Year End Round Up 2011

2011 was a year of incredible changes. It was a turbulent year around the world with events that were difficult to ignore and certainly impossible to be oblivious to. Changes swept through every part of the globe - from popular uprisings in the Middle East to nature’s fury in the Pacific Region. It created chasms and divisions that seemed to be an important ingredient for change. And on the sunrise of that change, illuminating light swept the land to show what had transpired and it brought people together. The world, as it was understood, was never the same again.  

Close to home, or should I say, close to where I pass the night, struggles of varying types are in plain view. Unemployment, foreclosures, homelessness and an increase in the number of people digging through trash for recyclables are on the rise. The scavenging of which has taken a hyper-territorial and competitive tone. I wonder sometimes if people will fight for trash cans.

There are individuals in the city who’ve lost their jobs and are receiving unemployment checks. The checks are a great help but only represents a fraction of their previous wages requiring a substantial adjustment in their lifestyle. More bothersome, perhaps, is the looming thought of the checks running out sometime in the future. I could see how that could be stressful.

The official unemployment rate in California is 12%. However, many people will challenge this statistic, as it does not represents the number of people who have fallen off the unemployment roster. It does not take into account those who are underemployed or persons who were business owners who’ve closed shop and aren’t eligible for benefits. Unofficially, the unemployment rate is much higher.

My routine changed considerably this year. As a result, I am much more aware of current events. A page I developed recently - ROBERT'S BRIEFING - allows me to post tweets about events transpiring here and abroad. This requires a reading regimen, understanding the implications of the events and getting a pulse for what is happening. It may seem a departure from my core business of advocating and blogging. Actually it turned out to be an enabler. There isn’t anything that we do in life that isn’t governed at some level and do not intersect with laws. It gave me a view of a life apart from my own - the life of an indigent litigator that I easily view with myopic lenses. Viewing the world outside my periphery gave me a different perspective. It places my struggles in its proper context. It kept my mind away from my difficult travails - insidious self-talk that if given a home between those two ears could cause a person to end up in disrepair - an event that our intrepid people from FBI-NY would be happy to facilitate.

This Christmas I posted a blog and noted the many people who perished around the world in conflicts and the effects of nature’s wrath. Here I am posting yet another blog. I am among those who have survived and with a future to look forward to - a future with a grandness that is limited only by the obstacles that I allow to deter me. Thus, a realization: my struggles are merely an inconvenience compared to those touched by those horrific events.

There were incredible discoveries this year - Eureka moments that now direct our work. If you want to know the truth about anything, you’ll have to have a passion for it and you must be prepared to fight for it. The truth stands on its own, but for reasons not easily understood it is distorted, censured, and in the most extreme cases, erased. In the digital age, corrupting and altering information is easily achieved with the proper tools. The law enforcement community has the resources and a cadre of computer scientists that do nothing but think about such scenarios - primarily to deter, but in the most appalling circumstances actually perpetrate such violations. It is no wonder why none of my cases got to even the first stages of discoveries. We are finding out, it is because I have stumbled on to something so embarrassing to powers that be it required a sophisticated cover-up. Who do you think they sent to do the clean-up? You’ve guessed it - the FBI-NY. So, I became a journalist-in-training, adding to my stated occupation of a Pro Se Litigator - a wannabe Sherlock Holmes and wannabe Clarence Darrow rolled into one.

We recently discovered a California statute that will allow us to generate income in the legal field without a law degree or any other credentials. We are looking at this carefully, wary about violating other laws that prevent non-professionals from making a living in the law. It appears, at this point, that we might have to challenge laws that are already in place. There is obviously a need for document preparation work to assist individuals defending against foreclosures, evictions and harassing collectors. The very fact that a person is in that situation means that their financial resources have been depleted. Affording an attorney likely poses a difficult challenge. This is certainly a policy issue that should be taken up at the highest levels of government. But, if we get sued it might provide us with exactly that - a venue and a microphone.

If there is one thing that might occupy my mind this coming year, it will be working towards acquiring a commercial dwelling. That should be an interesting puzzle to put together as we will try to do so without credit, a verifiable income, a seasoned savings account, references and the most important element of all - money. It we succeed, the place will be a light manufacturing office with walls and lots of floor space so we can lay out documents and exhibits for our actions. I hope to be in such a place early this year. It’s simply impossible to try a case working out of a cafe.

The biggest set-back this year is the loss of the white Dodge van that we acquired for $500 in June of 2011. Along with it were much of what was left of my personal belongings, trial binders and legal materials. It included case files and impossible to replace pieces of evidence and exhibits. If you’ve been reading our blog for any length of time you probably share in our astonishment at the ferocity of the FBI’s disruptive operations. This, I can be sure: If I get my case in front of the jury, provided the jurors are not FBI plants, I will use the the faces of their best lawyers to mop the floors with. What they have done is beyond outrageous.

So, this year, we begin with the primordial emotion of anger - the emotion that has helped me survive this episode of my life and the emotion that will insure my success. Litigation is inherently adversarial. And it is high time that I embrace it for what it is.

All the best in 2012.

A Christmas Cheer to All

Christmas, my child, is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, it's Christmas. (Dale Evans Rogers)

Christmas has always delivered for me some of the fondest and cherished memories, so heart-felt are some, in fact, that it can keep me warm even on the coldest night sleeping outdoors as a homeless person. That’s why it’s important to make those memories while we can because you’ll never know when a nice solitary laugh or a smile might come in handy. That is not to say we are not creating anything memorable at R|J. I can assure you, we are. We are merely looking for the proper time to make such disclosures, which will be soon.

Wow is probably the best way to express it. What an amazing year it is turning out to be. I was going to write a lengthier piece, a compilation of my hurts and pains as an indigent litigator. Then, I got to look around and realized what an embarrassing inconvenience all my struggles actually are standing next to those touched by nature’s fury this year - in Japan, Turkey, Brazil, Thailand, Pakistan and recently the Philippines. That’s not even mentioning the changes conceived from the minds and hands of humanity - Arab Spring the most notable. There were many paradigm changing events that it doesn’t seem any corner of the globe was spared by the swirling winds of change.

I suppose that makes the opportunity to be merry a responsibility and a distinct privilege. We must do it for those who did not make it back this Christmas, our brave men and women of the Armed Forces who will not see the dawn of a new year. Raise a glass to them and you may feel a gust of wind in reply. That would be one of them offering you a snappy salute - a presentment of arms in return. We are grateful for their sacrifice and that of their family's.

Have a Happy Holiday Season, y'all.

Hitchens has left the building

Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you. (Christopher Hitchens, Author)

Call me a fence sitter - neither a believer nor a full-fledged atheist, but something in between. Call me an agnostic - someone who has yet to attain the intellectual depth to understand the mysteries of God and determine with certainty that a he or she actually exists - that on the merits of my actions while alive I may work towards an ideal final destination. In my mind, anything is possible and the final revelation of truth has been deferred to a date in the future. If there is such a place, a final destination after we pass on, Christopher Hitchens is now in the midst of such a discovery. And if he stayed true to his character, he is in all probability trying to devise a plan to show us mortals what he is now observing and experiencing; to tell us whether his arguments have prevailed.

There were a number of events in my life that gave me cause to question my faith and ultimately abandon my religion. It wasn’t so much about Catholicism as it was about organized religion that I have rejected. It just so happened I was born into the Catholic faith and was a product of a Catholic education.

One summer, I went on a road trip and joined of group college students that sold books door to door. I was batched in with two atheists who showed me an entirely different perspective on religion and living. For me, the trip wasn’t a success financially. Yet, something valuable came out of it - the fruits of which I didn’t realize until some time after. It gave me freedom of religion, or rather, a freedom from a religion.

I came to realize that there was actually an option to leave my faith and not suffer painful  consequences - some form of wrath in the hands of God. It was, up until that moment, my first interaction with non-believers. Odd though it seemed to me at the time because they were genuinely decent human beings, something my religion taught me was not possible.

The second event was the pedophile priest cases that raged across the country at the turn of the millennium. I was a parishioner at St. Edward the Confessor Parish Church in Dana Point California at the time the first complaints against the church was filed around 2002. One of the last times I was at the church, I personally met with one of the priests, John Lenihan. I paid him a visit at his office one afternoon hoping to engage him in a thoughtful conversation about matters of the faith but was rather abruptly and condescendingly sent off with a book. He instructed me to read it and return after I had done so. He probably sensed that I was on a mission to provoke him into a debate. We never had our follow-up meeting. It turned out he was one of the members of the congregation that was later charged with pedophilia and eventually defrocked by the church.

The sex-abuse cases that were later filed against the Catholic church rose to a stunning number worldwide. It’s difficult to know how many lawsuits have been filed to date. It is even the more impossible to determine how many children were sexually abused by church leaders and not reported. Even with the amounts of money being rewarded by juries or were offered through settlements, none of whom will have their lives whole again.

The pedophile priest cases were an affront to my sensibilities at every level, causing me to re-evaluate the man-made institutions of organized religion. So, by the time I saw a debate between Hitchens and the former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair about religion, I was open to new ideas. I was thirsting to be exposed to perspectives about religion devoid of political correctness. Without retelling what actually transpired in the debate that was aired in November 2010, a clip is made available below for you to view. You be the judge.

In the end, even the razor sharp mind of Hitchens could not outwit the diabolical habit of cigarette smoking and it’s evil twin - cancer. He died of esophageal cancer on the 15th of December 2011. Nonetheless, there’s really no middle ground when it comes to formulating an opinion about this man. His ideas will expose you to things that you may not have considered before. It will either impress you enough to study his works and create a deeper perspective on the subject, or, he will so utterly offend you. This explains why he is so intensely abhorred by some and yet revered by others. You will have good cause to take a position, in either case. And though a person-to-person conversation with him will never occur, he left a considerable volume of work for me to investigate, to immerse myself in and to learn from. I, in turn, will give it the scholarly respect it deserves; the commensurate amount of effort and time it demands. It is an undertaking I anticipate with great relish, indeed. I look forward to knowing you, Mr. Hitchens.

VIDEO: THE MUNK DEBATES

JOHN LENIHAN PEDO-PRIEST ARTICLE

US Troops in Iraq leaving. Work is not finished.

“ … let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan …” (Abraham Lincoln - 2nd Inaugural Address | March 4, 1865)

The troops stationed in Iraq are finally all coming home. After nine years of selfless service  our brave men and women will return to their home soil and their homes. Yesterday, amidst the military fanfare, President Obama thanked the troops at Fort Bragg and reminded them of the virtues of American power - that they went there to do a job, bring liberty to its population and when the job was done, returned the country to its people. The war, by its classic definition is now over. The time to mend and heal the many things ravaged on a battlefield will thus begin. Unfortunately, we find that many of our servicemen and women who come back from foreign wars return with the worst of their experiences cocooned in some portion of their minds sitting in wait, in dangerous hibernation.

On an average day, eighteen veterans of our nation's armed forces take their own lives. Of those, roughly one quarter are enrolled with the Department of Veterans Affairs ("VA") health care system. (Veterans For Common Sense v. Shinseki - Court of Appeals, 9th District 2011)

Extrapolating upon those numbers, in a span of 9 years there will have been 59,130 deaths caused by suicide, not to mention other deaths by complications due to injuries incurred while in service.

In their ruling the Veterans court defers to the political branches to pursue much needed solutions to assist those who return from foreign conflicts. They wrote:

We willingly acknowledge that, in theory, the political branches of our government are better positioned than are the courts to design the procedures necessary to save veterans' lives and to fulfill our country's obligation to care for those who have protected us.

We at ROBERTS|JUSTICE are grateful to our brave men and women who’ve given so much for this nation and whom afford us our liberties. We will endeavor to bring about the much needed changes and find the best ways, to the extent we can, to ameliorate future conflicts. We are indebted to you all.

READ VETERANS FOR COMMON SENSE v. SHINSEKI

Four Years Homeless and Still Fighting

A DAY OF INFAMY
How time flies. This week, coinciding with the attack on Pearl Harbor - December 7, 1941 - marked the 3rd anniversary of my eviction from my home at San Joaquin Hills (27668 Country Lane Road). That crushing event changed everything for me. It led to my condition of homelessness and it ushered in my new career as an indigent litigator. I haven’t filed any new actions nor have I appeared in front of a judge in many months. In fact, the last time a post was made on this blog was on the 25th of October. It isn’t to say that I wasn’t writing, because I was. It was just in a format altogether different from what I’ve been using in the past. I was experimenting with an evolving platform introduced to me recently, in the form of “Twitter". During the Conrad Murray Trials, I became a self-styled commentator, posting tweets of no more than 140 characters while the trial was in session.

ROBERTS|JUSTICE could be found on Twitter @robertsjustice.

Whenever called upon, I introduce myself as a student of the law. Despite the incredible challenges, the desire to learn the law has not wavered. In fact, it feels as though it is one of the most important reasons that I exist, delivering for my soul a sense of purpose that transcends all the hardships and obstacles that I have faced as a homeless person thus far. I’ve held on to a phrase I wrote on my very first blog post, which said, “ … the ends and means to seek justice, to right a wrong and to heal.” In the end, this entire exercise is to become whole once again. It has been my battle cry, the alarm clock that rouses me early on those cold damp mornings to wage a new day of fights. Unfortunately, being a student of the law does not provide me with a livelihood. The laws in California preclude anyone without the proper credentials from making a living in the law. This interesting dogma is viewed by detractors as an oppressive machination of the bar association that violates the Constitution.

Working under regulative restrictions, there are only two ways in which I can make a living pursuing my cases - either settle my cases or to secure favorable verdicts in court. In this regard, I have made one inviolable and intractable resolution to never give up. After all that I have been through, subsisting in the way that I have, enduring the hardships for 4 years now, I will never settle. It will give me such pleasure to see the day that I finally face the people and all the establishments that have caused the hardships that my children and I have experienced in a trial setting. If it’s the last thing that I do on this earth, I will have my day in court.

THE SIEGE
A cafe called the Neighborhood Cup has served as my de facto headquarters since April 2008. Across the street from the Cup rests an apartment community called the “City Lights Apartments.” That is where the opening volley to this personal war really originated. The Cup has been my battlement position for all these years, feeding me with a figurative dose of incendiary materials to continue the long and arduous struggle to reclaim my good name.

There I take position daily, amassing my strength and waiting for the right time, the right opportunity, the right set of circumstances to spring my assault. It is becoming ever clearer now that the forum for our fight will be the highest court of the land - the US Supreme Court, after I discovered an investigation by a joint task force of law enforcement agencies that amount to substantial violations of my civil rights.

The spectacle of the cat and mouse game between local authorities and the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators gave me a shot in the arm as I discovered a kinship among those who participate. My demonstration may be muffled, calm and orderly, in contrast with the loud, drum-beating, camped-out protests at major cities around the country. Yet, the passions are obvious; theirs for the vibrancy and sometimes combative nature and mine for it’s sustained and lasting character. It has been a little less than four years now that I have been visiting the Neighborhood Cup, staring at the cluster of buildings and dreaming for the day I get the chance to tell my story to 12 individuals comprising a jury of my own peers. There are no signs of stopping, just yet.

What a man must do to have his good name restored.

Courts, Murray and Wikileaks

The weekend was spent producing a site for the purpose of compiling information about the Dr. Conrad Murray Trial. We launched the site called “Murray’s Tribulations” last night but had to take it off-line within an hour after discovering some links were mysteriously being directed to the wrong site or were not working properly (disruptive technologies galore). We’ll launch that site before the end of this week.

I’ve gotten quite fascinated by the Murray case that I now see it as an effective way to learn about the subtleties of litigation work. One of the questions that I was trying to answer was whether or not a system could be created so the same level of advocacy could be advanced by a person in a trial setting even if they do not have a background in the law. In other words, if a person had to bring an action to court as the litigator because he or she does not have money, could that person produce the same level of work as an experienced litigator? The jury is out on that one, but the idea of a wannabe litigator walking in a trial court and winning a complex case is a long shot. Apart from the technical aspects of litigation, such as knowing the local rules of court and evidence rules, a person must have a particular set of traits and skill-sets unique to trial lawyers. Unfortunately, that does not bode well for the majority of Americans as it means that the system is stacked in favor of those who have the financial means.

An important realization came to me several months ago that I wasn’t going to be able to go to law school. If I want to become a litigator, I’ll have to find an alternative way to become a lawyer in a short amount of time. Thus, I spend hours upon hours watching the Conrad Murray Trials, trying to dissect the case and discover the formula for winning cases. It has renewed my purpose and focused my efforts towards pursuits that are consistent with our goals. We'll just have to refine our approach so we can get more done with less.

Accordingly, the success of ROBERTS|JUSTICE will depend on being able to do two things very well. First, we must be able to do exceptional litigation work. Second, we must become a great provider of news and information. So, our mission is evolving into a hybrid that includes the following elements:

• To be the most trusted source of news and information about the US criminal-justice system.
• To uncover and expose abuses in the criminal-justice system and in government.
• To reform the US criminal-justice system.
• To serve as advocates for those who are aggrieved and could not afford.
• To ensure the government's adherence to the US Constitution.

Achieving this goal is not going to be easy. Consider what the US Justice Department and other government organizations around the world are now doing to Wikileaks. Under the mounting weight of pressure and disruptions they’ve just announced that they have lost 95% of their revenues because their bank accounts have been closed. As a result, they have made plans to curtail their services, meaning less embarrassing information about the government will be released. That can’t possibly be good for America.

I am very much familiar with the considerable armada used by the government to suppress potentially embarrassing information. That’s precisely where I find myself today. Until recently, I had in my possession information about the FBI and their corrupt relationship with judges and the judicial system. Now, all my possessions are gone, all I have are two bags of belongings. Gone were all the case files and information that the government does not want the public to see. Using government assets, they have sabotaged just about every opportunity that came my way, throwing me a bone here and there so I can have barely enough, so I do not starve.

So, to Wikileaks, I say this: You are most definitely making the framers of the Constitution proud. Keep at it. Keep hammering. Keep embarrassing the hell out of the government. They derive their powers from those who give them consent. It isn’t the other way around.

The Jackson Connection

My connection with Michael Jackson goes all the way back to my days in Manila. I was first exposed to his work around the time I first started learning how to dance. I was at a party one evening and one of my mischievous friends pushed me in the middle of the dance floor, in front of a girl who was already dancing. It would have been too embarrassing for me to retreat that I took on the challenge with all the ridiculous abilities possessed in my being. I remember flailing my arms in every conceivable direction and folding my legs so my foot was pointing backwards and then stepping forward and skipping. That was my version of a free-flow dance - indigenous style. Nobody had an inkling it was actually the first time I had ever danced in my life. I was so nervous that I could not even remember much about the 3 minutes of debauchery I perpetrated on the dance floor that evening. But I do remember listening to some of MJ’s tunes at the party.

Fast forward to October 2011 and here we are watching the testimony of witnesses, trying to piece together the circumstances surrounding his death. There were no prior plans to actually blog about it, much less to do a thoughtful piece. But things usually land on our laps, gently prodding us to figure out why we’ve met up with the information. I was surfing the net and ended up on CNN’s homepage and eventually the live feed from the Los Angeles courthouse. I started taking notes and as of this writing I’ve accumulated 148 pages of shorthand and difficult to decipher handwritten notes reminiscent of college lectures. What a great opportunity it turned out for me to learn from some of the country’s best attorneys.

In the criminal-justice system, the small "M" - for manslaughter - carries severe consequences enough to take a piece of a person’s life away, incarceration being the most probable. For the juror’s careful consideration is the fate of an individual who “The People” have accused of causing the artist’s death. This makes the advocacy inside the courtroom some of the most riveting. There were great exchanges - rapid fire witness examinations from both the prosecution and the defense - questioning and redirecting to get the witness to say something favorable to their case. With my laptop as my screen and earphones for listening, it took but an instant to understand that I was ringside for one of the great court battles of the year. For a student of the law such as myself, the cafe I frequented became my virtual classroom. 

Around the second week of the trial, I heard testimony that made me consider a number of important issues. For instance, the chief coroner, Dr. Christopher Rogers reported that MJ had 0.169 ug/ul of Lorazepam in his blood work. Through careful questioning the defense helped me determine that the amount would equate to 9-10 pills. Oddly, Dr. Murray had stated previously to having administered 4 pills the evening before MJ’s death. That begs this question. Was it even probable that Dr. Murray handed MJ 9-10 pills? And, why didn’t the coroner find a enough digested Lorazepam in his stomach to be consistent with that amount? That along with many other questions became the basis for the decision to create a “Special Report Series” about this trial. Such work can be time consuming, requiring us to research and investigate contradictory information being offered to the court. For instance, did you know that the date tag on one of MJ’s coroner pictures was erroneously dated? That seems ministerial and could easily be corrected. But, if that’s the case what other pieces of information on the coroner’s report was erroneously recorded and should be corrected? Is it enough to ultimately affect the results of this case?

You now get a sense why this needs a more thoughtful approach than mere blogging will afford us. Despite the fact that this is actually our first attempt at legal analysis, we will put our most devoted effort to this project. Unlike Leonardo’s Mona Lisa (took 4 years) and the other projects we have on the hopper, we will endeavor to publish it with the least amount of delay.