!! RICHARD FINE FREED !! Right Trumps Might ... Again !

In a stunning new development, whistle-blowing attorney Richard I. Fine was released from Men's Central Jail late last evening (Sept. 17th) by L.A. Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffe, whom Fine had forced to reveal had perpetuated fraud on the court in continually trying to defend himself by relying on what turned out to be a non-existent court order.

Full Disclosure Network, headed by tireless Emmy winner Leslie Dutton (and aided by the equally indefatigable T.J. Johnston), was first (as usual) to learn of Fine's impending release.  Although Fine was the sole author of all legal briefs filed in his case, his freedom could never have been obtained without Full Disclosure's regular and relentless exposure of the corruption as each element was uncovered.  California citizens ... indeed all Americans ... owe a huge debt of gratitude for Full Disclosure's determination.  (UPDATE:  View Dr. Fine's first post-incarceration video interview HERE.)

Judge Yaffe announced his "retirement", effective November 1st, after Fine's legal maneuvering forced him to reveal his false statements made to numerous courts over the past three years as he scrambled to hide his corrupt acts which furthered the illegal activities of a local developer, aided by L.A. County Supervisors Michael D. Antonovich and Don Knabe.  But rather than disappear into obscurity as a result of the shame he brought upon himself, his family, and California's judiciary, Yaffe is instead rumored to be planning to immediately return to the bench as a retired assigned judge, positions staffed by the Administrative Office of the Courts ... an entity so rife with corruption the Legislature was recently compelled to pass a bill protecting whistle-blowers whose complaints had repeatedly been thwarted by the AOC (headed by, surprise, Chief Justice Ronald M. George, who was also recently forced to "retire" as allegations of his own corrupt acts began to snowball).  Judge Yaffe should instead experience the future he so richly deserves: he should be forced to swap places with Dr. Fine:

Dr. Fine, understandably exuberant following his triumph, will spend the weekend re-acclimating himself to freedom and the comforts of home and family.  The specifics of implementing his next move to continue the clean-up of California's shady judicial system are still to be determined.

Dr. Fine would like to send a big THANK YOU to all of you who donated (time and/or money) to this cause.  Without YOUR help, it would never have been possible.  Pat yourselves on the back for helping save America's future.  Thanks are also due to Troy Anderson of L.A.'s Metropolitan News-Enterprise and other reporters who saw the truth and reported it ... unlike the crooks' protectors at the Los Angeles Times, who should be ASHAMED of themselves for failing so miserably at their jobs!

UPDATE:  Full Disclosure Network reveals Yaffe's true intent in jailing Dr. Fine:

“By keeping him incarcerated for 18 months, the court has deterred others from defying its orders to the extent that it is possible to do so given the facts of this case.”  Judge David P. Yaffe

So now we know the truth, from Yaffe's own lips.  It was to intimidate any other attorney who may be considering fighting void orders created to protect and further judicial corruption.

UPDATE:  Ron Kaye, former editor of the Los Angeles Daily News, calls out Yaffe on his hypocrisy:

"Why it took Yaffe 18 months to determine Fine's confinement does not serve 'any useful purpose' is hard to understand unless you know the judge is regarded by attorneys who have appeared before him as erratic and often irrational in his decisions."

"So I guess if Yaffe resorted in the end to self-justification by calling Fine crazy, it's something he knows about -- if only a juvenile name-calling excuse."

"Maybe Fine is crazy, maybe everybody who fights for what they believe in is crazy."

"That's certainly the viewpoint of every repressive regime and of every oppressor in modern history. That's why they use gulags, and prisons for the politically incorrect."

"The legal standard for coercive confinement in a contempt of court case is five days in jail, after which it is presumed the incarcerated will not back down. Yaffe exceeded that by [526] days."

"There was never any question Fine would break. His whole life is marked by an obsessive passion for doing what he believe is right, fighting against illegal taxation and official abuses."

"As Yaffe knows, the legal standard for insanity is knowing the difference between right and wrong. The question which deserves a proper judicial inquiry is whether Yaffe -- not Fine -- can tell the difference."

Very insightful, Mr. Kaye!  You're spot on.

Still, despite all of Yaffe's faults, let us all remember that he was NOT the author of the illegal payment scheme.  The blame for that rests solely with Mike Antonovich and Ronald George.

David P. Yaffe -- When Did Being "Honorable" Stop Being A Requirement For Being A Judge?

REPOST of Sept. 11, 2009 entry:

There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

Judge David P. Yaffe apparently has no fans ... in fact, he seems to be utterly reviled. Little wonder he's failed to act with any shred of honor in refusing to disqualify himself from judging cases in which LA County is a party while simultaneously receiving illegal payments from the County. (Given that LA County no longer loses lawsuits filed against it when decided by its judges, many are now recognizing that the "payments" are, in fact, "bribes".)

For example, on May 22, 2001, journalist Roger M. Grace of the Metropolitan News-Enterprise, reported with refreshing honesty:

"I can’t stand him. ... From what I’ve observed, Yaffe does, to his credit, read the briefs. And he has a substantial quantum of law memorized. To his discredit, however, he’s a nasty and arrogant SOB."

"Chief among the quirks is that he indulges in a fantasy of infallibility. He decides cases on bases not advanced by the parties, but conjured up by himself, and does not permit an opportunity to brief the propositions he’s interjected. After all, a proposition spawned by David P. Yaffe could not possibly be wrong."

"My negative perception of this jurist, I have found, is shared by others. If I bring up the topic of David Yaffe in conversations, I hear comments such as 'he’s crazy' and 'he’s a contrarian son of a bitch.' (Each of the persons so labeling Yaffe is a leading practitioner.) A Superior Court judge told me he avoided talking with Yaffe at a judges’ event, saying, 'I would have puked all over him.'"

In responding to Mr. Grace's questionnaire concerning Judge Yaffe, lawyers had these things to say:

A lawyer who says she appeared in Yaffe’s courtroom two or three times when he was in a trial department comments: "I never really had a pleasant experience with him," explaining: "I found him to be rude."

She notes that he "seemed to be consistent" — that is, consistently rude. It wasn’t like he was having a bad day," the attorney says. She recounts: "My reaction was: why is this guy a judge if he hates lawyers?"

If the presiding judge asked her opinion as to whether Yaffe should be returned to a trial department, she says, "I would recommend against it." Where does he belong? "Retired," she responds.

(In a letter last year to then-Presiding Judge Victor Chavez, I made a somewhat different suggestion: "The reassignment of Yaffe to some other court would be in the public’s interest. [¶] I believe he should be in Department 95. That, of course, has nothing to do with where he should preside.")

Another lawyer recounts:

"I served on a committee with him that revised the local rules in ’94, ’95. He was very jealous of judicial prerogatives.

"The goal of the committee was to make the rules uniform. ... We were trying to abolish the secret rules, the rules on the clipboard."

That goal, he observes, was not shared by Yaffe.

MUCH more at link.

On another site, Courthouse Forum, the following comment about Judge Yaffe was lodged:

The horror stories related by [Roger] Grace in 2001 are mild compared to the manner in which Yaffe has degenerated. In my experience, he has a fascist mentality and a sadist's heart.

In one case, the City denied the existence of a hearing audio tape that was central to the case. The city submitted false declarations under penalty of perjury about the tape's not existing. Petitioner insisted that it saw the meeting being recorded. Two days after Yaffe's adverse ruling, the hearing officer was caught trying to slip the "non-existent" tape back into the achieves. Within the required 10 days, Petitioner brought the tape to Judge Yaffe's attention, reminding him of the prior false representations that the tape did not exist. Rather than hear the Reconsideration Motion, Judge Yaffe promptly dismissed the entire case and refused to even hold a hearing on the perjury and withholding of evidence.

Yaffe acts more like a mob hit man than a jurist. While I doubt he actually kills people ... his job is to kill lawsuits that harm the special interests, primarily developers. The mob analogy is not out of line. The entire superior court system is run more akin to a mob operation than a system of justice.

Lawyers do not have to fear only retaliation from vindictive judges like Yaffe, but from a host of other judges. This systemic corruption of the California judiciary places attorneys ... in a double bind: When they are silent, they endanger the public by allowing men like Yaffe to remain on the bench, but if they speak up, they endanger their other clients to which they owe fiduciary duties.

More observations about Yaffe here.

David Yaffe swore an oath to defend the Constitution.  He must be held fully accountable for violating it.

"The Flaying Of The Corrupt Judge Sisamnes"

UPDATE:  Richard Fine files Notice of Farr Hearing, set for Wednesday, May 26th at 9:30 am, Judge Yaffe's courtroom (Dept. 86) LA Superior Court.  (Dr. Fine's incarceration for "contempt of court" should have been limited to five days under the Farr Doctrine.)


UPDATE:  Yaffe repeatedly refuses to hold Farr Hearings, taking the filing fees but not holding hearings.


UPDATE:  See results of "RateTheCourts.com" concerning Yaffe.  It seems he earned solid "F"s across the board, even from staff, from those who've encountered him.  The most telling one was this:  

"I was called as a witness on a case before Judge Yaffe. Earlier, I was having dinner in a restaurant and was sitting near Judge Yaffe and I heard him discuss details of the case with attorneys representing a government entity. It looked like the dinner tab was picked up by the attorneys. Later, I saw the same attorneys in court when I was called to appear in court. The Judge did not remember me. I think it was because my presence was out of context. I feared that he would recognize me nad he would get start screaming mad like he has done in the past. I felt "FREE" once I left the court building. I never thought our court system was this crooked. It looks to me that it is NEVER about the law, but always about WHO one knows (Judge Yaffe)."

Credits:

1498-1499
Oil on panel
Bruges, Groenige Museum
http://www.aiwaz.net/gallery/flaying-of-the-corrupt-judge-sisamnes/gi637c101

Image credit: "There was a crooked man ..."
Scott Gustafson
http://www.scottgustafson.com/Gallery_DR_NR_CM.html

"Robert Kennedy speaks out against Retroactive Immunity"

REPOST of Aug 18, 2009 entry: 

Oct 21, 2007, article by Glenn Greenwald at Salon Magazine:

The very idea of "retroactive immunity" ... is so radical, so repugnant to the most basic principles of the "rule of law," that only one prior attempt can be found in recent history (at least from my research): the efforts by some in Congress in 1965 to enact a law retroactively legalizing the mergers by six large banks which clearly -- as a federal court found -- were illegal under our nation's antitrust laws.

The banks knew when they merged that they were almost certainly violating anti-trust laws. But they did it anyway. And when courts began ruling that their behavior was illegal, they ran to Congress to demand that a law be passed granting them amnesty, claiming that the consequences would be ruinous if they were held accountable under the law.

But the very concept of retroactive amnesty -- the idea that corporations could break the law and then have Congress pass a special law legalizing their lawbreaking conduct -- was so profoundly offensive to Sen. Robert Kennedy (who had been the Attorney General when the banks broke the law with their mergers), as well as then-Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, that they engaged in extraordinary efforts to try to put a stop to this Congressional travesty:

Review the rest of this "Salon" article here.

Ronald George co-authored Senate Bill SBX2-11, effectively granting himself retroactive immunity from criminal prosecution (for now) for his crimes related to the payment scheme.  If that's not the absolute height of arrogance, then what is?

Formal Demand for Grand Jury Investigations Submitted to Prosecutors

Now that Judge David P. Yaffe has been caught on the record lying to higher courts, the probable reason for his recent "retirement", taxpayers' advocate attorney Dr. Richard I. Fine (himself a former prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C.) has made a formal demand upon several prosecutors for the immediate convening of grand juries to investigate the corruption rampant within California's judicial system which rewards crooked judges for approving illegal real estate development projects, among other dastardly deeds.

Review the full text of Dr. Fine's demand letter, which provides a full outline of his legal battles as the corrupt have tried to break him, here.

Will those in authority give the public a response better than the following this time around?

UPDATE:  Marketing reports inform us that almost 65 MILLION people are aware of this story ... in the United States alone! WOW!  (And what's up with the Moscow readership?)  A high percentage of readers seems to be members of the financial community, Wall Street and Main Street. We can't help but wonder what business decisions are made concerning beginning or continuing to do business in such an odiously corrupt environment. Our bet is that jobs by the tens of thousands are being relocated as we speak. Whom should we thank first? Top cop Jerry Brown? Top judge Ronald George? Supervisor Mike Antonovich? Senator Darrell Steinberg? District Attorney Steve Cooley?  Presiding Judge Charles McCoy? .... If anyone were to put together a list of the Ten Most Wanted Public Enemies, these folks would top the list today.

SOMEONE had better round them up soon before they manage to steal ALL our money.  That's truly what they want, and there's little time left to stop them before it's too late.

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