKMAN-FRIED AND HIS MADOFF-STYLE PONZI SCHEME CARRIED OUT AT AGE 30. NO ONE SHOWED ANY INTEREST.
NOW THIS SCAM ARTIST HAS FINALLY BEEN ARRESTED IN NASSAU, THE CAPITAL OF THE BAHAMAS, JUST IN TIME TO AVOID HIS PLANNED FLIGHT TO DUBAI WHICH HAS NO EXTRADITION TREATY WITH THE UNITED STATES.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW SCAMS ARE COMMITTED BY THOSE OF INFLUENCE, IT IS IMPERATIVE FOR EXISTING AND POTENTIAL VICTIMS OF A MONEY-DRIVEN FAMILY COURT SYSTEM TO READ, COMPREHEND AND SUPPORT QUALIFIED WHISTLEBLOWERS.
THIS IS HIGH-RISK ACTIVITY AS MY ORDEAL OVER A TWELVE-YEAR PERIOD HAS DEMONSTRATED. AND YET IT IS SO BENEFICIAL TO MOMS, DADS AND FAMILIES ESPECIALLY DURING THE HOLIDAYS. SO GET INFORMED ON SUCH ACTIVITY AT www.leonkoziol.com.
THERE IS A LOGICAL REASON WHY THIS BLOG SITE IS SO CENSORED, AT ONE TIME EARNING AS MANY AS 2,000 REACTIONS TO A SINGLE POST.
BOTH FAMILY COURT AND WALL STREET ARE BIG MONEY INDUSTRIES, AND THEY SHARE A GROWING INFLUX OF SCAM ARTISTS DURING DESPERATE ECONOMIC TIMES PROTECTED BY SECRETIVE POLITICIANS AND SPECIAL INFLUENCE GROUPS.
SO YOU CAN JUST KEEP SCROLLING TO SOCIAL GOSSIP SITES, ENTERTAINMENT VENUES OR TROLLING FOR FREE “VOO-DO” ADVICE FROM SELF-APPOINTED LAWYERS WITH GED LAW DEGREES. OR YOU CAN JOIN OUR CAUSE. AS A PRIME MOVER, I SACRIFICED EVERYTHING. AND STILL, THE BAND PLAYS ON.
About the Author
Leon R. Koziol, J.D. is a human rights advocate who practiced law for more than two decades in federal and state courts. He appeared on the CBS program 60 Minutes for his defense of landowners targeted for eviction by Indian tribes alleging violations of ancient treaties. In 2004, he secured a judgement in New York Supreme Court invalidating the 1993 Turning Stone casino gaming compact.
His recoveries feature substantial jury verdicts for victims of government abuse. Case citations include, Koziol v Hanna, 107 F.2d 170 (NDNY 2000); Patterson v City of Utica, 370 F.3d 322 (2nd Cir.2004); Oneida Indian Nation v County of Oneida, 132 F. Supp. 2d 71 (NDNY); Peterman v Pataki, 2004 NY Slip Op 51092(U) and Parent v State, 786 F. Supp. 2d 516 (NDNY 2011).
The latter was a consolidated case intended as a class action on behalf of parents defrauded in divorce and family courts. It was part of a bold challenge to judicial and sovereign immunity which yielded severe retributions upon the author’s licenses and parent-child relations. The horrific ordeal which led to a near death climax was captured in his book, Whistleblower in Paris, published in 2021.
Leon Koziol can be reached at (315) 796-4000 and leonkoziol@gmail.com.
This year I decided to forego the traditional elaborate decoration of my 70-foot pine tree. Instead, I displayed a scaled down version halfway up which I call my “CHRISTMAS TREE AT HALF MAST.” I did this to signify the deaths of my father-daughter relationships at the hands of a corrupt family court system.
Kristen and Cassandra: if you are reading this, recall the many Christmas seasons we shared together. We were all so happy then. There is still time to reverse some of the damage done to us that would mean so much to your loving dad this holiday season.
As always, please call me.
I am also decorating at “half-mast” to recognize parent-child alienations everywhere. Many of the judges, lawyers and players who pursued it as a custody tactic or whistleblower retribution in my case are literally dead. But wherever they are now, they will hopefully be held to account for their mortal sins on humanity.
These were God’s creations that they abused.
In the end, their fees, egos and possessions could not be taken to any afterlife if you believe in that sort of thing, but for my part, the “CHRISTMAS TREE AT HALF MAST” will also be a memorial to them, not in a good or holy way, but as a reminder of the depravity of separating a loving parent permanently from his or her child.
This would be a good post to share with the world for inspiration
Morley Safer interviews Leon Koziol at his Utica, New York law office for a segment featured on 60 Minutes
Dr. Leon Koziol, J.D.
Parenting Rights Institute
As followers of my blog site at http://www.leonkoziol.com know, my 23 unblemished years as a highly successful civil rights attorney was erased along with my parent-child relationships in retaliation for my exposure of court corruption and funding abuses connected to Title IV-D of the Social Security Act. After 12 years of inhuman persecution, this resulted in my hospitalization for a life-threatening condition on December 23, 2020.
Despite a dire prognosis, my daughters have yet to call or visit me two years later as part of a lucrative child custody tactic known as parental alienation. I have never been reported for abuse or neglect even by a spiteful ex-wife and never found to be unfit by any judge. The details of my ordeal are captured in my newly published book, Whistleblower in Paris. A highly informative, expert summary is provided on the book’s website and elsewhere on this blog, but suffice it to say, I’m still here for some fateful reason.
And that leads us to today’s timely post in the wake of midterm elections and the increased gridlock it will bring on the subject of parent-child separations at our borders and in our courts. A great hypocrisy continues to infect this human rights crisis with citizen parents being systematically separated from their children while greater concern is being exhibited for their illegal counterparts. Families have become politicized to avenge the egos of both Democrat and Republican leaders to a point where our very Capitol was invaded by protesters.
Only recently have parents awaken to the realities of a new world order bent on removing parent involvement in our schools. Yet they remain woefully short of the focus needed behind a larger, all-encompassing threat at the core of our constitutional government. I have been exposing this threat since 2010 when I took a public stand against my profession. Unfortunately, apathy ruled the day despite my precedent-seeking-lawsuits, lobbying initiatives in Congress and public rallies that included a 2019 Parent March on Washington down Pennsylvania Avenue under police escort between the Trump White House and Supreme Court.
My girls have long entered colleges that have not been disclosed to me, so none of my continued sacrifices or reform efforts really matter anymore. However current victims in our divorce and family courts remain as “Deer in the Headlights” with unscrupulous lawyers and ego-driven judges exploiting them for their misplaced trust. This crisis is now on the verge of exploding as moms and dads speak out at public meetings. Their impatience is well justified by impotent oversight, whistleblower retributions and leadership changes that effectively conceal unequal treatment.
Doubters need go no further than a high-profile case filed by seventeen (17) states against Donald Trump in 2018 to verify. It sought declaratory and injunctive relief against federal practices that separated illegal immigrants from their children. It represented a back-door way of encouraging more illegal behavior, and we see the harmful impacts today across America. Meanwhile parent-child separations among legal residents were quickly dispensed as tedious squabbles. In my case, for example, the separations were clearly malicious with no regard for collateral victims such as extended family.
The 2018 lawsuit received early attention due to media posturing of a federal judge. An exigent (temporary) order was immediately entered which put a stop to Trump’s separation policies. A venue change was then granted to the Southern District of California where it has languished to the present day. Among other things, the first judge ordered a re-drafting of pleadings to conform with federal rules of procedure regarding basic typeset prior to her transfer order. These pleadings were drafted by high-profile lawyers enjoying top hourly rates and political influence.
It is worth mentioning that many of my own lawsuits seeking identical relief against our family courts suffered no such humiliation on the opening pleadings. My first precedent-seeking case was commenced nine years prior to the Trump filing and, like their lawsuit, was based on both procedural and substantive due process in addition to equal protection violations. My adversaries included the Justice Department, New York Attorney General and similar high-profile law firms.
Two of my lawsuits of similar nature were consolidated, and there was no request or court order to suggest that either was frivolous (unlike some election-denier lawsuits today). However, because I sought to invalidate judicial immunity and open the door for pro se parents to obtain compensation in our federal courts, I was targeted and misrepresented in the lawsuits I was forced to lodge later on.
You can look up my case and its 46-page decision at Parent v State, 786 F.2d 516 (NDNY 2011). It remains astounding that, once again, I have acted with exceptional fortitude, constitutional resolve and litigation experience to anticipate today’s crises and act accordingly, see i.e. Patterson v City of Utica, 370 F.3d 322 (2nd Cir. 2004)($333,000 civil rights verdict argued before Justice Sonia Sotomayor); Koziol v Hanna, 107 F. Supp. 2d 170 (NDNY 2000)(First Amendment case as city corporation counsel in federal court ultimately successful in removing a mayoral gag order).
My combined skills to benefit human rights victims today have been suspended since Parent v State was litigated. This represents additional collateral damage associated with the retributions as victims struggle to find competent representation. As victims yourselves, you need to get active right now. Avoid the trolls, beneficiaries, laziness and lame excuses, the self-appointed lawyers and voo-doo advice they dispense on the internet. Support our cause, both financially and virally. I cannot do this alone, and frankly, I have no incentive these days to continue.
In the balance hangs our cause of liberty and fundamental parenting rights under the Constitution.
Daniel King is seeking re-election as county/family judge in Lewis County, New York. But an antiquated court structure allows him to preside in all the larger counties of the Fifth Judicial District which includes the cities of Syracuse, Utica and Rome. Put another way, by succeeding quietly to judicial office in a county having roughly 25,000 residents, a judge candidate here can end up presiding over non-residents numbering well over a million without their consent.
That makes the judge race here critical to all litigants of this upstate district not only because it features an outdated and irrational court structure, but the vast and unpredictable assignments take time and resources away from the people who actually need it and voted for it.
Most voters are not aware of this bizarre assignment system headed by an administrative judge in Syracuse. Even though the New York bar issued a convincing report to reform the state’s 11-trial court structure on a par with our country’s largest court system in California which has one, that effort ended when a constitutional convention was turned down by voters with union influence in 2017. And that means that if Daniel King is re-elected, his own influence will extend well beyond county borders without any vetting process for impacted voters.
In Dan King’s case, a Jeckle-Hyde demeanor makes him the worst nightmare for the entire Fifth Judicial District. As an unblemished trial attorney in federal and state courts for nearly a quarter century, I have been privy to countless judges, juries and litigants. But when I challenged this antiquated structure as an impacted litigant and qualified whistleblower, I was suddenly targeted and destroyed professionally to an unprecedented degree.
The relentless retaliation coming at me from all directions over a fifteen-year period finally landed me in the emergency room at Albany Medical Center last year with a dire prognosis. The details of my ordeal are now a part of my recently published book, Whistleblower in Paris, as well as the shocking exposures on this blog site, http://www.leonkoziol.com. Daniel King was assigned without litigant consent to my family court matters, and he promptly asserted himself as the “protector” of my precious daughters in July, 2013, six months after his first election.
Judge King was not present when my girls were born, he knew nothing of their upbringing and there were no neglect or abuse petitions lodged against me before any state agency. Meanwhile competing cases were being delayed and criminals allowed to roam free. King’s demeanor on a first appearance was therefore suspect at the very least, but he proceeded to avenge my “audacious” challenge to his superiority by issuing a series of parenting orders that effectively made it a contempt risk to see my offspring in any meaningful way.
This judge, charged by oath and constitution to exert impartiality, refused to hear my side of a custody violation petition, many of which were dismissed among the 40 or so jurists assigned to my domestic matters since 2007. This was and remains unprecedented in judicial history by most accounts, but that same number was sufficient on the record to demonstrate systemic bias after my motion for transfer to another district was denied the same year. It ultimately caused permanent separation from my daughters.
An increasingly informed public has described this as Parent Alienation Syndrome or PAS. So absurd were Dan King’s retaliatory orders that he rendered one on December 2, 2013 suspending child contact based on, among other bizarre conditions, a “prohibited alcohol related gesture” (wedding toast). I am not making this up. Anyone can find it on page 5 of his relevant decision. This order was stayed (temporarily overturned) one week later, but by this time, others came to his rescue due to my continued whistleblowing activity.
My commitment to justice helped expose such corruption as my custody judge which King replaced, namely Brian Hedges, permanently banned from the bench by the high court of New York due to his admission of pedophile behavior with his handicapped five-year old niece. In 2016, Judge King issued a gag order disguised as a protection order on this site. It was removed when I challenged it on First Amendment grounds in state supreme court.
Within weeks of a relevant court order signed against him, Judge King finally stepped down. Not surprisingly, all these exposures and challenges to judge authority made me a pariah, ultimately forcing me to seek human rights protection in Paris. The notion that I could be jailed for a non-criminal debt called “child support” (caused by retaliatory law license suspensions) was too much to bear when considering a parent suicide influenced by a Judge King support contempt order (more on that in a future post).
Today I remain a victim of joint whistleblower targeting which would be questioned by the public at the earlier time. However, with all the bold arrests, false charges and preferential treatment being made public these days regarding national figures, my ordeal is now quite believable. To be sure, Judge King was relying on memory loss of his voters and victims when he abused judicial office, but we did not forget with this election opportunity now upon us.
So please, for the sake of families, parents and litigants everywhere, help us end Dan King’s Jeckle-Hyde tenure by electing a worthy and highly qualified opponent, Caleb Petzoltz, for Lewis County judge. Although he was unsuccessful in his Republican Party primary challenge this past June, turnout was low, and he was able to obtain a place on the November 8th ballot on other major and third-party lines.
Do not be fooled by King’s boyish appearance, friendly rhetoric, number of campaign signs or endorsements. A similar onslaught of sign pollution failed to get the late Utica Mayor Ed Hanna re-elected, and presumably none of the politicians endorsing this man experienced his Jeckle-Hyde conduct as a court litigant. Even if they did come before him, would they now get favored treatment as a result?
To conclude, in contrast with the crusade of recent years to discredit my reputation, my prior record as a prominent attorney, dedicated dad and office holder cannot be erased. Among my many accomplishments are precedent decisions, successful jury verdicts and client recoveries totaling well over a million dollars.
I was even able secure decisions in federal and state court against high powered law firms and Department of Justice invalidating the Oneida Indian Turning Stone Casino gaming compact on behalf of politically disadvantaged rural landowners. It earned me an interview on the CBS program, 60 Minutes. A documentary regarding my ordeal is in the works but will not be in time for this crucial publication.
A few case citations proving my true record are provided below:
Koziol v Hanna, 107 F. Supp, 2d 170 (NDNY 2000)(successful First Amendment jury verdict ultimately obtained in federal court)
Patterson v City of Utica, 370 F.3d 322 (2nd Cir. 2004)($333,820.32 federal jury verdict argued beforeb Justice Sonia Sotomayor)
Oneida Indian Nation v County of Oneida, 132 F. Supp. 2d 71 (NDNY 2000)(removal of injunction upon state court challenge to gaming compact); see also Peterman v Pataki, 2004 NY Slip Op. 51092 (U).
The ongoing ordeal of a judicial whistleblower has necessitated an update to the epilogue (concluding summary) of my recently published book, Whistleblower in Paris. If you have already purchased a copy, available at any Barnes and Noble store, Amazon or major bookseller on-line, this update should energize you to demand reform and accountability. It may also prevent you from becoming a victim of abuse, prevent undue fees and educate you to the realities of these courts. If you are learning of the book for the first time, this update might convince you to obtain a copy. It is a highly intriguing insight based on more than thirty years of litigation experience from a former trial and appellate attorney. That concluding summary is reproduced below:
Epilogue
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 “the small Utica law firm that won the case.” [66] Among the defense firms was Cravath, Swaine and Moore, one of the most powerful in the nation. 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 twenty-three 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 here remains unprecedented in modern times. Among the practices I condemned in chapter two and an earlier book, Satan’s Docket, was the abuse of forensic custody evaluations. Then, in January, 2022, 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 appeared), 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. His successor, Joe Biden, proved oblivious to this crisis altogether.
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 through such things as a voting rights bill. Therefore, it is time for those struggling against parental alienation, custody abuses and support debtor prisons to take matters into their own hands. Stay away from lawyers and these courts, set aside your custody and support disputes, and keep abreast of fellow victims who need your help. In this way at least, we might succeed in closing the gold mine.
Thinking back to all the craziness I endured for more than a decade under the yoke of this antiquated child custody regime, it still amazes me that not a single inquiry was made by the New York Commission on Judicial Conduct regarding the many complaints I lodged. How could so much corruption become so buried? I am also amazed at all the physical restraint I practiced. Under our form of government, when the courts break down, victims can seek recourse outside the system. Nevertheless, my restraint led to poetic justice in so many ways.
Among the Sadistic Seven, Michael Daley is no longer a judge, having failed to garner enough support for re-election to the bench. His unpopularity was borne out later when he was defeated in an election for his old job as a local prosecutor. Last I heard he was representing traffic clients in Utica city court.
Judge Martha Walsh-Hood continues to serve as a family court judge as does her colleague Michele Pirro-Bailey in Syracuse. Judge Daniel King is still on the family court bench in Lowville, New York, but is up for re-election in 2022. At a minimum, my whistleblower testimony before the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption should be raised by any opposing candidate. The judge collusion inferred by King’s sudden removal of his gag order during my mandamus action in state Supreme Court remains a part of the public record. The manner in which this was all arranged behind closed doors demands a proper investigation.
Regardless, not one of these judges was elevated to higher office. This includes Judge James Eby who no longer presides over my case in Oswego, New York. In the aftermath of his uncorrected bias, innocent third parties were irreparably harmed. During his bombastic antics directed at me, he gave no concern for extended family similarly denied all contact with my daughters. He simply pressed on with his ego-driven agenda of retaliation to maintain favor among colleagues on and off the bench.
To be sure, as director of the Parenting Rights Institute, I continue to receive complaints about him, one from a custodial mother regarding his knack for keeping the fees coming. He makes a mockery of this self-serving rationale of acting “in the best interests” of our children whose basic needs and college funds are raided. Entire families are bankrupted in the process while inciting domestic violence. An adversarial process rationalized by truth-seeking objectives cannot withstand the ultimate injury it yields when children are placed at needless risk compelling parents to resort to uncharacteristic extremes to protect them.
Similarly, Judge Gerald Popeo in Utica is also no longer presiding. He declined re-election prospects following my crusade against him in 2018. The judge censure which he blamed partly on me no doubt played a role in his decision. Magistrate Natalie Carraway continues her routine in support courts of Herkimer County, presumably charting a course for higher judgeship. Meanwhile, I continue to receive unsolicited praise from countless parents who publicly credit me for private changes in attitude among certain well-meaning jurists.
But it may also be said that poetic justice was served beyond the Sadistic Seven. My pedophile custody judge, Bryan Hedges, was permanently banned from the bench by the high court of New York, his colleague in Syracuse, Michael Hanuszczak, was forced to step down for sexual harassment of his court clerks, and Magistrate G. Stephen Getman lost an election for family court judge. His license suspension for mishandling client money caught up to him in that race.
My ex-secretary was jailed for crimes upon later victims. Her scheme with outsiders to orchestrate ethics issues in my office together with her tampering of mail and files resulted in the removal of a $220,000 mortgage claim on my home. It is unlikely that she will ever be hired for another law-related position given her felony convictions and our creation of a pretend lawyer website that features her. She would not have contemplated such crimes unless cloaked with some concealed protection while my office supervision was derailed by the family court battles.
My ex-wife was removed from the millionaire’s home in 2016 after wasting untold resources to pursue a needless parent alienation campaign bent on greed, revenge and jealousy. She too could not have succeeded without the undisclosed backing of many of the judges assigned to our case. But this particular campaign exceeded the worst I have come across. It can only be described as something hatched out of hell itself, a new form of evil. It harmed not only her children and their father but it devastated her own world. Yet she pressed on like the proverbial energizer bunny.
You would think that this “custodial parent” learned a profound lesson when her relocation scheme to that millionaire’s home was exposed. It featured the “gmai.com” concoction which she and the child attorney tried to pass as proper notice of a new residency. At a minimum, a parent has a right to know where his or her children are residing and with whom so that they can be better safeguarded. But here, despite undeniable proof of deceit upon the father, court and schools, this scheme was accorded no accountability in contrast with money obligations (child support) which were hounded to a point of arrest warrants, jail commitments and even death.
This one-sided persecution had no effect on her commitment to forever end all father-daughter relationships developed since birth. In August, 2021, the newly married Kelly Usherwood contrived an exit from the region on the day after my youngest daughter’s eighteenth birthday. She placed her home on the market and relocated both my girls to an undisclosed residence without even an identity of colleges they were now attending. By text message, she directed that any information was to be exchanged through the maternal grandmother nearby.
As fate would have it, this grandmother deceased only three months later. Meanwhile, circumstances showed that the e-mail exchanges made between father and his daughters were actually being made by the mother. This is how devious the alienator had become to achieve her objective of a family unit completely isolated from the biological father, one who had never even been found to be an unfit parent. It proved to be spite, greed and status which motivated Kelly Usherwood to pursue the unimaginable while the band played on in these corrupt family courts.
None of this should surprise the reader given the content of earlier chapters and the growing horrors of parental alienation throughout the country. The unilateral directives of this deranged mother comported with no court order, but with the long confirmed systemic bias among numerous assigned judges in New York’s Fifth Judicial District, and the deference repeatedly given them by federal court, all courthouse doors had been closed in terms of any civil recourse. If Daniel King could invent a “prohibited alcohol related gesture” (wedding toast) as a reason to suspend child contact, how could I expect any sanity from the judges who replaced him?
The recent concealment of my daughters raises concerns that could warrant an amber alert given the bizarre conduct of the alienator-abductor. It occurred in the aftermath of my extended hospital stay only months earlier. Despite a life-threatening condition, no direct contact was received from my daughters. By the time the realities of brainwashing caught up to them, it would be too late to revisit countless precious moments captured in home videos and photos.
In the end, it begs the question: what kind of evil lurks in the body of Kelly Usherwood? The answer may lie in some sequel of American Greed or a psycho movie. Even my girls were not spared the karma behind their immoral disregard of dad during his hospital stay, the man who made their existence possible. Both daughters were forced to suffer through a pandemic which is continuing. Graduations, proms and other once-in-a-lifetime events were either canceled or subjected to highly diluting regulations.
As for the ethics lawyers who helped facilitate this chaos, they were forced to resign after an investigation into falsified time sheets. Would-be clients continue to be denied qualified representation. Even after eleven years of license suspension, I continue to receive calls from victims who cannot secure basic legal advice. The system justified this by support obligations that cannot be satisfied without the licenses, resources and liberties that were seized.
This so-called disciplinary process was abused to achieve censorship, thereby making its perpetrators complicit in the resulting crimes upon humanity. Despite all this, corruption was exposed on a vast scale after unprecedented numbers of jurists were removed from my originally uncontested divorce. Those removals helped alter the divorce culture in a positive way while exposing the underbelly of a court system hell-bent on revenues and profits.
But I paid a high price. Out of law school in 1987, I was able to secure a restraining order on a $30 million high school project, [67] I won my first interstate divorce appeal two years later, [68] my name appears on two dedication plagues of the Utica city courthouse as an elected councilman and corporation counsel, I was a featured speaker regarding Native American land claims across upstate New York, and I won a $300,000 civil rights recovery against my local Sheriff which may have factored into the later antics. Other high-profile cases are cited at footnotes 7-11.
Today I am unable to get a family judge to order phone contact with my own daughters.
In raw terms, you can kill a targeted person with a gun or accomplish the same outcome with a drawn-out process that chips away at your existence. Parent alienation is such a process. It is more than a psychological syndrome or human rights violation, it is a proven killer of victimized parents. Whether it be a suicide, terminal illness or some other brutal consequence, the needless separation of a loving parent from his or her children is simply unconscionable. And when forcing the victim to pay for the child abduction through support payments under penalty of a debtor prison, it becomes utterly barbaric.
Judges are quick to overlook this reality as they routinely find breaches of various duties in personal injury cases to achieve million-dollar verdicts. But when greater breaches of ethical duties are presented regarding their own conduct, they cloak themselves with judicial immunity on the rationale that such liability would deter qualified candidates from seeking judgeships. Utter nonsense, most lawyers crave these prestigious titles, and a judge complying with job requirements has nothing to fear. If anything, this absolute immunity encourages misconduct while politically-appointed oversight commissions fail us time and again.
This ordeal warrants a Justice Department investigation and congressional inquiry. It would benefit countless moms, dads and families similarly situated. There are tremors of unrest throughout this country which are being ignored. Hardly a day goes by without some child murder, needless suicide or unpredictable homicide traced to these dysfunctional courts. What remains of a stable society is largely made possible by the free exercise of parental liberties and self-governance. It is my fervent hope, therefore, that a powerful movement emerges from my sacrifices that forces our government to pay attention to its own parents.
This literary work is by no means an indictment of our justice system or legal profession. However, it verifies in painstaking detail how a conscientious attorney, model parent and judicial whistleblower can be so ruthlessly punished for his crusade to deliver overdue reforms to our system of family court justice. The people rely on qualified insiders to alert them to corruption in our third branch of government. It accentuates the need for attorney whistleblower protection.
Finally, this book is directed against the divorce industry and the family court predators who are dragging justice down to hell, a people’s courthouse reduced to a giant profit center. All this corruption might compel another victim to resort to violence. But I was able to forbear it and achieve some justice in more constructive ways. My old friend, Sir Walter Scott, gave me sage advice in that regard:
For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good he performs, but the evil he forbears
66. Michael Gormley, Judge strikes down pact, Las Vegas Sun, June 29, 2004. Peterman v Pataki, 2004 Slip. Op. 51092. The final judgment was affirmed on appeal.
67. In Rome Concerns Citizens v Rome City School District, this restraining order made possible a state-of-the art high school now located at the Griffiss Technology Park. As fate would go, a base realignment commission led to the closure of the former Griffiss Air Force Base after my controversial litigation. It was the region’s top employer. A tech park became its replacement which benefits faculty and students in a myriad of ways today. The former proposed school location could not have facilitated such benefits due to remoteness and land constraints.
68. DeNigro v DeNigro, 152 AD2d 951 (4th Dept 1989)
Separated parents do not deserve a death warrant on their parent-child relationships
Leon R. Koziol, J.D.
Parenting Rights Institute
Yesterday I introduced a new concept for helping moms and dads victimized by parental alienation. It was patterned around successful Amber and Silver Alert programs. While still in developmental stages, it could use input. For now, we are focusing on the social site releases of victim identities and their needs which could lead to discovery of child locations, schools attended, safety aspects and other vital facts.
I have offered my own case as a test run and already, in less than 24 hours, I have learned where my teen daughters reside and the unfortunate demise of their maternal grandmother. Sadly, she once had a wonderful relationship with me, secretly contacting me regarding issues of child concern even after my cooperative separation from her daughter went bad. This breakdown, a custody and support war, occurred as a result of the mother’s opening volley of court filings contrary to my forewarnings in 2006.
This grandmother revelation adds another dimension to all the harm caused by a lucrative, adversarial and antiquated child custody system. Having known her for over seven years prior to the end of that last co-parenting year, I believe that this ever-escalating divorce process caused much needless conflict and grief in her life. Whether it contributed to her early demise is not known and may never be.
However, there is no dispute that severe parental alienation of the kind I experienced can have a devastating impact on one’s health. It shows just how far these dysfunctional courts can go to harm extended family. Ironically, in her secret haste to exit our region following the 18th birthday of my youngest daughter, Kelly Hawse-Koziol (Usherwood since her remarriage in May) directed in a text that all future communications concerning my girls should go through that maternal grandmother.
Where do I go now for vital information? As yesterday’s post explains, Kelly Usherwood has shot herself in the foot time and again with her schemes, but now her “energizer-bunny” conduct has gone beyond evil, it’s diabolical. Hence, the value of this new information networking program is obvious. I will keep you updated in upcoming posts here at http://www.leonkoziol.com. Kindly spread the word and help us bring this new program into fruition for the benefit of parents, children, families and future generations.
YOU CAN ALSO HELP BY SIGNING OUR PETITION AGAINST PARENTAL ALIENATION ON CHANGE.ORG. The short video below provides a great book background on parental alienation from a mom and dad standpoint.
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