Tag: Gerald Popeo

What can you do if judges violate the law and threaten to assault litigants in court? Meet Judge Gerald “Neanderthal” Popeo!

On By leonkozioljdIn Call To Action, Civil Rights, Uncategorized
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“I would love to come off this bench and wipe that smirk off your face!”  City Judge Gerald Popeo to a litigant in his court room, now assigned to Family Court after the New York Commission on Judicial Conduct censured him for a battery of ethical violations but never removed him.

By Dr. Leon Koziol

Parenting Rights Institute

Should you decide to expose corruption in our judicial system, be wary of the immunity which it claims over your First Amendment rights. This immunity and self-regulation power has become so abused that Michigan Family Judge Wade McCree was able to commit adultery in chambers, get a litigant mother pregnant while he placed her adversary on a child support monitor and suffer no monetary liability to his victims.

Now we have another “Acting” Family Judge in upstate New York who threatened a litigant from the bench, was found by an ethics judge to have used racial slurs (“country niggers”) and sent people to jail on serial contempt rulings because they grinned or complained of injustices. Meet Judge Gerald “Neanderthal” Popeo of Utica, New York, a regular standard-bearer for anti-violence groups. Get the details by clicking here.

Because the persecution for my judicial misconduct complaints has become so extreme, I recently filed an extraordinary lawsuit against such judges in New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division. There is little expectation of proper accountability, however, because our courts are self-protecting of their revenues, fees and reputation. They would rather excuse, ignore or rationalize racial slurs and judge revenge than accept the public consequences for their actions like they require of the rest of us.

So what can we do? My lawsuit may shed some light. Here is an excerpt of my arguments before that court which may shock you, but it is a sound position based on my 23 unblemished years as a civil rights attorney and successful cases which recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars for my clients. That was before the judicial retaliation began for my whistleblowing activity. These arguments are made to oppose dismissal motions filed by New York’s Chief Judge Janet DiFiore and various inferior judge (respondents) engaged in clear misconduct:

Koziol v DiFiore, et. al.

2)  This is a hybrid declaratory judgment and extraordinary relief action brought pursuant to CPLR Articles 30, 63 and 78. It is otherwise authorized by New York’s high court under a “Rule of Necessity” laid out in another hybrid action, Maron v Silver, 14 NY3d 230 (2010). If the Chief Judge and respondents are to be plainly understood by their motions, a hybrid lawsuit filed by predecessor chief judges challenging legislative dysfunction for pay raise purposes is proper, but if those whom they serve seek to do the same for purposes of protecting their children, livelihood and liberties from judicial dysfunction, they are out of line, subject to summary dismissals or even filing prohibitions of the sort demanded here.

3)  New York’s judiciary clearly had no authority to direct the amounts or timeliness of pay raises absent diminution. It is a subject textually committed to other branches of government under the people’s constitution. Yet the Maron case was filed anyway, by judges no less, and it is still “the law” in this state. It can only be construed as an unconstitutional scheme to politically influence the other branches through an abuse of our courts. If private litigants endeavored to do the very same thing, they would be subjected additionally to fines, sanctions and even contempt.

4)  Both motions have utterly ignored the Maron v Silver case, indeed it is not even mentioned in the joint Memorandum of Law, Table of Authorities. This is because the outcome is already anticipated. There is no neutral and detached arbiter, hence vitiating any good faith effort or purpose for preparing an opposition Memorandum. Ignoring stated precedent is not only unethical but also the tactic employed by most, if not all jurists reviewing this case to date.

5)  In my recent book, Satan’s Docket, I have described this tactic as “Orchestrated Law.”It was practiced in the serial rulings which were, in fact, cited in the moving papers, further confirmation of the systemic bias carefully and convincingly laid out in the petition.  Both motions have also ignored the precedent seeking nature of this case premised on escalating new facts caused by each biased ruling designed to suppress speech directed at judicial misconduct.

6)  The motions continue with their deceptive agenda by totally ignoring salient facts of the petition without facts of their own interposed by any person having personal knowledge. That renders the petition presumptively true for purposes of any summary ruling. Even on technical grounds identified for dismissal, the untwisted facts cannot be silenced on such an extraordinary case. But as practiced here for at least ten years, decision makers have cherry picked only those facts and precedent (if at all) which supports a predetermined outcome and a “law” concocted contrary to our legislated ones.

7)  If you don’t mention material facts or egregious misconduct clearly bearing on that outcome, it simply didn’t happen. This results in a monumental fraud upon the public by that branch of government charged with highest duty of protecting our constitutional rights and “justice for all.” If our courts are bold enough to cover up their own corruption, there is no “law.” It is all the justification needed for victims to take matters into their own hands. We can rightfully conclude that we are living in an increasingly lawless society. Proof is everywhere, from the mass murders by a fatherless teen in Florida to the terrorist threats in daily news reports.

8)  A simple test which bears this out is the perjuries of judge-appointed child lawyer William Koslosky and the state’s “custodial parent,” respondent Kelly Hawse-Koziol. The record clearly shows that they both conspired to conceal the true residence of my daughters, going so far as to serve a Notice to Admit in November, 2015 attaching a purported electronic notice of child relocation with the address “gmai.com.” It constituted an impossible transmission without the “l” character demonstrable from the face of that doctored confirmation notice. The 35th assigned judge, Daniel King, bent on revenge for my testimony before the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption, simply vacated the notice without any consequence to either co-conspirator. He did so while a gag order was in place in the last decision prior to his removal.

9)  The logical question which then arises is why a lawyer would engage in such clear misconduct. The answer lies in the continuing refusal of our appellate division justices to hold William Koslosky accountable. That failure in duty occurred as recently as February 26, 2018 when Judge Joanne Winslow submitted notice to me declining to sign a show cause order on this case. I am making that application, already served on the parties, a part of this cross-motion. It sought, inter alia, a referral of William Koslosky minimally for disciplinary action stemming from his July 31, 2011 and August 2, 2011 affirmations in support of appeal dismissals.

10)  Those affirmations were re-filed one month later in the Third Department after this court’s transfer order. In that particular scheme, Koslosky stated under oath that I sought to reinstate my law license in a family court cross-motion dated March 3, 2011 before later disqualified Judge Pirro-Bailey. It was obviously orchestrated to discredit me as a parent, lawyer and critic insofar as every sane lawyer knows that a law license cannot be reinstated in that court.

11)  As the petition and show cause application explained, lawyer Koslosky went so far as to assert factually that I was seeking to “revoke” the authority of this court to decide licensing matters. There was no proof of any of this, but the sworn affirmations remain in the records of both upstate licensing/appeals courts. The effectively ratified perjuries have not been retracted or even acknowledged by any judge to date. My answering affidavit and the ones repeatedly filed here contained the Koslosky sworn statements and entire cross-motion showing no such events.

12)  This court cannot deflect by asserting timely recourse to the Fifth District Grievance Committee. Apart from its own duties under the Judicial Code, its appointed Committee has yet to even acknowledge my 2011 grievance against Koslosky and custodial counsel, perhaps due to the simultaneous disqualification and transfer of my disciplinary matters to the Third Department and the witch hunt lawyers there focused on my public criticisms.

13)  These standard-bearers of lawyer ethics were allowed to quietly resign without public prosecution of any kind after an Inspector General discovered their falsified time sheets. As the petition explains with sufficient detail and examples, I was not accorded similar favor after more than eight years of license suspension, one year longer than a disbarment period.

14)  The Third Department misconduct was not much different prior to transfer when Fifth District Attorney Mary Gasparini submitted a false written statement to her Committee that I had not sought an adjournment to better prepare for a first time prosecution of ten grievances in 2008. This lie, in turn, led to “discrepancy” claims elevating a first time admonition to formal charges and my first one year disciplinary suspension by the Third Department (still extant).

15)  The Gasparini lie was fully proven in a March, 2009 motion for discovery and other relief during that prosecution. This court denied my motion in a cursory, confidential decision two months later without any mention of Gasparini’s misconduct. Ten grievances (six later dismissed on their face) comprised this first time prosecution after two decades of unblemished practice. It originated on January 9, 2008, the same day as arguments before Judge John Centra of this court which contained extensive proof of ethical misconduct by Keith Eisenhut, opposing divorce counsel unknown at the time to be a member of that same Fifth District Committee.

16)  These grievances were stale for many years as was the one currently prosecuted by the Third Department involving events of 2008. Hence it cannot be said that timely recourse against Koslosky is somehow stale or waived. To the contrary, the intentional disregard and uneven treatment of lawyer misconduct have only left wide open the door for a series of perjuries that have destroyed all aspects of my former model existence over a half century period, including the gmai.com concoction years later. In the face of all that has been presented and accumulated to date, how can anyone conclude that a rational justice system has been made available to me? The notion that an anti-filing order should now be issued is an even greater farce inasmuch as such an order has been effectively in place since January 9, 2008.

17)  But that corruption pales in comparison to the one which now confronts everyone involved. If lawyers appointed and licensed by this court can freely concoct facts and lie under oath, anything can be contrived against me as long as my reform and whistleblower activity persist. That entitles me to resort to every manner of personal protection at my disposal.

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Blockbuster Case Now Playing in Family Court: It’s Rocky vs Rambo

On By leonkozioljdIn Call To Action, Moreland Commission on Public Corruption, NYS Commission on Judicial Conduct, Parenting Rights Institute, Uncategorized

 

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“I would love to come off this bench and wipe that smirk off your face!” Judge Gerald Popeo to a litigant in his city courtroom. Despite such physical threats and racial comments with lawyer witnesses, i.e. “country niggers” and “cigar store Indian,” the Commission on Judicial Conduct allowed him to continue now as an “Acting Family Judge” in Koziol v Hawse-Koziol case.

 

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“You come off that bench Gerry, and I’ll knock you out of your black dress.” Photo of a Judge Popeo Family Court litigant, Civil Rights Advocate, Dr. Leon Koziol,  taken in 75 degree Central Park, February 21, 2018

By Dr. Leon Koziol

Parenting Rights Institute

Before continuing with this latest post on judge corruption in our nation’s divorce and family courts, I would like to say Hello to all the judges, lawyers, doctors, professors, investigators, commissions, national and local news reporters,  and even New York Chief Judge Janet DiFiore who may be monitoring this website, Leon Koziol.com. Confidential informants continue to report a growing number of “fans.”

Many of you are friends, others are bent on revenge, and most are seeking information or assistance. If you’re new to this site, opened in 2010, you’re in good company with more than 6,000 followers from Europe to Hawaii. This will be a “breaking news” post you will want to make viral because it is yet another shockingly true story. As we have assured time and again: “You just can’t make this stuff up.”

Judge Gerald Popeo is a racist and pompous judge who managed to keep his job in an upstate New York city court despite a battery of ethics charges brought against him by a prosecutor, public defender, an African-American lawyer and court victims before the New York Commission on Judicial Conduct. Because its proceedings are secret, we cannot tell you how many complaints he has faced during nearly two decades on the bench.

On February 12, 2015, Judge Popeo was merely censured by that Commission instead of removed, although to his credit, the Commission Chair, Thomas Klonick, dissented. He voted to sustain the findings made by a hearing judge concerning those charges of using racial slurs as a judge. They included at least two depictions of a prosecutor acting like a “cigar store Indian” and another, to an African-American attorney no less, where Popeo “joked” that New York City black people refer to upstate black people as “country niggers.”

That’s not all, the charges and findings that were accepted included temper tantrums and serial contempt citations without the requisite warnings and due process protections. In one case, evidently copying some of the movies that Gerry has watched (i.e. “My Cousin Vinny”), Judge Popeo sentenced a man to five successive thirty day periods in jail for each facial gesture or comment about the lack of justice in his courtroom. Only after getting a phone call from his chief administrative judge, James “Bond” Tormey, did he reduce the 150 day sentence.

But among the “injudicious” acts which the Commission did accept for public censure, the one which was most disturbing is a violent threat from the bench made to another litigant in his courtroom. After noting a grin on his face, Judge Gerald Popeo, evidently assuming the mantra of judicial Rocky Balboa, warned that he “would love to come off the bench and wipe that smirk off your face.” The Commission could not excuse this street thug remark because those in the same court could hear it clearly and it was recorded by a court stenographer.

But it gets better (or worse depending how entertained you are by Judge “Rocky” Popeo). After the litigant was excused and exiting the courtroom, a different kind of grin caught Judge Rocky’s attention. So he summoned him back for a contempt sentence because, in his delusional mindset, this poor sap “gave (Popeo another) nice big smirk …. as if to say, blank-you judge.” Seriously Sylvestor? Even the real Stallone might have you committed to a mental institution.

As a lawyer and litigant in Popeo’s kangaroo court and many others over a thirty year period, I have made all sorts of grins, objections and human expressions which could fall in the Popeo contempt playbook. And now this judge has been assigned to my custody and support cases as an “Acting Family Judge” in a court he was never elected to. How’s that for domestic violence prevention and our children’s “best interests?” You women better not grin in Gerry Balboa’s boxing court.

Yes you read that correctly. After my family court matters were assigned to remote courts at Lake Ontario and near the Canadian border, with 150 mile round trips to receive decisions already written, Judge James Bond has now assigned a judge only a few miles from our (parent) homes who threatens violence. Welcome to Trial Judge #41 assigned since my originally uncontested divorce was filed 12 years ago in 2006, a judicial record by most accounts.

It occurred after the Oswego and Herkimer judges recently stepped down. Judges #39 and #40 gave no reason, and I was given no notice of their disqualifications, but they came after my complaints to oversight authorities. Those published complaints focused on their unauthorized back room involvement in each other’s separate cases to orchestrate unlawful service of a support summons threatening as much as seven (7) years in jail. That’s more than violent felons and child molesters get. My pedophile custody judge Bryan Hedges (look him up) got no prison time!

I had been challenging service by mail on the face of that summons and petition because it leads to innocent non-appearances or fatal law enforcement for money collection purposes. A sensationalized example is an unarmed African-American shot dead five times in the back while fleeing a support warrant at a traffic stop in South Carolina  (Walter Scott). 

When I became one such victim of a non-appearance, an earlier support magistrate corrected the human error over the phone in 2012. But not Gerry Balboa. He was on some kind of mission given to him by his boss Judge James “Bond” Tormey who assigned all the other 40 trial jurists to my family court cases. He did so in a manner which mirrored the retributions inflicted on a chief family court clerk which resulted in a $600,000 recovery against “Bond, James Bond” in federal court for her refusal to engage in Tormey’s “political espionage.”

Again we don’t make these things up here at Leon Koziol.com. Look it up at Morin v Tormey, 626 F.3d 40 (2nd Cir. 2010). Shameless Tormey was neither removed from his position nor did he resign from the bench. With my full page advertisements and editorials published over the past few months in Syracuse, Utica and Watertown, New York mainstream newspapers, testimony before the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption, and continued exposure of rampant judicial misconduct nationwide, the retaliation elevated to unprecedented levels in Oneida County Family Court on March 3, 2018.

On that day, I made it clear that Gerry had better not threaten me with violence and most assuredly, he had better stay put on his bench. For the reasons that follow, I knew this was beyond question a contempt by ambush and an unlawful act of attempted imprisonment which a citizen has a right to defend against in such an extraordinary case. Think of it as a Rambo One movie with the corrupt cops replaced by corrupt judges.

In my reports I compared the judicial gang assault inflicted upon me for so many years to a Rodney King beating with the fists and batons replaced by orders and edicts. If Gerry decided to confront me physically and unlawfully under the protection of our court security, it raised the real question of who they should taser. Who was the real criminal here with this focus on domestic violence in these (family) courts? What would Sylvestier Stallone  do if he was real in this environment?

While depicting my discrimination and First Amendment motion papers as “rants” without so much as a first court meeting or argument, Rocky Popeo joined his predecessors in denying me parent-child contact since my 2013 testimony before the Moreland Commission on Public Corruption. He did so without any finding of unfit parenting, criminal charge or child protection report. Meanwhile “rehabilitated” heroin addict moms and life term prisoners were being reunited or allowed contact with their children.

Not mentioned was Popeo’s conversation at a golf and country club during one of my client cases or the unsolicited “rant” he gave me in the presence of a key witness last summer at a local bar. He accused me of some involvement in that censure prosecution. I had no such involvement, no obligation to answer his “rant” anyway, but he was obviously moved by my history of litigation success on behalf of African-American victims in his court, federal court and Utica city government.

That history included former “black” Public Works Commissioner Stephen Patterson and his pastor father who I represented and recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars as a result of law enforcement targeting and wrongful discharge, i.e. Patterson v City of Utica, 370 F.3d 322 (2nd Cir. 2004). Judge Popeo was obviously making a connection between my civil rights advocacy to the racial slurs which nearly caused him his judgeship.

In another case, Mr. Patterson, who had never seen a jail cell, was imprisoned by Judge Balboa in 2010 for non-appearance on a series of nuisance and city ordinance violations. I was not able to represent him then due to the ethics witch hunt already in place, so Steve got front page news after attempting suicide upon discovering that a belt had been placed in his cell while dazed and asleep.

Ultimately he was found “not guilty” on all charges by a jury, and I won yet another ruling for him in a federal civil rights case later that year for police and city harassment. As hard as it may be to believe, I won it while suspended because the papers were prepared by me beforehand and no qualified substitute lawyer could be found.

Rocky Popeo persisted in his beliefs that I had somehow influenced his public censure. He even inquired whether I had filed a complaint against him regarding his eviction ruling upon my former law office the same year as that censure. The current judge assignment should never been offered or accepted on grounds of revenge and prejudice alone. Such persecution has now required resort to natural laws for my protection. I am no Rambo, but I finish the fights that others start without provocation or genuine lawful authority.

You will find background news articles on this post and others together with professional services we offer on this site, Leon Koziol.com. Please contribute to our cause for the sake of parents, children and court victims everywhere. My book, Satan’s Docket, continues to be purchased and commended, a useful tool for self-representation as well. And share this post with those who need to know what is truly occurring in our courts. I can be contacted at our office at (315) 380-3420 or personally at (315) 796-4000.