If two crusaders succeed, judges will be liable for decisions
Most
days, Ronald Branson and his wife take turns at the computer in the garage
of their San Fernando Valley home, waging war against what they see as a
major failing of their country's court system.
Their Web site,
www.jail4judges.org, blasts the
"arbitrary abuse of the doctrine of judicial immunity." They shoot off
frequent e-mails to rally their troops, like the one last April when
Branson praised a Nightline report called "Blaming the Bench." "We are only
now viewing the beginning of a looming showdown in this nation on this
subject," he typed to his audience, which he says numbers at least 1,000
people.
For a decade, Branson, a prolific pro per, and Gary Zerman, a
Valencia attorney similarly disillusioned with the courts, have sought a
way around the immunity that shields judges from suits over their actions
on the bench.
In the 1990s, they tried to get an initiative on the
California ballot that would have created a special grand jury able to
criminally indict state judges or to strip them of the immunity defense in
civil suits.
"Members of the group are not going to police the group,"
Zerman says. "You have to have outside independent people to make sure
that mechanisms of accountability are there."
But their low-budget
operation ran into a roadblock: It took far too many signatures to get
anything on the ballot in their populous home state.
More recently,
though, things have been looking up for the founders of the JAIL movement,
which now aims to get a foothold for its Judicial Accountability Initiative
Law in any state it can. A feed-machine businessman from South Dakota,
where the population is roughly 1/50 of California's, has enthusiastically
taken up their cause, and is sponsoring a JAIL initiative there. In
December, a petition drive funded by about $140,000 of William Stegmeier's
money gathered enough signatures to put a constitutional amendment on the
November ballot.
Zerman and Branson hope a win in South Dakota will
create enough momentum to propel them into other states. That's also the
concern for lawyers and judges who claim a law like JAIL would be both
infeasible and philosophically dangerous.
Stegmeier's South Dakota
initiative was a topic of conversation among the state chief justices who
gathered last month for a national meeting, said California Chief Justice
Ronald George. While he doesn't seem to be losing sleep over it, he's not
shrugging it off, either. "I don't know that anything like this has
qualified on a state ballot before, so I think that means that it has to be
taken seriously."
Branson is already looking ahead, to other
initiative-friendly states. He'd like to take on Nevada next, but he's not
ruling other places out. If anyone can come up with a million dollars, he
says, JAIL might take another stab at California.
"I'm gambling on
the idea that if we prevail in South Dakota, we'll have the attention of so
many news sources, and so many money sources will come to us," he figures.
"Success breeds success."
GETTING NOWHERE
Branson, who says
he's been a minister since his three-year Army stint in the 1960s, peppers
his speech with analogies. The South Dakota initiative is like a wick
burning toward a barrel of gunpowder, a wrecking ball that will pick up
momentum, the first domino that will topple. When he reminisces about his
battles with the courts, he uses the lottery, or a baseball game, to make
his points.
He has been a pro per, on and off, for about 20 years,
typically in suits against the government, and by his count, he's sued more
than half a dozen judges. He says his legal education began in the early
1980s, when his wife, a legal secretary, lost her job with a district
attorney's office and sued to demand a civil service hearing.
"I've
had 14 trips to the U.S. Supreme Court, and not one time have the courts
addressed any of the issues I raised in those cases," Branson says. His
cert petitions were all denied.
"It would have been an act of insanity
for me to continue seeking redress in the judicial system," he says. "I
said, we've got to do it some way that doesn't include government."
When he met Zerman by chance, he found a collaborator.
They
were both at a speech by then-state Sen. Tom Hayden, when Branson overheard
Zerman complaining to the legislator about the state's Commission on
Judicial Performance.
Branson remembers following Zerman back to his
seat. "I knelt beside him and I said, 'Hello, I'm Ron Branson, and I
understand exactly what you're talking about here,'" Branson says. "He was
getting nowhere as an attorney, I was getting nowhere as a pro se."
Court dockets show that at least 10 cases involving Branson have
reached the Second District Court of Appeal, and at least five petitions
for review have been denied by the California Supreme Court.
The
case that really galled Branson, though, was an unlawful-arrest
suit against the city of Los Angeles, in which he contends a judge
never entered a required default judgment, leaving him no ruling to appeal.
Had a law like the South Dakota JAIL amendment existed in
California, Branson says, once his appeals were exhausted, he could have
complained to a special grand jury that the judge had blocked the lawful
conclusion of his case. If the panel decided his complaint wasn't
frivolous, the judge could have been prohibited from claiming judicial
immunity if Branson sued.
"This is the only thing that's going to
straighten out the politics in this country," Branson declares, before
pausing: "You can tell I get going like a racecar."
While Zerman, a
former insurance defense lawyer, isn't as prone to metaphor, he is equally
passionate in his view that judicial immunity from suits is inherently
unfair. "The rule of law exists for some and not others," he says.
Zerman's first real encounter with judicial immunity was a
malpractice suit, he says, in which he represented a pair of clients suing
two well-known California plaintiff attorneys, the late Melvin Belli of
San Francisco, and Santa Monica's R. Browne Greene.
Zerman says he
got his head handed to him by a judge at trial, and then got "what I
believe was a fraudulent appellate opinion." He eventually sued the trial
judge and appellate panel, but it did no good, he says.
He also tried
filing an accusation of misconduct against the two plaintiff lawyers with
the California Supreme Court, but the justices declined to hear it. Then,
in 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court declined Zerman's petition to review the
California high court's decision.
"In some of these cases when you get
hosed initially and then you start to appeal, the appellate system doesn't
work," he says. "They can't admit that the system is that out-of-whack."
CAMPAIGN MANEUVERS
After his chance meeting with Branson,
Zerman says, "Ron grabbed onto the initiative [idea], and he started
drafting." What the pro per wrote, Zerman and others polished.
They've been trying to sell their vision ever since, though as
salesmen, they can be something of a contrast.
Branson boasts of a
national JAIL organization with military-esque ranks and titles. He calls
himself the National JAIL Commander-in-Chief - similar, he says, to a
five-star general. When he appears at particularly formal events as a
representative, like a conference he attended in Virginia, he wears a blue
suit with five stars on his chest, and five more on the points of his shirt
collar. The ranks below him, he explains, go from
lieutenant-commander-in-chief (the equivalent of a four-star general), to
jailer-in-chiefs (two-star generals) in charge of each state.
Zerman, on the other hand, refers to JAIL as a "loosely knit" group,
and doesn't use his title. When he makes a high-profile appearance on
JAIL's behalf, like he did on CNN a couple of months back, he says, "I
just wear a business suit."
He estimates that he spends about 30
hours a week working on JAIL efforts from his home office or doing
interviews, and suggests his crusade to reform has hurt his civil practice.
"I have a few cases, but you pay a price for doing this," says
Zerman, who is acting as a spokesman for the South Dakota campaign. "I
tell [potential clients], having me as your attorney may be hazardous to
your case, because I've got some judges gunning for me."
And for
all that, he and Branson weren't getting very far. That is, until the
Internet extended the reach of their message.
As best he can recall,
William Stegmeier, whose company outside Sioux Falls makes grinders for
livestock feed, ran across JAIL's Web site and was intrigued enough to
donate $100 or so.
"You know, a lot of patriot organizations,
sometimes they link to each other," Stegmeier said by cell phone from rural
South Dakota. "The name jail4judges does elicit curiosity, no doubt about
that."
It wasn't long, Stegmeier added, before he got an e-mail asking
him if he wanted to be "jailer-in-chief" for the state.
Since then,
he's put up about $140,000 of his own money for a constitutional amendment
based on the California JAIL proposal drafted by Branson. Last month, South
Dakota's secretary of state declared that the amendment had the 33,456
signatures needed to qualify for the November ballot.
Apparently
going for a toned-down image, Stegmeier says he calls his statewide
campaign South Dakota Judicial Accountability. And on the campaign trail,
he's not really using the jail4judges name - "We thought it would be a bit
too strong for rural South Dakota" - nor going by his two-star title.
Surprisingly, the amendment's sponsor says he's never had a problem
with any judge, himself. "I really haven't had much involvement in courts."
He does remember being bothered more than a year ago, though, by a
case in Fort Worth, Texas. The judge, he said, wouldn't allow a defendant to
enter the U.S. Constitution as evidence. "Now, how ridiculous is that?"
"I'm a patriot. I have three young children," he added. "I look at
this as my civic contribution to the country."
CALL IT
YELLOW ALERT Given Branson and Zerman's roots, some judges in
California are keeping tabs on the South Dakota election.
"It is
such a frightening assault on the bedrock principle of an independent
judiciary," says Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Terry Friedman, president of
the California Judges Association.
He's not sure how to evaluate its
chances, he adds. "But I know that many judges are - and I would include
myself - [concerned] that if it were to succeed there, even though it's maybe
a small and distant state, that could give the movement some momentum
elsewhere."
Still, he's not sure whether any of the amendment's
critics in California will get involved in the campaign against the amendment
in South Dakota.
"I don't want to prematurely or unnecessarily build
it up in order to knock it down," Friedman said. "I would rather that it never
got off the ground in the first place."
Tom Barnett, the Executive
Director of the South Dakota Bar, would have preferred JAIL never left its
home turf. "We wish they just would've started out in California and stayed
there."
He has talked with South Dakota judges in passing about the
amendment. "While they were concerned, my recommendation is, you don't
dignify this type of initiative with a response," he says. "You let Main
Street businesses and people involved in civics and [local government] say
this is their fight - because the attack is an attack on Civics 101."
Barnett prefers not to go into too many details about the
counter-offensive, though. "The last thing I want to do," Barnett says, "is to
have Mr. Branson sit out there in California and read what our campaign plan
is."
That will surely disappoint Mr. Branson.
"You ever see one of these fish, they have this extension on their
lip that looks like a worm?" says Branson. The fish he's thinking of,
he explains, hunts by hiding all but that piece of its body, waiting
for another fish gullible enough to try for a nibble.
"They just
can't resist themselves, they have to attack us," Branson says. "And every
time they attack us, they're ruining the element
of surprise."
SIDE STORY: How to
judge a judge A constitutional amendment on the November
ballot in South Dakota threatens to make state judges there more vulnerable
to civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions.
The Judicial
Accountability Initiative Law, which needs a simple majority to pass this
fall, would create a special grand jury with the power to criminally indict a
judge, or to bar him from using the judicial immunity defense in a civil suit.
No one could lodge a criminal accusation with the special jury unless
a prosecutor had declined to file charges. And no one could bring a
civil accusation without having exhausted state court remedies.
After receiving the judge's response to civil allegations, the
13-member special jury would decide by majority vote whether the judge
could claim judicial immunity if the accuser were to sue in civil court.
The amendment specifies that immunity should not be allowed for any deliberate
violation of the law or the state or federal constitution; fraud or
conspiracy; intentional violation of due process; deliberate disregard of
material facts; actions without jurisdiction; or the blocking of the lawful
conclusion of a case.
Judges amassing three adverse immunity decisions
or criminal convictions would be kicked off the bench, with their
retirement benefits cut by at least half.
Critics say the proposal
is unworkable, and a threat to judicial independence.
"Every time
there's a dissatisfied person there'd be a lawsuit," says James Heiting,
president of the State Bar of California.
Larry Mann, a South Dakota
political consultant working against the amendment, also argues that it
would only serve to shift immunity. "It's so broadly written that it
creates this special grand jury [with] almost unrestrained authority to do
almost whatever they want, without any accountability."
But
proponents who have long hoped for such a law in California counter that
the current checks on judges aren't enough.
"Until a judge has become
an open embarrassment to the system, they just won't be prosecuted," said
Californian Ronald Branson, who drafted the template for the JAIL amendment
about 10 years ago.
Gary Zerman, a Valencia solo practitioner who's
worked with Branson to promote such initiatives, likewise expresses
disappointment in the Commission on Judicial Performance. "The CJP just
gives them a public censure and lets them go on like nothing happened."
- Pam Smith
Pam Smith Reporter, The Recorder legal
newspaper Phone: 415.749.5524 Fax: 415.749.5549
[email protected]