Demanding Accountability

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U. S. District Court – District of Columbia
As Corrupt as it Gets
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By Charles Sisson

Think Americans are guaranteed a fair trial and due process of law under the U.S. Constitution?  See if the following doesn’t convince you that a Federal judge illegally supported a lawsuit based on flagrant misrepresentation and perjury, then told whoppers to protect the decision, and rather than question these developments, the judicial and criminal justice system that is supposed to ensure the integrity of judicial proceedings backed her to the hilt.  These events appear to have given official blessing to a conspiracy to defraud, commit grand larceny, and obstruct justice in the Federal courts that was devastating to the victim.  After serving his country two years during the Vietnam War, then earning a PhD and working at the International Monetary Fund for nearly thirty years, he lost the fruits of a lifetime of hard work and careful investment, as well as his good health, and last but not least, his steadfast faith that given the chance America would do the right thing. 

These are troubling developments in a country that proclaims its role as a nation of laws, especially as they didn’t occur in some obscure backwater court, but in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, located virtually in the shadow of the White House and a stone’s throw from Capitol Hill.  They also seem to provide stark refutation of President Obama’s recent proclamation that the era of two sets of laws, one for the rich and famous, and another for everybody else, is over.  In a similar case also involving allegations of witness tampering tried by the same bench, the guilty verdict for the rich and famous Senator Stevens was thrown out and a special prosecutor was named to investigate the irregularities that had surfaced.  If you can’t ensure impartiality under your own nose, how can you expect it elsewhere?  If a judge has the latitude to repudiate the court record she herself created and contradict case law through the ruse of simply stating it was observed, what is the point of holding a trial in the first place?   

Compare the two cases. In the trial of Senator Stevens, when allegations of fraud and misconduct in the form of actions to suppress evidence and foster perjury surfaced, after former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska had been found guilty, Attorney General Holder intervened in the proceedings, acted to terminate prosecution of the case, and appointed a special prosecutor to investigate these developments. This is what you would expect in a nation of laws, and was altogether proper.  But what happened in the second case, adjudicated by Judge Rosemary Collyer of the same bench?

As the other trial did not receive the publicity of Senator Stevens’, some background may be helpful.  I was defendant in a home defects case where the plaintiff alleged the house I sold her was so defective it was about to collapse and all the house systems had to be replaced in their entirety.  I was told afterward that the purchaser was the youngish wife of an elderly Russian “diamond merchant” who had had been twice extradited in handcuffs to Europe on charges of bank fraud.  Never mind that I had previously developed nearly a hundred housing units without serious complaint, and plaintiff’s complaint very conveniently came after she undertook a massive renovation that completely gutted the house, eliminating the alleged “defects” before they could be inspected by anyone except those employed by her.  All the house systems had to be replaced anyway when her renovation reconfigured the house and rendered them obsolete.  It’s always nice when somebody else pays for changes you want. 
 
Think this judge didn’t do some heavy lifting to enter a guilty verdict?  The trial featured a series of remarkable judicial rulings that significantly bolstered plaintiff’s case. 

·Judge Collyer designated plaintiff’s foundation witness an “uncompensated fact witness” to bolster his credibility, despite a public record he and the plaintiff were clandestine business partners and he was intimately involved in preparing the lawsuit, briefing other witnesses for plaintiff.  The judge actively protected that false designation by steadfastly and resolutely overruling defendant’s questions during cross-examination intended to reveal his bias.

·She ensured that the evidence prepared by this falsely designated “uncompensated fact witness” would be the only real basis for assessing the quality of construction by agreeing that plaintiff had the right to deny defendant any opportunity to inspect the alleged defects, a violation of standard legal procedure. Instead, the judge turned the “spoliation inference” (whereby the party who destroys evidence is presumed to have done so to hide or distort evidence which would weaken their case) upside down, faulting defendant for not submitting evidence showing his work was not defective, even though it was undisputed plaintiff denied him access to the alleged “defects”.

·The judge adopted representations from the “uncompensated fact witness” as to what constituted “defects”, applying building standards that did not exist outside her courtroom.  For example, she found the entire plumbing system defective on the basis of plaintiff’s claim that the natural gas pipes were only “hand tightened”.  No jurisdiction uses this standard, as out-of-round pipes will leak even when tightened by a wrench.  The appropriate test, as enforced by the District of Columbia Regulatory Authority (DCRA), is for the pipes to retain pressure overnight, and the gas company for liability reasons would never have provided service to the house until it was satisfied the system met this standard.  Even if the gas pipes were defective, which they weren’t, it wouldn’t justify replacing the entire plumbing system, which is mainly water supply and sanitary sewer lines.

·She didn’t require plaintiff to keep a record of actual expenses repairing “defects” but accepted a theoretical model of costs prepared by plaintiff’s architect as the basis for the enormous award.

·She even waded in to help make plaintiff’s case, voiding official DCRA inspections that certified construction met building codes—the only evidence available to defendant after he was denied access to inspect the alleged “defects” by plaintiff--even when plaintiff didn’t provide supporting evidence and the inspections were valid.

Could the enormous judgment approaching two million dollars she won somehow be related to the fact that plaintiff was represented by the same politically well-connected law firm, Williams & Connelly, that was so effective in winning a reversal of the Stephens decision?

After-trial developments were even more astounding, and provide a remarkable contrast to the outcome in the Stephens trial.  The plaintiff’s “uncompensated fact witness” voluntarily came to defense counsel’s office, where three witnesses swear he confessed plaintiff bribed him to testify on her behalf, and identified two former employees who had independent knowledge of this arrangement.  This witness subsequently refused to sign an affidavit prepared to memorialize his confession, citing fear of reprisal from the plaintiff, but presumably also motivated by concerns that he could incriminate himself in a conspiracy to defraud, obstruct justice, and commit perjury. 

Even with several witnesses attesting that crimes had been committed, law enforcement authorities refused to initiate an investigation of these developments, and the FBI wouldn’t even file a complaint.  When relevant government officials refused to act, I resolved to pursue justice independently by launching my own inquiry.  This effort was significantly impeded by the absence of criminal investigatory powers and ultimately proved financially ruinous, but with perseverance I overcame the “uncompensated fact witness’s” determined and resolute efforts to avoid going on the record.  Why was he so determined to avoid testifying?  In his deposition, the witness refused to incriminate himself, but acknowledged plaintiff had tried to bribe him, and did in fact compensate him for supporting her lawsuit. 

Thus this witness, finally freed of the judge’s muzzle, confirmed he was never an “uncompensated fact witness” and plaintiff’s representations otherwise were false--thereby raising questions about the validity of the “evidence” he provided and the integrity of the lawsuit.  At the very least, plaintiff’s attorney would seem to be guilty of perpetrating a “fraud on the court.”  This witness’ continuing denials of actually accepting plaintiff’s offer of a bribe contradicted compelling and consistent evidence from at least eight other sources, including all three attorneys involved and the two former employees who had independent knowledge of the bribery agreement, the only sources involved who actually were “uncompensated fact witnesses” motivated solely by a sense of justice.  

When this information was brought before Judge Collyer, who had so steadfastly ruled in support of plaintiff’s allegations during the trial, she never wavered course.  Her ruling validated plaintiff’s right to offer witnesses bribes as long as she was not represented by counsel.  More significantly, she refused to reopen the proceedings, claiming that in any case the testimony of this witness was irrelevant to the decision, which she averred was “painstakingly and independently” corroborated by other witnesses. 

A judge uninterested in the bribery of witnesses in her court?  Her statement that this witness was irrelevant to the decision flatly contradicts the trial record the judge herself so actively shaped and is reminiscent of the White Queen who lectured Alice that she should be able to believe six impossible things before breakfast.  The judge had falsely designated him an “uncompensated fact witness” to bolster the credibility of his testimony and the “evidence” he provided to support plaintiff’s claims, cited him over sixty times in her decision, and ruled work was defective on the basis of his testimony.  Moreover, she had repeatedly emphasized his central role.  In her decision awarding plaintiff remarkable legal fees, Judge Collyer ridiculed suggestions plaintiff’s attorneys had spent excessive money preparing his testimony, stating that any complaint that his testimony wasn’t that important “falls flat” and that he “was a critical witness” whose testimony was “particularly crucial”.  Furthermore, during the trial the plaintiff’s expert witnesses, who had never seen the alleged “defects” even though plaintiff had maintained control over access to them throughout, repeatedly attributed his representations in their analysis, until even Judge Collyer ruled during the trial that their testimony was not independent of, but in fact dependent on, his groundwork and guidance.  

If someone makes a statement so utterly inconsistent with the facts, what other errors has she committed?  A law-and-order judge might be expected to jump on evidence showing one of the parties had misrepresented in court the nature of plaintiff’s arrangement with her foundation witness, at the very least tried to bribe him, evidently committed a “fraud on the court”, and almost certainly contaminated her court by perjury and misdeeds directed at the very administration of justice.  Instead, she waved these issues aside and focused her attention on a sweeping denial of my petition to hear these eight witnesses, ruling defendant was falsely affable, and even had the audacity to deny any future appeals I might bring, sight unseen.  How can denying appeals sight unseen be due process?

Remarkably, the court of appeals supported these rulings.  It was unperturbed by the judge’s apparent liberties with evidence and witnesses, summarily confirming her rulings without bothering to justify its decision by citing case law and precedent.  It subsequently confirmed Judge Collyer’s decision to ignore the testimony of at least eight witnesses who could swear that the foundation witness in the case had accepted a bribe or committed perjury when he denied his confession.  In this ruling, the appeals court based its decision by citing cases that clearly seemed to hold that these witnesses should be heard.  Subsequently the defendant tried to report judicial error under Title 28, U.S. Code, Section 351(a), which allows a person to question if a judge’s conduct has been prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration of court business.  The appeals court denied this claim without consideration of the merits, on the grounds that a judge cannot be found accountable on the basis of her actions in only one trial.  Evidently the Constitutional right to a fair trial only applies to groups instead of individuals.
 
If eight witnesses aren’t enough to demonstrate perjury and obstruction of justice, how many would it take?  Why would a legitimate party in a lawsuit even try to bribe a witness?   The real question at issue here is if in our democratic society some people are above the law and can ignore the consequences of their actions.  Are plaintiffs who knowingly misrepresent the main elements in their cases and try, if not actually succeed in bribing their witnesses supposed to win huge awards in U.S. Federal Courts?

During his trip to Russia, president Obama admonished Russia for making bribery a hallmark of its business practices, and in Africa he stated “No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery.  That is not democracy, that is tyranny—and now is the time for it to end.”   And yet here a federal judge appears to have confiscated a lifetime of hard work and careful savings from a defendant on the basis of some remarkable rulings that defy credulity and our Constitutional rights to due process. 

How badly does something have to smell before something is done?  Isn’t it against the law to abuse the power of government for personal gain?

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