Sunday, November 20, 2016

To  My Midwest Center Friends, Members and fellow Readers and even Distractors:
      Its Time to Speak Again:


    Its been quite some time that I have added anything to the Midwest Center's official blog page.

    The year has expired like a winding road, with its variances and crazy electorial national politics, the routine mind boggling public comments combine with the mind numbing failure of local lawyers and judges and many others across the nation...  who just simply fail their duty, their clients, the legal profession, the system of laws that are in place
to protecct the most basic fundamental due process rights of ours.

Its not only the citizens who are to blame for the recent elections, the disaffected white rust belt voter
and those who have been left out of the elite media blitz we all have been so treated to for the past decade or so,

We here who have been living in the fly over districts of America, have not only seen our jobs and our lives disenfranchised, lost, depressed, corrupted and uphended unlike anything many other places in this nation have not

we also have been treated as  "fly over" in terms of our civil liberties being ignored, trampled upon, mis treated and completely and forever jarred from us, by rude, crass, at times, ignorant eventual trump wanna bes, in office, locally across these midwestern states also.   In particular..for this article...by the very third branches of our midwestern states that just delivered to America its stunning new world order...the presidency of Donald Trump and his rampant nationalistic fervor (fever?) pitched campaign that may lead to our first real serious experience with homegrown modern world fascism.

In other words, this region is NO area of the country to be a civil rights lawyer or advocate as much as its not any place to be a liberal forward thinking politician or media reporter for major mainstream media.

Its the fly over districts of America that have been left out, left behind, forgotten and simply trampled upon and as the Bi Coastal and the southeastern coastal regions of this nation grew exponentially not only in terms of population but jobs, nice condos, beautiful new shopping centers, beautiful landscaped as if 3d printer moulded dream home neighborhoods were simply shipped in and stamped down onto the Florida and Carolinas' east coast or the Georgia and Alabama coastal one's also ...

But rather, its the places like Warren, Waverly and Cadiz Ohio, that grew this nationalism among others like it....where....but for the gas and oil industry fracking efforts of late, with its billion dollar injection of cash into this region, giving many a republican governor the chance to crow that he, not the Texas and Oklahoma industries brought jobs to this once totally defunked, once proud but down on its knees, rust belt 'appalachian' center of the universe

it was here, where its hard working citizens were completely forgotten by the many ambitious politicians and wall street billionaires, of donald trumps cabinet, who sought political refuge in major corporate donors offices, in DC, and many of the east coast, west Coast and southern ocean view
office buildings...

Its for many a reason Donald Trump won this election this year; racism and xenophobia at clearly near its head and not without a good amount of mysiogeny.

But, what else was there?

There was this very extreme, long march to death, long in the tooth, well-developed institutional legal movement with its serious but intentional blundering and slouching ever growing tendency inside our midwestern state and FEDERAL COURT systems that have treated the citizens's individual rights as put forth by the Founding Fathers First Principles as if they were nice written tablets belonging to some archaic past archeological find, from a long ago extinct ancient culture which once roamed the North American continent...



The push and urge we see now taking actual real form and shape in our national elections and most disturbing to many inside our national government with Trumps' election did not begin with just the lost of jobs and long term unemployment, inside the underemployed midwest.

 Its also must give its salute to the Clinton era appointee federal judges who also treated the lowly citizens of Ohio Michigan and Kentucky and western Pa and many other such places across all of America, as if these people were something lesser, something other, something to use for cheap labor and/or to be used for heavy industry labor practices for three or four decades then to be discarded in their pensions as if they were mere fodder, food for the capitalist pigs who took their old tired worn out factories and moved them down south of the border, sometimes, just down to Georgia, or to the republican strongholds of Alabama and Tennessee...

not always, just to Mexico necessarily but just across the Mason -Dixon line.

and not necessarily to China (though so much was actually moved there)...but to Texas and South Carolina and Tennessee ...places where no union was ever truly welcomed..and never will be until Pat Robertson and Jesus together show up on their respective White Horses...


 (and I'm not sure who will be leading that amazing assembly either, after this past decade of the "great migration of jobs southward"....will it not CrefloDollar and his 30 million dollar yatcht crew'? or will it be the Only Son...?}

   not quite sure... after living thru these past years in the midwestern wilderness...

The point being and I'm making this, as a civil rights lawyer who was shockingly 'defrocked'
{never disbarred but just silenced}

sometime ago now ...with the pain and suffering of how that was done to me, and with the shock of the same, fading, the pain a direct factor due to the once very high regard I once enjoyed and viewed along with the high institutional respect I held for the legal profession and the positions of higher laws and Courts  I obtained from my own father, a former 32 year senior trial judge who loved his tomato garden more than any country club...and yet worked in every type of law and in 76 of 88 Ohio counties, from Cincinnati, to Chillicothe, from Columbus and Toledo to Cadiz and Marietta, from Dayton and Youngstown, to Steubenville, and Dillonville, Ohio

yes....i have seen the beast arising inside this nation's heartland ...long before this national election ...

and Ive had the hot breath of the beast of something "other", breathing down on me for years

Not even this nation's highest officers or some of its Highest Government Agencies could stop nor prevent from happening what has happened to me.

more importantly, most if not all, do not even care and no longer feel its even necessary to discuss

but now, perhaps, because of the fears of millions and the threat to muslims and to mexicans
and to so many lesbians and others...

This American white male civil rights lawyers can share his story and have it become relevant
...just maybe

I knew something of what this nation is sensing today...sometime ago...

it started long ago but it became very clear and personal to me
when i was put through for about 3 to 4 years by the Ohio Supreme Court and a local democractic strongly hold's bar associations, about 9 years ago now,

I witnessed and was afforded the private email account treatment, of

how a high court was corrupted by lies and politicization and influenced by serious corporate creepy special interests and mere man's jealousy and yes, a good dose of midwestern institutional racism

I witnessed personally, how easily it was for the highest courts of a entire state and region in both the state and federal judiciaries...

to simply fail...their duty to uphold the concept and truth of what a highly devout christian 19th century figure once authored, fought for and himself paid a terrible price politically for getting into the constitutional framework of this nation. called the 14th Amendment.

and soon afterwards, to witness it to be promptly forgotten and buried and much later, only resurrected merely in bits and pieces case by case, year by year almost a century later, in after a King and Kennedy arose,

they were the ones who critically applied, what this single devout serious equality minded 19th white male from Cadiz, Ohio had envisioned for America....John Bingham's 14th...was the KEY to all of our modern notions of individual equality and due process rights...he authored the most important constituitonal amendment one may say, after the original 10 and the 13th which abolished slavery.   it is easy to forget him.   this nation did afterall for over a century after he wrote the same.   and today??

well, in many many cases, sadly its my experience, in many high courts today, they don't seem to wish to adopt even now, what this pious devout christian white male wrote;

in many instances, the judges on high courts, in many instances are simply imposters

...and have been for a generation now.. they are just as much responsible for the rise of any would be dictator whether or not its Trump or some other would be strongman, to rise in the near future, over America,  for they themselves, these high courts, have invited in and conjoured up such a spirit of NON DUE process, with resulting shocking outcomes and surprising results...to what would to the ordinary citizen and American would readily think is only just and fair and equal

the federal and state courts of America, particularly in the midwest regions of America have been well ahead of the national mood and curve in burying the individual rights contained in the 14th Amendment for years...

in a significant manner, places and times, they have plowed the ground and seasoned the roots of the rise of a modern tyranny.

its not the tyranny of old, like in France with Napolean or a Roman like Caesar..

its not the third world dictator tyranny ...and its not even the garden variety Soviet style tyrant modern or former like Stalinists flavor;

no rather, its a tyranny by another name, another form

and its been welcomed in through the back door of the forgotten, over the heads of the millions found not fully nor gainfully employed in the bread basket of America..

like Mike Moore, the middle finger of White working class people who were left out of their jobs and their lifestyles, having to watch their children go far away just to find life,  not just a job..but life...

were the one's who voted the neo con liberalism out of existence
and it was Hillary who paid the price for it no doubt..

but the darker impulses we see underlying the foundation and the true spirit of how this was appealed to, came from another more potent and much more powerful institution

The federal and state and in some instances, the forgotten small town local courts who have treated individual rights as if they were so many plastic action figures on a children's gamestop table game...

They created the legal judicially created form of today's heavily immunitized local and state acting officials that can not be very easily held accountable and therefore the did as the ancient scriptures would say " they did what seemed right in their own eyes...so says the Lord..."

    and for this reason.. the once held universal ideal that upheld the highest forms of constitutinality and all that flowed form those first principles and universal ideals meant, were no longer held as the boundaries and limitations upon a governmental actor, even as they acted wrongfully towards the citizens of their very government.

so, the truth and the universal notion of individual rights, today, is weakened and no longer holds true,

and with this, comes a rising up...of what always comes from the failure of the consensus of men and their rules, the breaching of the social contract in the form of a strongman arising who "will make the nation great again"

this is the talk and language of all Musollini's....   the fascist rise was begun not with only dick cheney and Bush's waterboarding white house lawyers and AG...

not only with what Snowden revealed to us about our own government's top down, complete capturing of every single keystroke on this computer I am writing on...

but, also, it was given its legal and powerful impetus, the first and second and third, and thousandth and hundred of thousandth

time, a judge, a federal magistrate, a hearing office a lawyer failed to grant a citizen their true 14 th Amendment Due Process...

inside of a hearing that held in the balance their entire life, their life's work, their career, their reputation

when high courts and high court appointed officials and hearing officers and lower courts

lie and lie seriously and intentionally disassociate themselves from the very founding principles that create the basis for what the law is in our open society

we have already taken the steps....to that which we see, hear and fear all around us today

...in Germany, the tribunals who operated under a very highly developed set of laws before the rise of Nazism...were doing so under a formal Constitution and a formal set of due process standards.

However, in order to politically please the higher ups and commands and the prevailing winds of the day, politically

the courts of Germany long before the invasion of Poland, began to treat "the other" as if ...they were simply "fly over people"....to be stripped of their civil liberties, slowly almost hidden at first.

 it was then, they were lost   Germany as a republic lost its soul, inside its own courts, well before the people embraced and longed for a leader, a Furher...to take them into the new millienial 1000 year reign of near heavenly rulership.

it was the german nationalists who decided to short cut the treatment of the individual and his/her right to due process and the truth,

that created inside the system for a rise of the Nazi party inside of Germany...

and so...i fear and more than just intellectually surmise

but i bear the very scars....of that which I write and speak herein

when a nation and when a high court chooses to ignore the most fundamental due process guarantees to its citizens to those its considers public enemies and to those who dare to be different and who decide to put their careers on the side of the unpopular, the disenfranchised the poor and outkast

then that nation no longer is operative of a truly open society  Democratic in form but dangerously overpowering of the individual, within its truer self...

in form we're a functioning democracy

but many, many of  my former clients, and acquaintances even today, i witness in my friends case...the housewife of a small town being tortured to death literally

because of the failure of the local courts and the lawyers to a person, ...to simply do their jobs and to protect her civil liberties

whatever she is into, what ever she does and doesn't do good or bad

their abandonment wholesale...from high end super lawyers in Columbus, to the lowly bunch of local legalize

its hard to witness once again...that which I myself endured ...not so many years ago

and have to be treated to a front row seat

while her...and my own

and nearly every one i know...civil liberties, are being trampled upon, shorn, ripped into pieces
and even mocked and treated with deliberate indifference

not by the police outside....nor by the enemies from overseas


but by those seated in black robes

and those who bring their briefcases full of cookies and favors for judges

around those land granted rural appalachian courthouses, built in an era, when america was just industrializing

when Ameria's future wasn't as globally conceived

When its better technologically days were just ahead

when American's still believed....

and when courts and lawyers, to a larger degree....

had come from a place where a civil war over slavery and citizenship

had just become....a recent faded memory
but the afterglow
made everyone realize then....as Lincoln stated in his final address

we either get along and "treat all humans, equally...or we as a nation that is dedicated to freedom will perish from the face the earth"

putting it bluntly if not paraphrased...



Monday, February 8, 2016

Update: Keturah Krankovich's Case's Plea:  The Failure of the Local Criminal Justice System and The Media's Complicity In The Effort to Tear Down the Individuals' Right to Presumption of Innocence

    Recently, a felony drug case that had been pending for over a year inside of Harrison County, Ohio was quietly, (very quietly) dismissed and all the pending aggravated drug trafficking and possession charges were dismissed.   A plea instead was taken by the tired but still spirited Defendant, Keturah Krankovich, after she fought off the allegations that had taken on a life of their own inside the local court and also, oddly, the local media, including the everywhere local TV NewsStation, NewsNine.

    Keturah Krankovich in other words successfully defended herself against the powers that be and two separate indictments, a 10 month malicious prosecution, twice a week drug testing for 10 months and she defended herself against a three aggravated felony charge indictment and overcame all of these officials hot accusations against her, on January 19th.   She won.  In a word, she won against the greatest of odds after having spent tens of thousands of dollars, and retaining no less than three separate defense lawyers over the course of the past year.

    She won because she would not give in and give up on her defense and her own statements.  She won because she was committed to defending her professional background as a local experienced RN and she won for her young adult children who have had in her son's case, his own issues and serious problems.   And keturah won because of her faith, not so much in the human system of laws, but in the Kingdom of God and His ability to still influence the affairs of men.

   Keturah may have bended at times and she was made to endure things that very few mothers and career women and housewives would ever endure inside the same year.   She was bruised and hurt by the local reporting and the relentless prosecution of something that ended up not having much if any official discovery and therefore evidence ever presented against her.

   She won because she insisted upon her own rights to counsel, right to cross examine evidence, to have the state prove their hot and very damaging allegations against her and the imbalanced local prosecutor's seeming personal agenda in bringing such weakly supported allegations and then sustaining them for months, long after his own assistant had spoken to Keturah's various competent criminal defense attorneys for months, about how weak the case was, and how the case ought to be resolved and done so by either a dismissal and/or low misdemeanor.

   Its happened and she did take a "no contest" plea to a third degree minor misdemeanor non drug charge.   She was NOT requested to take a plea to ANY DRUG charge whatsoever.   She wasn't given any jail sentence and no reporting probation.   She has no more drug testing to perform at all.
  
    And this win, and it is a significant win, is largely based on the complete lack of evidence that the State's case, inside the Harrison County Prosecutor's office had in prosecuting her for most of the entire past year.  And its a material victory for her, despite the local media's constant attention to this case for months, as if it were a major felony drug case.   Yet, when the case was resolved two weeks ago, very strongly and very much in her favor, the local media was not present, and/or either mainly silent and in effect, not so interested any more.  After all, an American citizen who overcomes the most serious kinds of legal threats this nation's local governments can do to any individual, to any of u s citizens, just isn't news anymore, when the citizen wins and basically defeats the local powers that be who have made her withstand a year of hell itself, night and day for over 11 months.

     In our nation anymore, its a total a crap shoot if American citizens can retained their fundamental civil liberties.  Most women in Keturah's position would have given up and given in a very long time ago.  The amazing thing about this case is the person who withstood all that the local prosecutor's and probation officers were willing to sustain for a year against her and do so, with strength, with courage and the kind of self-dedication and personal grit that it takes to stand up against the uneven balance of power that the individual has to face inside of our court system today.   Keturah simply never give in completely to their serious high pressure and coercive tactics, for months, all the while she was undergoing the searing pain of a difficult unwanted personal divorce brought in part against her by a husband who stated repeatedly to her, "I can't be seen with you in public even."

     This is what this young mother and woman who  is an experienced RN has had to endure for the past year.   Now, she is resting in the aftermath of having overcome the serious felony indictment and she is truly the victor.    And its a victory not only for Keturah but for all of us, who believe in the constitutional rights of the accused in this country, a country supposedly based on the right of the accused to enjoy the right of presumption of innocence before being considered and promoted as guilty in the public square by a media that often simply is way to eager to buy every single thing the local police and prosecutors have to say.     This case if anything, stands for the right to confront evidence that the state has brought against the beset individual and where and when it is completely lacking, the Defendant ought to win and/or achieve a significant outcome in their favor and Keturah certainly did.  Her retained counsel often told her they thought they could win at trial and they knew the case was weak against her.  But they all also strongly advised her to forego the rigors of a jury trial and the outside chance that the local jury system would be tainted by all the local negative media coverage that made her out to be less than innocent even though there was scant, if any actual direct evidence that the state ever did produce, even in its 10 month old delay in presenting to her, its discovery....there was so little evidence that the state would be able to present before a Jury,  it was difficult for Keturah to take a plea.  But given she would face no jail, no fines, and most importantly NO DRUG CHARGES WHATSOEVER, she took the minor misdemeanor and got the pressure over with and with this, begin to heal up from what was a ordeal that no one, much less a younger mother and wife going thru a painful time of personal life ought to have had to endure and do so, under our alleged 'best' legal system in the world, with the kinds of constitutional rights it is supposed to be based upon and deliver to the citizens of our nation.

   Its a lesson learned and Keturah is now basically free from the terrible year long personal prosecution she has had to endure risking everything in her life, including her professional and personal life.   She's learned some very important but difficult if not hard lessons about local prosecutors, local legal systems and just how bizarre a local small town criminal justice can become when they wish to create a threat to one's very liberty interest and life and family.

    Its nothing one wishes to ever experience or endure.  She once she has, she will never be quite the same and for this, we hope that by not giving in and not succumbing to the seriously over indictment felony charges and fighting the local powers that best she could, she has not only secured her own liberty interests once again, but in some significant way, she has helped secured all of ours in believing enough in herself and in her cause to not just take whatever dish the local prosecutors and authorities had hoped she would in furtherance of their own agenda and personal and political careers

   The Fifth and Sixth Amendments and the 14th Amendment, written by Cadiz' hometown legendary 19th century congressman and lawyer, John Bingham, guarantee individuals in Keturah's status, this past year, the power of that which all of our Founder fathers fought for and believed in.   Its what men died in World War II for at Normandy and beyond.   Its the very basis of why our own Civil War was fought over;  human freedom and human rights for all, equally.

  It may seem odd to some, but in fact, every time someone is focused upon and indicted in this nation, all of these basic sacred rights are put to the test.    So it was the same inside Keturah's year long felony drug prosecution. 

    It was terrible that she was treated by the local prosecutor and probation office AND THE LOCAL MEDIA FOR THE MOST PART, as guilty before proven innocent repeatedly and she was constantly pressured and threatened with jailing and was in fact, jailed twice by the local officials pre trial for allegedly violating the pre trial court drug testing program.   One major problem with this; THEY NEVER PROVIDED ONCE EVEN ONCE THE EVIDENCE OF HER FAILED TESTS INSIDE THE COURT OF LAW!

   ITs a very troubling day in America when a defendant has to argue for months and stand up and face jail time  for simply wanting the state to present, not prove, just present its evidence against a defendant accused of serious crimes.   When a defendant faces a multiple level felony indictment, one would expect the evidence of her infractions and the discovery that is accompanied to every single criminal case ever brought inside this nation, ought to be reasonably and quickly if not timely provided to the Defendant and her counsel.   This NEVER HAPPEND INSIDE OF KETURAH's case for over 10 MONTHS!

    This is the reason why Keturah's win....and her brining the state's railroad to a pause and finally to a stop against her on January 19th.  She is one very seriously tired individual and she has paid out tens of thousands of dollars to lawyers, just to survive, to fight on and try to get her points across and to finally overcome all of this, this past year.  

    Yet, she has her pride intact and she owns her own reputation once again, despite the heavy media coverage of the state's allegations;   She needs it to be more fully restored now, no doubt.   She has her dignity and with this, she has stood the test and she literally helped all of us, who care deeply about the civil rights and constitutional liberties of our nation.   Watching this from a certain third party distance and yet up close and personal with her at times, it is something else to try to express today, anywhere  to just try to demonstrate and write about what it takes for one individual to assert ones' innocence and those all important constitutional rights before a Court of  Law today in smallville USA, against a few select, highly personally agendized locally powerful local prosecutors and courts.

     Its nothing small to be able to meet them on a field of battle and overcome their tactics and their unsubstantiated allegations.  This has happened and it took everything inside of her to fight this fight

      But now, for her, its the time to heal, a time to rest and for those of us who were near her, and watched having to endure this long night of the soul, we are left to only help watch and admire and help her realize and those watching from within the public who followed this case closely, and thru the media, to realize just how serious a win and overcoming this woman obtained not only for herself, but all of those who oneday just may find themselves unexpectedly in the same position as she did, one year ago this week.

     Its an American narrative and nothing is more important than what she did to overcome this seriously falsely maintained criminal multi level felony prosecution which now is all dismissed and gone forever out of her life in the legal sense.  The experience itself, of being so prosecuted,  however, sadly, will never be.

   She has several things to do and she will get to them in due and reasonable time.   But the war is over, the battlefield is now silent largely and she now is rebuilding her life.   Its a time of gathering stones for Keturah and for some peace and quiet.  Its also time for the government to leave her alone and let an American citizen, a young mom and career woman to get back to what can be called normalcy when things in this nation, are anything but normal given our present weakened constitutional framework within our courts today.