After promoting an agenda for discrediting my decade-long crusade to reform a corrupt family court industry, its beneficiaries continue to hide from their roles in the mass shootings among our schools. Today’s killing of three children and three adults in Nashville is the latest example of collateral damage emanating from a court system that favors profits and revenues over the “best interests” of our children.
The continuing carnage is detailed in my Law Review and News Alert published here on March 17, 2023 and more extensively in my 2021 memoir, Whistleblower in Paris, available at any Barnes and Nobles store, Amazon or major bookseller site. The connections to this tragedy are manifestly complex but accurate in defining a “silent epidemic” of immorality caused by an increasingly parentless society.
This latest tragedy is not about race, gender or gun control but the erosion of moral fiber perpetrated by non-parents promoting woke ideologies and sexual perversions, among other evils, in these same schools. The true victims grow up to be demonic, deprived of genuine loving guidance by those parents anxious to remain a part of their children’s lives in divorce or separated households.
Shared parenting is made subordinate to a custody war reminiscent of the Roman Coliseum in these godless tribunals. They continue to ignore parental alienation and denigration of authority vested in parents seeking to raise responsible adults. The perpetrator of today’s heinous crime defied all the stereotypes of an angry, young, white male to reveal a white, female 28-year-old as the killer.
Insanely, President Joe Biden opens his public reaction to this tragedy with jokes about his wife, chocolates and pointless cravings. He then follows not with a new strategy but that tired old song and dance about gun control. Former New Jersey Governor and federal prosecutor, Chris Christie, had it correct with his reaction emphasizing that we are already inundated by gun laws to address such crimes.
Both reactions were featured on FOX news as this horrific scene was unfolding. Respected anchor Martha MacCallum opened a segment with shock over the gender of this killer thereby evidencing her ignorance of the bigger picture. She is obviously unaware of such child murders as Gabriella Boyd by a mother who chose that option over a custody change order. MacCallum’s guest contributor, Shannon Bream, was more attuned to the crisis by reference to this godless society in her recent publications.
This “silent epidemic” so vigorously exposed here at http://www.leonkoziol.com must be addressed by Congress with oversight hearings into the abuse of federal Title IV-D funds by family courts. And our Justice Department is duty-bound to investigate the escalating human rights violations evident in these same courts. Instead, the “band plays on” to the tune of heart-wrenching losses by families everywhere.
When I began my bold crusade as a conscientious father and civil rights attorney to expose and reform the lucrative divorce industry, I was quickly targeted by its beneficiaries. As the news conferences, public forums and civil rights actions grew, so did the retributions from my profession.
In the end, these beneficiaries (unscrupulous lawyers, service providers, and lawyers on the bench) united to extinguish my crusade not by any meritorious response, but by killing the messenger. It is a typical tactic of tyrannical regimes throughout human history.
However, this does not mean that I have to tolerate their fraud on the public or the persecution. My adversaries certainly had the power to destroy me as they ultimately proved, but they cannot erase my unblemished record as a parent and professional, and they cannot rewrite history as they strived to do. In that vein, I have been compelled to publish aspects of that record here.
Koziol novel at Barnes & Noble, AmazonDr. Koziol at United Nations Conference
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.
Yesterday afternoon I had occasion to attend a Matt Castelli public forum at the town offices of Lowville, New York in the far north reaches of the state, only an hour from the Canadian border. He is challenging incumbent Elise Stefanic in the 21st congressional district which extends from Vermont to Lake Ontario, Mohawk River to the St. Lawrence River. It is by far the largest geographically, comprised mostly of farmers, small businesses and middle class families.
I was anxious to determine if a candidate for such a high level position was anywhere on the radar of a reform movement seeking to gain accountability for federal funding abuses under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act (child support program). I also wanted to see if his campaign promises were genuine given my four decades in law and politics, having made a run for the same office on the same party line in 2006. What I discovered was alarming.
Mr. Castelli refused to address my questions before a small audience of 30-40, mostly senior citizens, even though there was still ten minutes left to his question-answer session per his public release. Instead, he invited me to share my concerns privately at its conclusion. However that proved more alarming when he displayed utter ignorance of the Title IV-D program that impacts so many in the district he proposes to represent. He also evinced a lack of genuine concern for parental rights. Having completed numerous jury selections as a trial attorney, I concluded that his candidacy was more committed to self-promotion than public service.
To be fair, Mr. Castelli was a political newcomer highly distracted by media and attendee interruptions. And he did ask for a copy of my relevant 2015 report to former U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch. But my time is valuable, and resources limited, as it appeared unlikely that he would ever read it. Instead, his seemingly blind commitment to the liberal-socialist agenda plaguing our federal government convinced me that any exchange of documents would be a gesture in futility.
Sadly, and ominously,this is the political landscape of today.
I therefore urge all Democrats to cross party lines and vote for Elise Stefanic on this year’s election ballot. The Republicans are sure to take over the House, and as a high ranking member, Congesswoman Stefanic is far more suited to give us the clout we need in northern New York.
Founder and president, Citizen Commission Against Corruption, Inc.
In his ominous concurring opinion in Dobbs v Jackson, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas declared that other landmark rulings should also be overturned based on the reasoning used by the Court’s majority in striking the right to an abortion. He cited gay marriage and contraceptives as some of his targets given their lack of any textual source in our Constitution. Unlike the right to bear arms enshrined by our Second Amendment which the same Court reaffirmed only one day earlier, these rights are not found in any amendment or bill of rights.
This should deeply alarm all parents because the right to raise one’s offspring is also devoid of any textual recognition in that same venerable document, making it ripe for judicial assault. Indeed, like prey evading the shark, it is a right that may be said to be hiding among those targeted for review. Moreover, it is one that is already being bitten apart in our schools, homes and communities. Simply stated, we parents have taken it for granted much like abortion advocates had for a half century.
However, the parenting right derives from a different source than privacy or that “penumbra” of rights found elsewhere in our Constitution which the high court used to rationalize its shaky decision in 1973. The parenting right exists solidly within the “traditions and history” of our republic, and it was unquestioned by the framers of that Constitution in 1787. It was first given formal recognition 75 years ago in the landmark case of Meyer v Nebraska, 262 US 390 (1923) and expanded to countenance grandparent rights in Troxel v Granville, 530 US 57 (2000).
In the latter case, writing for a plurality of the Court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor declared this right to be the “oldest liberty interest protected by the Constitution.” Hence it may be assumed that this right will remain protected for the foreseeable future because it rests upon a different prong than abortion and privacy. But given the whirlwind of recent Supreme Court rulings, the renewed drive to pack the Court, and outright bedlam across America, we parents must stand guard.
Here at the Parenting Rights Institute we have been acting aggressively to promote fathers’ rights and parental rights generally since 2010. This is largely due to our growing status as a “fatherless America” which, in turn, has triggered widespread violence and declines in our moral fiber as a nation. To that end, as a victim and civil rights attorney, I have exposed judicial corruption that is destroying our families.
This 12-year crusade for overdue reforms led to severe retributions by my profession leading to the loss of all contact with my precious daughters, closure of my law practice and ultimate hospitalization in 2020 for a life-threatening condition. This is the price to be paid by whistleblowers in our third branch of government while the band plays on.” Hopefully my sacrifices will be a beacon of light for parents immersed in the same crusade who are being ignored and censored by our government.
Dr. Leon Koziol of the Parenting Rights Institute presents…
THE AMERICAN PARENT CARAVAN
Schedule
May 1st, Wednesday
10 AM, Caravan meets at Liberty State Part in Jersey City NJ motorcade starts on Interstate 70 to I-95 to Washington DC.
5PM – 550 C Street – 21st Century Lounge – Meet and Greet
7PM Congressional Ballroom until 9PM
May 2nd, Thursday
The entire day will be spent lobbying congress with meetings and deliveries of packets. Two tiers of meetings.
May 2nd Evening – Speakers Event and Rally.
May 3rd, March from the White House to the Supreme Court – Hear the ordeals of everyone who wants to be heard.
Friday May 3rd Parent March on Washington – Starts at the White House and finishes at the Supreme Court.
Please Join the Conference call on Mondays and Thursdays at 7PM to learn more – 605-313-4165 – access code – 763491
Support the Parent March on Washington Today! (Click Here)
As we’ve said here time again, our public messages keep getting proven correct by the day. Today is no different. A story out of Breitbart news chronicles how liberals, socialists and communists, like the ones who joined in that Super Bowl protest, are now calling for a mental evaluation of Donald Trump.(Click Here to Read)
These characters will simply not accept the will of the people in a Democracy which elected Donald Trump only three months ago. In office only one day and he’s greeted by a hoard of vagina fashion models protesting with visible evidence of a demented society.
They are coming more unglued because our new president is actually doing what he was elected to do. These anti-Americans, anxious to bring more of their kind into this country, are now exploiting Trump’s criticism of a “so-called” federal judge in the state of Washington who put a stop order on the president’s temporary ban of refugees.
This guy in a robe was elected by no one. He was politically appointed for life and saw an opportunity to glorify himself with national attention (like federal judge Gary Sharpe did according to former senate leader Joe Bruno in his new book, Keep Swinging). This judge decided to interfere with national security with harm already showing up with the recent flood of incoming from the Middle East.
This judge is actually ruling America for the moment as our self-appointed president, like family judges ruling over our children and interfering with private lives beyond powers allowed under our Constitution. The real president is justified in laying blame for any consequences on this judge just like we moms and dads are justified in laying blame on the kangaroo family judges for the social epidemic we have today.
We must stop blaming good parents for the consequences of mentally deranged family judges (not every judge, only the ones who abuse their egos and jurisdiction). Any mental evaluation of Donald Trump was successfully completed on Election Day, his reform message has not changed, unless they’re saying half the voting population also needs a mental evaluation, the “deplorables” as Ms. Whitewater, Monicagate and e-mail scandal expert called them.
The Trump developments give us pause to reproduce here a post which is very timely on the subject:
In the Wake of Recent Events, Litigants are Entitled to Better Accountability and Due Process.
By Dr. Leon R. Koziol
When New York’s Chief Justice, Sol Wachtler, was arrested and imprisoned for stalking a debutant and falsifying reports to authorities, it was clear to the world that he suffered from a severe mental disease. Several years ago, this convict was re-licensed as an attorney and assigned to teach ethics if you can believe that.
But there is much more to this story which the public has generally not known. For example, while serving in our third branch of government, Sol Wachtler directed paid staff in chambers to investigate a New Jersey lawyer for the purpose of impairing his law license. That lawyer had become too friendly with the debutant Wachtler had been secretly dating as a married man.
Such precedent has relevance to my ordeal as a civil rights attorney, unblemished for more than 23 years, when I began a reform campaign directed to our divorce and family courts. With each public criticism or formal complaint there arose a matching act of retribution which harmed my parent-child relations and professional livelihood, this coming from the branch of government charged with the highest duty of protecting First Amendment rights.
As fate would have it, the “ethics lawyers” employed by an appeals court in Albany, engaged in the witch hunt against me, were fired for falsifying time sheets in 2013, only weeks after admitting in a closed hearing that they had been targeting my website and formal complaints. As a defense attorney, I once had a client who was charged with a felony for alleged misuse of a city gas card amounting to $16. Yet here, the standard- bearers of attorney ethics, Peter Torncello and Steven Zayas, have never faced any public charges while I remain damaged by their misconduct.
Today we read about a deranged airline pilot who crashed a passenger jet into the French Alps. The public is rightfully demanding better mental health accountability. In our family courts, parents and children are being subjected to mental health evaluations every day on self serving accusations of a scorned litigant or state agency. As explained in prior posts here at Leon Koziol.com, such orders yield billions of dollars in fees and revenues for lawyers and bureaucrats.
But what about the judges, top jurists like Sol Wachtler, who issue such orders like burgers at a restaurant? Didn’t his court clerks have a duty under the ethics code to report his misconduct and seek a mental health evaluation before the public was harmed? Did anyone even raise the issue? Or do we conveniently assume that this was all an isolated series of crimes no longer relevant to our system of justice? Well think again, it’s only gotten worse.
These are only some of the shocking cases of judicial misconduct that we have featured here. When viewed individually, it’s alarming enough, but taken together, it raises a potential epidemic in our justice system. For example, how would you know that your opposing lawyer is not so connected as to fix a custody case? In the Michigan case, an unsuspecting father was prejudiced with monitoring devices and jail threats to the glee of his pregnant adversary. How many cases are out there today which will never be discovered given the brazen nature of these very recent incidents?
Make no mistake, it’s not just ethical misconduct being overlooked by our judicial commissions, but felonies and deranged actions of office holders held to the highest public trust. Children are being alienated and even removed from fit and loving parents simply because an unscrupulous lawyer with a paid psychologist is able to concoct some voodoo syndrome to explain human emotions inflamed by these very same needless and lucrative court proceedings.
Suddenly the children are at risk and court ordered evaluations are required as a condition for seeing one’s offspring. This is the gold mine that is causing people like investigator Joseph Longo to commit a murder-suicide that left three children without parents. How are such losses any different than those caused by an airline pilot or his German superiors. Shouldn’t deranged judges and lawyers who profit from their misdeeds be held similarly accountable with mental health evaluations?
In coming days, we will be exposing the deranged behavior of a family judge in Lowville, New York who goes by the name of Dan King. He is a quintessential example of incompetence, arrogance and evil which mars our system of justice and harms innocent children exploited as a means of retribution for public criticisms properly asserted against him. Hopefully, with enough public support, we can remove him like we did Bryan Hedges before more harm is inflicted upon families in family court.
But is access to our nation’s highest court illusory for the vast majority of us?
That is among the questions posed before the Supreme Court today in a mandamus action entitled Leon Koziol v United States District Court for the Northern District of New York being considered on the same day as two other parental rights cases. In another mandamus action, Marbury v Madison, 5 US 137 (1803), the Supreme Court rendered one of its most controversial decisions in which it seized the power to interpret our Constitution and thereby set itself up potentially as a super-branch of government.
The Marbury case has held up to the present day despite much criticism from the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Roosevelt. But the chance for an average citizen to obtain such an interpretation is next to zero. That is because our high court only accepts roughly 100 of 10,000 petitions filed from around the globe. Perhaps more startling is the fact that our Supreme Court has only two more members today than it did during the time of Marbury while Congress plays politics with a vacancy. Since 1803 our population has grown from about 5 million to over 300 million. You calculate the probabilities.
As Americans we should all have a reasonable belief that our highest court will hear our concerns. We should not have to expect that a few prominent law firms guard the door to this court. For this reason four professionals from around the country took a stand as victimized parents on the steps of the Supreme Court. They have asked that our parenting rights be heard as abortion, marital equality and other rights have. Here are excerpts. Three presenters have no lawyer background yet in my expert opinion they articulate the core issues better than many trial lawyers with whom I have litigated during my 25 year career. You be the judge:
Here are the opening segment and Part II of my Supplemental Brief accepted by the Supreme Court last week:
While children in Allepo, Syria are diving and swimming in a pool created by a missile strike (Associated Press, 9/15/16) respondents are hanging on to a “prohibited alcohol related gesture” as a sufficient danger to petitioner’s children to prevent father-daughter contact here in the United States. That “gesture,” assuming it could be understood at all, was not prohibited by any court order, and it consisted of a 2013 wedding toast with petitioner’s children nearby and no alcohol history of any kind as found by an appellate judge.
Sanity dictates that there is obviously something else driving an absurd process challenged by this precedent seeking action on constitutional grounds. Due to a highly abused pretext of promoting our children’s so-called “best interests,” lawyers and conflict profiteers are concocting endless issues to beat up opposing parents. So bad is it today that the entire divorce industry is coming under serious fire as it drags down a noble legal profession.
This ordeal represents the outcome for a judicial whistle blower, victimized parent and conscientious civil rights attorney who set out to reform this industry. However, absent discovery rights or a reliable self-regulating agency to remedy a colossal failure in human rights, persecution is now the sole outcome. It is being ratified through inaction of our federal courts. This is not petitioner’s first endeavor to access our Supreme Court on a long neglected issue. But it will provide the highest authority either way to justify an escape from the oppression that is undeniably present.
An alcohol gesture remains the reason cited in a December 2, 2013 decision for suspending child contact that continues to this day. It was manufactured after no evidence could be provided to show any parenting problem, consumption of a legal beverage being standard issue for abusing parents in our nation’s divorce and family courts. There are many more, a veritable treasure trove of accusations in a system designed to maximize profits and court revenues at the expense of children and families under a federal statute.
Point Two: Domestic courts are not constitution-free zones, and routine obstacles to federal jurisdiction can no longer be abused to deny parents basic rights.
Domestic relations courts are no longer matters of local or state interest. Constitutional violations here were fueled by a federal funding statute and a state revenue system based on the magnitude and number of child support orders manufactured under Title IV-D of the Social security Act, 42 USC 651 et. seq.; Bast v Rossoff, 91 NY2d 723 (1998); Dept of Family v DHHS of U.S., 588 F.3d 740 (1st Cir. 2009)
Beyond that the events occurring since this petition was filed have only proven beyond any remaining doubt that respondents are forever committed to their agenda for censoring and suppressing the petitioner using every means available to them. The overriding reason for denying this public critic his discovery rights in the Northern District of New York was a concern for exposing judges to abuse.
Recognizing this interest, petitioner brought an action for extraordinary relief under FRAP Rule 21 with a request for the appointment of a special master to investigate and report on the complex ordeal inflicted upon this public critic and parents throughout the country as exemplified in the Second Circuit. This was the course of action taken by the same federal court in the Oneida land claim class action of 1998, a case in which petitioner was intricately involved, Oneida Nation v Oneida County, 132 F. Supp. 2d 71 (2000).
The obstacles to federal court jurisdiction and good faith petitions for accessing this Court can no longer be tolerated or glossed over. This is a nationwide epidemic corroborated by other cases decided by this Court since petition filing. For example, in Universal Health Services v United States, No. 15-7 (June 16, 2016), a teen girl was placed under the care of a counseling center having unqualified staff which administered improper medication resulting in a worsening of a bi-polar diagnosis. She died of a consequential stroke.
This Court allowed the family’s action to go forward under the federal False Claims Act based on an implied false certification theory of liability. In family courts throughout the nation parents and children are being referred by judges and lawyers as a matter of course for psychiatric evaluations on the slightest accusations of a scorned ex-spouse. All too often entire families are over-medicated, bankrupted or permanently harmed by this lucrative referral program in these courts.
In this case, a scorned ex-wife acting on advice of lawyers anxious to harm petitioner, requested and obtained a forensic order in 2011 for the parents and children without cause of any kind. The biased judge who issued that order was disqualified, her replacement was removed from the case on motion of petitioner and removed altogether from the family court bench for admitting to sexual misconduct upon his handicapped five year old niece, In re Bryan Hedges, 20 NY3d 677 (2013).
On September 23, 2011, the next (veteran) family judge, Michael Hanuszczak, vacated the order on the same record employed by his two predecessors to order and continue the evaluations. This event fully verified in the record shows just how arbitrary these forensic orders truly are and how easily they can be exploited to harm a public critic as respondent Judge Daniel King did only two years later. On July 12, 2016, his replacement Judge James Eby refused to honor that precedent on the case, thereby producing a permanent loss of petitioner’s children.
The DSM-5 manual used to diagnose psychiatric conditions and process insurance claims has at least 300 disorders and 600 conditions that can destroy careers and keep parents and children under state control and medication for many years. It is beyond epidemic and leading to suicides, bizarre activity and needless destruction of parent-child relations in criminal ways. A special master must be assigned to investigate this crisis because it arises exclusively in our judicial branch. It has been a long time since this Court took a bold move to correct a court created injustice of such magnitude, see Finlay v Finlay, 240 NY 429 (1925); Bast, supra and Brown v Board of Education, 347 US 483 (1954). The case for extraordinary recourse could not be better.
Throughout the entire 230 year history of the United States Supreme Court, there has never been a case accepted on the issue of parental rights in divorce and family court. There have been decisions on how to properly jail a father for a support debt, Turner v Rogers, 564 US __ (2011); how to protect a custodial mother from grandparent rights, Troxel v Granville, 530 US 57 (2000); how to prevent a biological father from accessing children who want to be in his life, Michael H. v Gerald D., 491 US 110 (1989); how to terminate parental rights consistent with due process, Santosky v Kramer, 455 US 745 (1982); how to assure that a father has the same rights as a mother to oppose adoption of their offspring, Caban v Mohammed, 491 US 380 (1979) and cases all the way to where parental rights were first declared to be the oldest liberty interest protected by our Constitution, Meyer v Nebraska, 262 US 390 (1923).
In divorce and family court, because two purportedly co-equal parents have the same rights to their children, lawyers, judges and hired guns, i.e. child psychologists, can beat up on their parental rights until the custody and support battles bankrupt entire families if necessary. It is this antiquated and lucrative custody law (as opposed to shared parenting) which violates the fundamental rights of both parents more than most other forms of state infringements. But that’s okay because of all the conflict profiteers which keep this a trillion dollar industry at the expense of our children.
Then came Koziol v United States District Court, Case No. 15-1519, a mandamus action which seeks parental justice and real accountability for those who abuse our constitutional rights. I filed it on June 14, 2016 to remedy the horrendous retaliation I sustained for criticizing my profession and our courts for their exploitation of our children for profit. On September 20, 2016, the Supreme Court accepted a Supplemental Brief which I offered to show just how the retributions escalated since the earlier filing and how absurd these processes have become. We all know how impossible it is for anyone to get the Supreme Court to hear a case. Less than 100 are accepted out of some 10,000 filed each year, making our high court an illusion for justice among the vast number of aggrieved commoners.
Parents are batting zero in this regard. So we do not expect anything to change any time soon unless we make ourselves heard. That has simply not happened as parenting victims have preferred to stay on their keyboards in the comfort of their homes instead of organizing and protesting. And so the band (bank) plays on as we gripe incessantly to one another and to no one else who cares. Finally a case has come before our high court where true reform is possible. This is the third in a series of excerpts from that supplemental brief which should be shared and supported by all. Here is our third part for publication:
REASONS FOR SUPPLEMENTAL BRIEF
While children in Allepo, Syria are diving and swimming in a pool created by a missile strike (Associated Press, 9/15/16) respondents are hanging on to a “prohibited alcohol related gesture” as a sufficient danger to petitioner’s children to prevent father-daughter contact here in the United States. That “gesture,” assuming it could be understood at all, was not prohibited by any court order, and it consisted of a 2013 wedding toast with petitioner’s children nearby and no alcohol history of any kind as found by an appellate judge.
Sanity dictates that there is obviously something else driving an absurd process challenged by this precedent seeking action on constitutional grounds. Due to a highly abused pretext of promoting our children’s so-called “best interests,” lawyers and conflict profiteers are concocting endless issues to beat up opposing parents. So bad is it today that the entire divorce industry is coming under serious fire as it drags down a noble legal profession.
This ordeal represents the outcome for a judicial whistle blower, victimized parent and conscientious civil rights attorney who set out to reform this industry. However, absent discovery rights or a reliable self-regulating agency to remedy a colossal failure in human rights, persecution is now the sole outcome. It is being ratified through inaction of our federal courts. This is not petitioner’s first endeavor to access our Supreme Court on a long neglected issue. But it will provide the highest authority either way to justify an escape from the oppression that is undeniably present.
An alcohol gesture remains the reason cited in a December 2, 2013 decision for suspending child contact that continues to this day. It was manufactured after no evidence could be provided to show any parenting problem, consumption of a legal beverage being standard issue for abusing parents in our nation’s divorce and family courts. There are many more, a veritable treasure trove of accusations in a system designed to maximize profits and court revenues at the expense of children and families under a federal statute.
Supplement to Fact Section
Judge Sharpe’s anti-filing action began on August 25, 2015, A-I at 51. Syracuse media was put on notice prior to petitioner’s knowledge of it to yield a calculated publication that further damaged petitioner’s reputation, credible reform message and employability. It was also caused by a fundamental lack of reporter investigation and knowledge of family court matters which mainstream media as a general rule is avoiding. Hence secondary media becomes a critical by-product which in this case has been gagged and targeted by both domestic and disciplinary agents.
At the time of this anti-filing order, respondent King was reviewing motions properly seeking an order reopening a support violation order obtained through joint fraud, namely the concealment of petitioner’s children at the home of an unfit, childless millionaire on the family court record for at least eight months. He issued a decision only days later without mention of that fraud, committing this father to a maximum six month jail term for support arrears.
An arrest warrant was also issued despite a stay order obtained by agreement with a state Supreme Court Justice on September 8, 2015 to facilitate global settlement under a superior court support order by agreement entered on August 23, 2010. It called for sale of petitioner’s home as the predicate remedy for arrears. Home foreclosure had been underway in the only (Supreme) court with authority to direct a sale, and the parties had reached a tentative settlement for child support through sale proceeds due to the state’s impairment of all of petitioner’s income means.
However Judge King reneged the following day without notice to petitioner, placing him unknowingly in fugitive status while upending the settlement set for September 24, 2015. A satisfaction amount had been held back pending the motion for reopening the violation, but the funds were refused because the prescribed local support agency had no authority to accept it and a central office refused to disclose its confidential location. Judge King refused to amend his impossible order due to his true agenda of censorship and punitive incarceration. He refused despite notice from petitioner’s attorney and his possession of certified funds.
In early October, 2015 the arrears were satisfied by mail, the warrant and commitment vacated, and petitioner’s motions denied despite the respondent mother’s claims to have satisfied her own court ordered obligations to notify the father of residential relocation within 24 hours by e-mail or text. She later testified that such notice had been confirmed on her home computer under address “gmai.com” (“l” character missing unlike other received transmissions).
Petitioner was therefore compelled to file more futile judicial misconduct complaints while exposing the fraud on his website. Judge King answered on November 25, 2015 (after mandamus filing below) with a protection (gag) order on this site based exclusively on non-threatening disclosures of recent events with the following absurd, highly defamatory and overbroad language prohibiting:
“assault, stalking, menacing, reckless endangerment, strangulation, criminal obstruction of breathing, identity theft, grand larceny, coercion, or any other criminal offense” nowhere alleged in an offense petition;
Petitioner was actually being ordered to refrain from strangling his own daughters. The Fourth Department appeals court denied an intervening mandamus as did the Second Circuit but petitioner was able to get a mandamus show cause order signed in New York Supreme Court on May 3, 2016. On the eve of family court trial, Judge King cancelled proceedings for the second time while his gag order was maintained under threat of arrest and contempt for six months. He followed days later by throwing it all out on the face of the original petition and website content.
In June, 2016, one week prior to a public hearing on the mandamus action, Judge King stepped down while continuing his 2013 and 2014 suspensions of fathering periods. The action was then dismissed on the court’s own motion due to relief rendered moot through conduct that can only be described as orchestrated. Necessarily involving respondent Administrative Judge Tormey, it was successful in avoiding a citizen protest set to occur at the courthouse.
The case was then transferred to family Judge James Eby in a more remote county, the 38th trial judge since an originally uncontested divorce was filed in 2006. The latest judge denied an exigent motion for Father’s Day time deprived the prior two years as part of a father replacement agenda. Petitioner nevertheless obtained an afternoon with his daughters through pressure upon the mother. This only infuriated the newest judge at a July 12, 2016 session when he effectively closed all state court houses to petitioner.
He did this through notices conclusively proving systemic bias. Prior to first introduction, they stated, inter alia, that civil practice rules will be strictly observed and telephonic argument will not be considered (contrary to practices). This required an entire day and 140 mile round trip to receive a decision already prepared and provided from the bench without mention of a recusal motion or severe child alienation. He simply stared back at petitioner when basic enforcement of phone contact was requested. Given an ability to control appellate records, such torturing of due process impairs access to this Court on the state track.
Judge Eby engaged in sarcastic lecturing in a manner intended to provoke outrage and contempt. He limited petitioner’s recourse to appellate remedies with full knowledge of their prohibitive time, resources and systemic bias with daily developing children as the subject. It compelled petitioner to reiterate the temporary nature of prior allegedly precluded dispositions and contrary precedent involving the same case and parties.
The recusal of Judge King and pending challenges to his forensic and contradictory parenting conditions could be vacated as it occurred in an identical circumstance by a prior Judge Michael Hanuszczak on the same record used by a predecessor (disqualified) judge, Second Circuit A-222. The invidious treatment here mirrored the retaliation against a chief family clerk of the same court in Morin v Tormey, 626 F.3d 40 (2nd Cir. 2010).
The same chief administrative judge, respondent James Tormey is shown through compelling circumstantial inference to be orchestrating these outcomes through discourse outside the scope of judicial office. This may be the only explanation for absurd orders, assignments to remote courthouses, and reneging of stay orders arranged by judges themselves for logic and economy purposes.
Due to the respondent King’s usurpation of a global child support settlement during the month following Judge Sharpe’s anti-filing action, the prescribed satisfaction pursuant to higher court order of August 23, 2010 was derailed. It caused respondents Hawse-Koziol and Koslosky to pursue another violation petition in their preferred family court which lacked jurisdiction to order a sale of petitioner’s home with equity well beyond amounts owed.
That petition was made subject to a traverse (personal jurisdiction) hearing on September 1, 2016. A city marshal admitted on cross-examination by petitioner that he had lied under oath regarding his purported service. Decision was strangely reserved. On September 16, 2016, it was issued dismissing the petition without prejudice but also without referral of the perjury to a law enforcement agency as required by Judicial Code, Jones v Clinton, 36 F.Supp. 2d 1118 (E.D. Ark. 1999)(federal judge referral of President Bill Clinton for ethics prosecution after contempt of court).
Among other issues ignored was the serial misconduct of the attorney continually appointed since 2007 to represent petitioner’s children even after removal by an intervening judge (respondent William Koslosky). Like his predecessors, Judge Eby disregarded the issue, leaving petitioner to futile complaints before an ethics committee engaged in the witch hunt against him. As stated, its chief and deputy counsel were fired for falsifying time sheets without public charges, i.e. respondent Steve Zayas. Hence there is no even-handed lawyer accountability in the peculiar ordeal inflicted here.
Hardly a day goes by without another fatal clash between police and citizens on the streets of America. Many are quick to blame it on racism, but as a civil rights attorney for over 23 years currently advocating for parental rights in our domestic courts, the root cause can be found in the destruction of fathers, families and parental authority. Escalating crime and violence is the natural outcome beyond the capacity of law enforcement to control. It is a central issue in my case currently pending before the United States Supreme Court.
Dallas Police Chief David Brown may have summed it up best when he lamented that police cannot be made the repository for all of our societal problems ranging from loose dogs to domestic disputes. Unfortunately conflict profiteers in our family courts are dumping upon society and adding to police burdens every day. It is an epidemic tackled in my case but suppressed and censored by our courts and legal profession to the point of persecution and international protection. And so, while the media squawks about a problem it cannot or will not comprehend, the “bank” plays on.
That root cause has been quietly making its way through our federal courts for the past ten years and now the Supreme Court is being asked to appoint a Special Master to hold hearings and inquiries on the state of American families in divorce and family courts. Call it “families vs fees,” the official title is Leon R. Koziol vs United States District Court for the Northern District of New York. It was necessarily filed as an extraordinary action originating with an uncontested divorce in 2006 that escalated to an unprecedented 35 trial judge disqualifications and exposure of some of the most horrific injustices ever to mar a civilized court system.
One key aspect of my case is the murder of an unarmed African-American father in South Carolina named Walter Scott. Unlike other victims of police shootings, Walter Scott was shot in the back five times for fleeing a child support warrant at a traffic stop. There was no crime and the horrific scene was caught on a citizen video. A family lost their daddy due to a debt, nothing more. The money enforcement practices in these courts have become so “draconian” that at least one British court refused to extradict a “dead beat” to the states. As predicted here at the time, terrorism and violence will escalate due to the media and court suppression of this core cause.
As promised this is a continuation of our sequel of publications on relevant aspects of my Supreme Court brief awaiting decision next week. Help us spread our message of court reform and parental equality across America. Look us up at www.parentingrightsinstitute.com or call our office at (315) 380-3420.
Point Three: Persecution inflicted upon this public critic and judicial whistle blower meets the criteria for asylum under United Nations Convention of 1951.
The fact pattern here is shockingly unprecedented and incredible from a human rights standpoint. It mirrors in many material respects the abuses inflicted upon Chinese lawyer Chen Guangcheng who like petitioner advocated for women’s rights, land rights and parent-child rights. He fled China in 2012 and was accorded protected status in New York with help of then secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
In this case, the mirror mistreatment of an American civil rights attorney and parent entitles petitioner to protected status under the United Nations Convention of 1951 and other human rights protocols. Such protection is accorded to persons persecuted for their political views and free speech. At least one British court denied extradition to a child support obligor due to “draconian” enforcement practices in the states. The case for protection here is detailed in the opening segment of this brief and in petitioner’s motion filed on August 9, 2016 and will not be repeated.
Since that time, petitioner was improperly served with an amended petition for enforcement of a child support order and willful contempt. It contained language in boldface capital letters on its Notice face page which is far more threatening than the original one allegedly served on petitioner prior to petition filing here. As explained in the fact segment of this brief, the original service was made fraudulently with a city marshal admitting on the witness stand at a September 1, 2016 hearing in Syracuse Family Court that he had lied under oath. Critical to the service that never occurred is a shocking criminal sentence now being threatened in the amended version yet to be served:
YOUR FAILURE TO OBEY THIS ORDER MAY SUBJECT YOU TO MANDATORY ARREST AND CRIMINAL PROSECUTION WHICH MAY RESULT IN YOUR INCARCERATION FOR UP TO SEVEN YEARS FOR CRIMINAL CONTEMPT AND MAY SUBJECT YOU TO FAMILY PROSECUTION AND INCARCERATION FOR UP TO SIX MONTHS FOR CONTEMPT OF COURT. IF YOU FAIL TO APPEAR IN COURT WHEN YOU ARE REQUIRED TO DO SO, THIS ORDER MAY BE EXTENDED IN YOUR ABSENCE AND CONTINUE IN EFFECT UNTIL YOU APPEAR IN COURT.
On April 5, 2015, an unarmed African-American father was shot dead in the back five times by a traffic cop while fleeing a child support warrant on a routine stop. Although both white and black officers were charged in the murder, the children forever lost their dad for a money debt arbitrarily inflated to maximize federal incentive revenues under Title IV-D and to feed family court beneficiaries. It is a situation well out of control and leading to increased instances of violence across America.
Respondents have successfully destroyed petitioner and his reform efforts through a seizure of his licenses, income capacities and disparagements of his reputation and public message. Petitioner’s background was omitted from the original petition for the sake of substance. However in this supplemental brief it is required to repair to the extent possible the false depictions ascribed to the judicial whistle blower here while further solidifying the conscience shocking misconduct of respondents for substantive due process purposes and extraordinary relief.
Petitioner is a civil rights lawyer still registered with the New York Bar during an indefinite suspension period which began on February 5, 2010. This is when he took a conscientious stand against father discrimination and corruption generally consistent with his professional oath. In front page news of the day, he compared his refusal to pay gender biased support orders to the refusal of Susan B. Anthony to pay her fine after being convicted of the crime of voting in the 1872 presidential elections.
It must be emphasized that petitioner never refused support of his children or compliance with agreements when honored by the “custodial parent.” Ironically the court in Rochester, New York where the arguments and suspension occurred is dedicated to Susan B. Anthony due to location of her trial.
Petitioner was known in the Northern District of New York as an attorney willing to take on cases which few others would for fear of government retribution or public condemnation. His achievements include legal precedents and six figure recoveries for victims of government abuse. All the while, he was self trained, generating a perfect record of acquittals in criminal cases. A sampling of news articles ignored in the record below is appended to the lower court record at A-91.
Petitioner’s civil rights work earned him interviews on the CBS Program 60 Minutes and introductions on the front page of New York Times, among other major media. A published book was discussed on CNN and his candidacy for United States Congress was a headline story in 2006. After years of complex litigation against high profile firms, he secured final judgment in New York Supreme Court invalidating the largest casino gaming compact in the state on constitutional grounds.
In education, a Juris Doctor was conferred by Northern Illinois University, College of Law with an award from the American Bar Association in State and Local Government. Petitioner received a Bachelor of Professional Studies from the State University of New York, College of Technology, thereafter joining the management team of a Fortune 500 manufacturer. Later he served as a corporation counsel, school board attorney and city councilman with a focus on risk management.
Petitioner’s many published cases include Patterson v City of Utica, 370 F.3d 322 (2nd Cir. 2004)($333,820.32 civil rights verdict argued before Justice Sonia Sotomayor); Oneida Indian Nation v Oneida County, 132 F. Supp. 2d 71 (NDNY 2000)(successful casino challenge in defense of landowner rights) Koziol v Hanna, 107 F. Supp. 2d 170 (NDNY 2000)(free speech challenge as city corporation counsel invalidating mayoral gag order); Currie v Kowalewski, 842 F. Supp. 57 (NDNY 1994)(successful sexual harassment case), Palaimo v Lutz, 837 F. Supp. 55 (NDNY 1993)(brutality and unlawful confinement claims allowed for 72 year old woman).
Rounding out his scholarship, community service awards and dedication plaques on a new city courthouse is his latest published novel regarding nuclear terrorism. It can be found at major bookseller sites entitled Voyage to Armageddon. Within two years of law school graduation in 1985, petitioner obtained a restraining order on a $30 million school project. Today he is unable to get a family court order to enforce a single phone call from his daughters. Much of petitioner’s unyielding quest for justice derives from his own father who shared horror stories of his five years spent in a Nazi internment camp.
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