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By Sal Osio, JD

From the Publisher's Corner,

September 25, 2009

Mi Punto de Vista

When the Judges Are Also the Prosecutors

By Sal Osio, JD

Assume for this purpose that you are a rabid USC Trojan fan, like I am, and that our team is playing its perennial rival, the Irish of Notre Dame. Now assume that the referee is a former coach of Notre Dame and that his calls are one sided and biased in favor of the Irish - for instance an obvious incomplete pass is called a touchdown - so much so that USC loses what otherwise should have been a fair and competitive game on the gridiron. What would your reaction be? Trojan fans would be furious. They would call for an investigation. The media would make the event the top story in the nation for the entire football season, and thereafter, would make reference to the ‘dishonestly officiated’ game. Indeed, the whole nation would jump in and condemn the officiating and the outcome, demanding a replay with honest officials.

It’s ironic that our reaction is as above described when dishonest officiating takes place in an athletic contest. And yet, on a more important scale, one involving our civil liberties, truth and justice we don’t even care when judicial officiating is one sided and dishonest – in favor of conviction, in favor of the prosecution.

Our founding fathers were most concerned for the protection of our civil liberties and against the oppression of the government. For this reason they enacted the Constitution with an inherent check and balance system: The separation of powers among the Executive, Legislative and Judicial bodies of our government. In our criminal justice system the executive branch is represented by the arresting law officer, the prosecutor (typically the U.S. or State Attorney General, the County District Attorney or the City Attorney). The Referee is the Judge. His role is to assure fairness and justice, the protection of the constitutional rights of the accused. In substance, the role of the judge is very much like the one of the referee in a sporting contest. But what happens when the judge is a co-prosecutor? What happens when the judge is a former prosecutor such as a referee who is a former coach of the opposition? Clearly, with rare exceptions, the defendant loses. He is convicted.

Regrettably, our trusting, fair minded but uninterested fellow Americans live their lives oblivious to the injustice in our justice system. The vast majority of the nation’s criminal court trial judges are former prosecutors – former coaches of the opposition. The abuse of the arrest power by law enforcement is legion. The overzealousness of prosecutors, including the commission of misconduct such as suborning perjury, manufacturing and concealing evidence, is a common practice, an integral culture of misconduct. But, when the ‘defender’ of our rights, the ‘fair and impartial’ judge  joins this unholy alliance the result is a travesty of justice and a fundamental violation of the very constitutional rights sought to be protected by the separation of powers. The creation of a check to the abuses of power by the executive (the Monarch in the English Common Law) was the key concern of our founders.

The fact that Americans are criminalized, arrested, convicted and detained in a scale of 7 to 1 over the rest of the world, is no accident. We have evolved into a system of injustice wherein the executive and the judiciary, at the trial level, are on the same team. The deck is stacked against the accused who, hypocritically, is deemed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

Allow me to point you to selected Web sites that document the hundreds of abuses in our criminal justice system:  www.OpedNews.com; www.forjustice.org; and www.justicedenied.org. There are dozens of online references that highlight the injustice in our criminal justice system (Search engine: “Injustice in Criminal Justice.”)

I would like to share with you one of the most egregious abuses of the criminal justice system by a judge. The victim, Gary V. Dubin, a renowned attorney and scholar, is a very close personal friend, dating back to our high school days at LAHS. What happened to him is chronicled in the L.A. Times article authored by Carol J. Williams on  August  16, 2009, entitled “Critics Want to Bench Judge Manuel L. Real.” (www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-judge-real16-2009aug16,0,1352114.story). U.S. District Court Judge Manuel Real (he changed his Hispanic surname pronunciation to ‘reel’), a notorious tyrant sitting on the bench, for life, in complicity with the prosecutor, dragged Gary out of his hospital bed where he was in medication for depression ensuing from the loss of his son, and without the benefit of his records or independent representation, held Gary in detention during a two day bench trial and summarily found him guilty and sentenced him to prison. Gary’s alleged crime was a failure to file tax returns wherein he had no tax liability and was not obligated to file. In addition to a fine exceeding $100,000 Gary served time in a Federal prison for over 19 months. The IRS apologized over their mistake and exonerated Gary subsequently. But how can anyone restore an unblemished reputation and loss of liberty? And, did Judge Real apologize for is persecution? Did the U.S. prosecutor? Of course not. For more detailed discussion of Judge Real’s flagrant conduct and Gary’s subsequent vindication you may want to visit the American Bar Association on his subject (copy & paste): http://74.125.155.132/search?source=gp&uipref=6&channel=gp1&og=gp&q=cache%3AclFjOm5wbYkJ%3Awww.abajournal.com%2Fmagazine%2Freal_trouble%2F

Judge Real is a former prosecutor. He still is and will always be a prosecutor, not a fair and impartial judge. This is his DNA. The miscarriages of justice which he has caused and over which he has presided are so flagrant and numerous that they are almost unbelievable. And yet, he continues at age 85 to wreak his vengeance on innocent defendants that are assigned to his court. Why has he not been impeached, sanctioned and removed from his position? Simply because there is a brotherhood among judges wherein they protect each other’s behind. It’s that simple. It’s sad that in America we have the unholy alliance of the executive and the judiciary. The result: Injustice in our Criminal Justice System.

         Sadly, America is digressing into a police state. All Americans better wake up from their slumber before it is too late.

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         Sal Osio, JD is the Publisher of HispanicVista.com. Contact at SPOsio@aol.com