Okay, lately I have been going off-topic on various discussions that, though relevant, are probably making it pretty hard to follow the thread of events chronologically. Part of this is because I have, by necessity, had to back up and fill in blanks in my original statement (Another Case of Gov Abuse). Another part is that there are current issues ongoing that need commentary. And of course there are the random thoughts that come to me that I feel compelled to chronicle wile they are fresh in my mind. But this makes the reading of my history more than a little jumbled, and for that I apologize.
However, I hope that one can realize that I am making an effort to keep the ACGA threads in line by numbering each one. I suggest that anyone trying to follow this thread please go back and read the original site, then follow the threads as they are numbered starting on February 26, 2009.
Unfortunately, I find myself out of time at the moment and won't have time to do more than apologize for my ineffectiveness today. It is part of the drawback to having only roughly an hour each day to do all my internet work because I have to use the library's computers. I am trying to get a personal computer or laptop, but I don't see that happening anytime soon. This fight has left me absolutely destitute and I simply do not have resources yet to draw upon to set myself up in even the simplest ways. Basic things like a computer or even a DVD player or VCR are beyond my means.
I remind one and all that I did call for donations on my original sight to assist me with legal defense against the corrupt Montana authorities; but to date, not a single person has stepped forward to aid my efforts. As it stands, I fight this battle alone, both physically and economically. And I could certainly use help, but I begin to feel that there's just no one out there who cares enough to do anything about any of this but me...
At any rate, I hope that anyone reading this will bear with me and my limitations as I try to eventually commit all of my experiences to this blog and beyond...
Ron Glick
Political Prisoner since 2004
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Letter to William Hooks, Appellate Counsel
I wrote the following letter to Mr. William Hooks, esquire, of Helena, Montana. Mr. Hooks is/was my appellate counsel for the criminal prosecution against me. I post this letter publicly to denounce Mr. Hooks as a collaborator in the Great Monspiracy:
Dear Bill,
I must say, I am extremely disappointed by your position in your last letter. I had though, obviously inaccurately, that you were going to be a genuine advocate for me. Yet when a significant issue arises in the last leg of the race, you abandon ship.
I am not your common, uneducated client. I know the law well enough to recognize a genuine, legal foundation. You made the argument that Finley was applicable to my case, as it applied to my being forced to face off against my own attorney in open court both in November, 2004, and May, 2005. The Supreme Court addressed only the secondary hearing in its order and completely ignored the prior hearing that was by far the more extensive violation.
The Court got around the Finley issue with the second hearing only because it determined that a findings of fact and conclusions of law had not been filed in the cause, and thereupon sent the case back for a new hearing and rectifying the absence of counsel by permitting you to represent me. However, this did not address the failings of the first hearing. Not only was the earlier hearing a far more extensive process, with three separate hearing dates and with evidence presented against me by my own counsel, Mr. Falla, but there was a findings and conclusions filed following that hearing. Therefore, the Supreme Court's solution for the May, 2005, hearing does not remedy the problem with the first hearing whatsoever.
Nor does the Court even discuss the earlier hearing or the applicability of Finley to a three day hearing addressing the merits of my ineffective assistance claims against Ed Falla in which Mr. Falla became a third adversarial party to me throughout (beside the district court and prosecutor). Without a doubt, this is an oversight of the Court, and as my counsel, it is your obligation to address this.
And yet, you have decided not to do so. We have had disagreements before when discussing arguments to make before the Supreme Court, particularly your unwillingness to raise vexatious litigation or speedy rights violations when we first discussed strategy for the appeal. I bowed to you on those issues because you were in charge of strategy and you had a reasonable reason not to go beyond five base arguments, which is to say that you informed me that the Court had issued directives stating that any attorney that argued more than five arguments had no faith in any of his arguments and therefore his brief would not be considered. In this instance, you have no rational reason to dismiss filing a motion for reconsideration. You simply have given up.
So the question is - why? After making a halfway decent effort to be my advocate, why in the eleventh hour have you abandoned me? Have you sold me out or is my status as an enemy of the state simply too politically inconvenient for you to continue to represent? Are you afraid to stand up to the Court justices who have demonstrated a blatant disregard of my civil rights so far, to defend me in the face of such overwhelming unpopularity? Mr. Hooks, I could not previously have imagined that you would permit politics to affect your representation. I know you have shown an unwillingness to challenge the status quo, but this is more than just playing within the rules - this is a betrayal of trust, sir. And I believe I am entitled to a fair explanation for your duplicity.
I do not expect one, however. I expect you to remain silent or to simply rebuff what I say. Your integrity, what I had thought was a penchant for the pursuit of justice, is clearly no more than a facade. As I have said, I am extremely disappointed in you. I am sure that means little to you, but it is the truth. Again, not something you seem overly concerned about.
You have left me little choice but to file a motion for reconsideration on my own. I have every expectation that the Court will reject it because you are my counsel of record, being as Montana does not permit pro se filings when a counsel of record exists. But I need to at least make the attempt - after all, you have abandoned me, so my counsel of record is mere pretense at this point in time.
You should know that I will be posting this letter publicly on my blog. You are welcome to comment publicly if you like or ignore it. The link to my blog follows my name below.
I await the copies of the records and transcripts you have promised.
Ron Glick
Political Prisoner since 2004
Dear Bill,
I must say, I am extremely disappointed by your position in your last letter. I had though, obviously inaccurately, that you were going to be a genuine advocate for me. Yet when a significant issue arises in the last leg of the race, you abandon ship.
I am not your common, uneducated client. I know the law well enough to recognize a genuine, legal foundation. You made the argument that Finley was applicable to my case, as it applied to my being forced to face off against my own attorney in open court both in November, 2004, and May, 2005. The Supreme Court addressed only the secondary hearing in its order and completely ignored the prior hearing that was by far the more extensive violation.
The Court got around the Finley issue with the second hearing only because it determined that a findings of fact and conclusions of law had not been filed in the cause, and thereupon sent the case back for a new hearing and rectifying the absence of counsel by permitting you to represent me. However, this did not address the failings of the first hearing. Not only was the earlier hearing a far more extensive process, with three separate hearing dates and with evidence presented against me by my own counsel, Mr. Falla, but there was a findings and conclusions filed following that hearing. Therefore, the Supreme Court's solution for the May, 2005, hearing does not remedy the problem with the first hearing whatsoever.
Nor does the Court even discuss the earlier hearing or the applicability of Finley to a three day hearing addressing the merits of my ineffective assistance claims against Ed Falla in which Mr. Falla became a third adversarial party to me throughout (beside the district court and prosecutor). Without a doubt, this is an oversight of the Court, and as my counsel, it is your obligation to address this.
And yet, you have decided not to do so. We have had disagreements before when discussing arguments to make before the Supreme Court, particularly your unwillingness to raise vexatious litigation or speedy rights violations when we first discussed strategy for the appeal. I bowed to you on those issues because you were in charge of strategy and you had a reasonable reason not to go beyond five base arguments, which is to say that you informed me that the Court had issued directives stating that any attorney that argued more than five arguments had no faith in any of his arguments and therefore his brief would not be considered. In this instance, you have no rational reason to dismiss filing a motion for reconsideration. You simply have given up.
So the question is - why? After making a halfway decent effort to be my advocate, why in the eleventh hour have you abandoned me? Have you sold me out or is my status as an enemy of the state simply too politically inconvenient for you to continue to represent? Are you afraid to stand up to the Court justices who have demonstrated a blatant disregard of my civil rights so far, to defend me in the face of such overwhelming unpopularity? Mr. Hooks, I could not previously have imagined that you would permit politics to affect your representation. I know you have shown an unwillingness to challenge the status quo, but this is more than just playing within the rules - this is a betrayal of trust, sir. And I believe I am entitled to a fair explanation for your duplicity.
I do not expect one, however. I expect you to remain silent or to simply rebuff what I say. Your integrity, what I had thought was a penchant for the pursuit of justice, is clearly no more than a facade. As I have said, I am extremely disappointed in you. I am sure that means little to you, but it is the truth. Again, not something you seem overly concerned about.
You have left me little choice but to file a motion for reconsideration on my own. I have every expectation that the Court will reject it because you are my counsel of record, being as Montana does not permit pro se filings when a counsel of record exists. But I need to at least make the attempt - after all, you have abandoned me, so my counsel of record is mere pretense at this point in time.
You should know that I will be posting this letter publicly on my blog. You are welcome to comment publicly if you like or ignore it. The link to my blog follows my name below.
I await the copies of the records and transcripts you have promised.
Ron Glick
Political Prisoner since 2004
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Unity
First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.
by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945
Friday, March 6, 2009
Enemy of the State
Well, today I heard from my appellate defender, William Hooks out of Helena, MT. He filed my appeal for me over three years ago. And though he didn't make all the arguments I wanted him to, I did feel he made a couple very strong arguments to overturn my conviction. A couple of weeks ago the Montana Supreme Court ruled on my appeal, affirming my conviction and ignoring most of the issues that had been raised in the appeal to do so. And now, Mr. Hooks informs me that he will not be filing a motion for reconsideration because he does not believe they overlooked anything. In a nutshell, Mr. Hooks has apparently sold me out to remain in favor with the powers that be.
Let me talk briefly about only one of the issues that the supreme court failed to review and which Mr. Hooks decided was "not" overlooked. And I mention this one because is, in my humble opinion, the strongest of all the arguments. There is a case called State v. Finley (276 Mont. 126)in which the Montana Supreme Court agreed with prior US Supreme Court precedent that a person is entitled to effective assistance of counsel at all critical stages of his defense, and if that person challenges the effectiveness of his counsel, he is entitled to separate counsel during a hearing to determine the merit of such claims; otherwise, the person is left without representation during a critical stage of his defense. The case says a lot more than that, but that's the gist of it.
One of the many things I was exposed to during my prosecution was an attorney (Ed Falla) who worked very much for the corrupt powers-that-be, and who did everything he could to sabotage my defense and to make evidence that exonerated me unavailable for my defense. And I sought to dismiss him as counsel on several occasions. Two of those occasions resulted in hearings, and at both hearings I was forced to fight my own counsel, alongside the prosecution and the court. Effectively, I was left without counsel and was actually openly opposed by counsel at both hearings.
In September, 2007, the supreme court issued a preliminary order to fix this mistake with the latter of the two hearings, but did nothing to address the previous three day hearing that occurred between November and December, 2004. In the final order issued by the supreme court, it completely ignores this critical issue in order to affirm my conviction. And my own attorney, Mr. Hooks, is cooperating with this blatant disregard of my constitutional rights!
Let's face it - I am an enemy of the state of Montana and so long as I continue to fight these people, I will forever be deprived of all reasonable rights and privileges under the law. I am supposedly a US citizen, so when do I get rights like everyone else?
Ron Glick
Political Prisoner since 2004
Let me talk briefly about only one of the issues that the supreme court failed to review and which Mr. Hooks decided was "not" overlooked. And I mention this one because is, in my humble opinion, the strongest of all the arguments. There is a case called State v. Finley (276 Mont. 126)in which the Montana Supreme Court agreed with prior US Supreme Court precedent that a person is entitled to effective assistance of counsel at all critical stages of his defense, and if that person challenges the effectiveness of his counsel, he is entitled to separate counsel during a hearing to determine the merit of such claims; otherwise, the person is left without representation during a critical stage of his defense. The case says a lot more than that, but that's the gist of it.
One of the many things I was exposed to during my prosecution was an attorney (Ed Falla) who worked very much for the corrupt powers-that-be, and who did everything he could to sabotage my defense and to make evidence that exonerated me unavailable for my defense. And I sought to dismiss him as counsel on several occasions. Two of those occasions resulted in hearings, and at both hearings I was forced to fight my own counsel, alongside the prosecution and the court. Effectively, I was left without counsel and was actually openly opposed by counsel at both hearings.
In September, 2007, the supreme court issued a preliminary order to fix this mistake with the latter of the two hearings, but did nothing to address the previous three day hearing that occurred between November and December, 2004. In the final order issued by the supreme court, it completely ignores this critical issue in order to affirm my conviction. And my own attorney, Mr. Hooks, is cooperating with this blatant disregard of my constitutional rights!
Let's face it - I am an enemy of the state of Montana and so long as I continue to fight these people, I will forever be deprived of all reasonable rights and privileges under the law. I am supposedly a US citizen, so when do I get rights like everyone else?
Ron Glick
Political Prisoner since 2004
Thursday, March 5, 2009
The Affidavit of [*] (ACGA Part IV)
Sorry, I got somewhat distracted yesterday and did not get a chance to finish this thread. It happens...
At any rate, as I attested last time, [*], Carrie Beth Mountjoy and I went into the back office at Arcadia to help prepare what became the Affidavit of [*]. [*] had asked me to help her write up a statement and I had asked Carrie Beth to be present as a witness to confirm that what was typed was what [*] was saying. Of course, later on, [*] lied and said that it was only her and I and that I had typed up the whole thing and forced her to sign it. And even though Carrie Beth had later attested in an interview to the truth, I was never allowed to use this evidence at my trial... That will all come later though.
Basically, the meeting in the back office comprised [*] as the attester, myself as the typist (asking occasional questions for clarification) and Carrie Beth as a largely silent third party. In hindsight, I suppose I should have had Carrie Beth sign the affidavit as a witness, but it simply never occurred to me at that time exactly how far-reaching the corruption in Flathead County, Montana, truly went.
As [*] related her version of events, I placed the content of her statements into affidavit form (I worked as a paralegal for two years in California, so I knew legal format). I separated her individual statements and numbered each paragraph. As I needed to, I asked questions to get the information I wanted (ie, that specifically related to the lawsuit against the [*] - [*] would have had a lot more in the statement that was completely irrelevant otherwise -though again in hindsight, I wish I had included [*]'s opinion that she was frightened of her grandmother, [*]), and when I actually typed anything, I always verified it with [*]. When I finished, I printed out a copy for her to verify before signing. We actually revised the document three times after I printed out hard copies because she saw things she wanted to add or change.
In the end, I believe the document was three pages long (I lost my last remaining copy due to the duplicitous actions of one Tim Harris, who took custody of my legal papers upon my transfer to prison - but that's another tale for another day....). [*] signed it and I sent a copy to the [*] as discovery for the suit.
Of course, the [*] did not accept that at least part of their actions had been exonerated. they were still being sued for breaking into our home to steal [*]'s dishwasher, for breaking the pipes under our house, for tearing down our address sign and other acts of vandalism, not to mention for their efforts to contact anyone and everyone they could to maliciously malign me as a "child molester" (They even called Arcadia's landlord to spread that false accusation!). Instead of accepting this, they instead called Child and Family Services (CFS) and alleged that I had "browbeat and tortured" [*] into signing the statement and made up a new allegation, claiming I had supposedly tickled [*] in her private areas!
Of course, [*] denied this and to this day, [*] has been the one person who has been unwavering in her support of my innocence; Even after [*] was taken from her home, she refused to lie about me, even at the cost of not being allowed to be returned home. Which is an interesting story in and of itself. Remember, [*] was six years old and [*] was thirteen. [*]'s older sister and even her mom, [*], bent to the authorities' whims to help railroad me into a false conviction, yet the youngest of all of them, the one someone would think would be the easiest to manipulate, stuck to her guns and refused to lie for the authorities that had abducted her. In my mind, if there was ever someone deserving of honor and respect throughout all of this, it is little [*]. I could not be more proud of her; I only wish I could tell her...
By the way, I know that CFS tried to convince her to lie about me because she told [*] in a couple of letters that the little genius managed to smuggle to her mom. [*] had a reading coach in school, a teenage girl. [*] convinced this girl to take letters to her mom to let her mom know what was being done to her. There were like two or three letters that [*] got before CFS found out about it and put a stop to it. But then letters, though actually written by the teenage girl, made it very clear what was going on: Kori Taylor, the CFS caseworker, was trying to get [*] to lie about me and [*] refused to do it. [*] made it clear that she was mad at her sister ([*]) because she was willing to say whatever Taylor wanted her to, and [*] desperately wanted to come home, even at the cost of leaving her sister behind. She said she even had her suitcases packed and was ready to go anytime her mom came to get her.
I actually had to talk [*] out of going to get her daughter. Trust me, it was not an easy thing to do, but I knew that with the authority of the district court behind CFS, however unlawfully imposed that authority may have been, if [*] had gone and picked up [*], it would have been considered kidnapping and [*] would have been on the run for the rest of her life. I could not let [*] do that, even if going after her daughters was the ethically right thing to do... Sometimes, it sucks being right....
Well, that's all the time I have for today. I will hopefully be here to type more tomorrow...
Ron Glick
Political Prisoner since 2004
At any rate, as I attested last time, [*], Carrie Beth Mountjoy and I went into the back office at Arcadia to help prepare what became the Affidavit of [*]. [*] had asked me to help her write up a statement and I had asked Carrie Beth to be present as a witness to confirm that what was typed was what [*] was saying. Of course, later on, [*] lied and said that it was only her and I and that I had typed up the whole thing and forced her to sign it. And even though Carrie Beth had later attested in an interview to the truth, I was never allowed to use this evidence at my trial... That will all come later though.
Basically, the meeting in the back office comprised [*] as the attester, myself as the typist (asking occasional questions for clarification) and Carrie Beth as a largely silent third party. In hindsight, I suppose I should have had Carrie Beth sign the affidavit as a witness, but it simply never occurred to me at that time exactly how far-reaching the corruption in Flathead County, Montana, truly went.
As [*] related her version of events, I placed the content of her statements into affidavit form (I worked as a paralegal for two years in California, so I knew legal format). I separated her individual statements and numbered each paragraph. As I needed to, I asked questions to get the information I wanted (ie, that specifically related to the lawsuit against the [*] - [*] would have had a lot more in the statement that was completely irrelevant otherwise -though again in hindsight, I wish I had included [*]'s opinion that she was frightened of her grandmother, [*]), and when I actually typed anything, I always verified it with [*]. When I finished, I printed out a copy for her to verify before signing. We actually revised the document three times after I printed out hard copies because she saw things she wanted to add or change.
In the end, I believe the document was three pages long (I lost my last remaining copy due to the duplicitous actions of one Tim Harris, who took custody of my legal papers upon my transfer to prison - but that's another tale for another day....). [*] signed it and I sent a copy to the [*] as discovery for the suit.
Of course, the [*] did not accept that at least part of their actions had been exonerated. they were still being sued for breaking into our home to steal [*]'s dishwasher, for breaking the pipes under our house, for tearing down our address sign and other acts of vandalism, not to mention for their efforts to contact anyone and everyone they could to maliciously malign me as a "child molester" (They even called Arcadia's landlord to spread that false accusation!). Instead of accepting this, they instead called Child and Family Services (CFS) and alleged that I had "browbeat and tortured" [*] into signing the statement and made up a new allegation, claiming I had supposedly tickled [*] in her private areas!
Of course, [*] denied this and to this day, [*] has been the one person who has been unwavering in her support of my innocence; Even after [*] was taken from her home, she refused to lie about me, even at the cost of not being allowed to be returned home. Which is an interesting story in and of itself. Remember, [*] was six years old and [*] was thirteen. [*]'s older sister and even her mom, [*], bent to the authorities' whims to help railroad me into a false conviction, yet the youngest of all of them, the one someone would think would be the easiest to manipulate, stuck to her guns and refused to lie for the authorities that had abducted her. In my mind, if there was ever someone deserving of honor and respect throughout all of this, it is little [*]. I could not be more proud of her; I only wish I could tell her...
By the way, I know that CFS tried to convince her to lie about me because she told [*] in a couple of letters that the little genius managed to smuggle to her mom. [*] had a reading coach in school, a teenage girl. [*] convinced this girl to take letters to her mom to let her mom know what was being done to her. There were like two or three letters that [*] got before CFS found out about it and put a stop to it. But then letters, though actually written by the teenage girl, made it very clear what was going on: Kori Taylor, the CFS caseworker, was trying to get [*] to lie about me and [*] refused to do it. [*] made it clear that she was mad at her sister ([*]) because she was willing to say whatever Taylor wanted her to, and [*] desperately wanted to come home, even at the cost of leaving her sister behind. She said she even had her suitcases packed and was ready to go anytime her mom came to get her.
I actually had to talk [*] out of going to get her daughter. Trust me, it was not an easy thing to do, but I knew that with the authority of the district court behind CFS, however unlawfully imposed that authority may have been, if [*] had gone and picked up [*], it would have been considered kidnapping and [*] would have been on the run for the rest of her life. I could not let [*] do that, even if going after her daughters was the ethically right thing to do... Sometimes, it sucks being right....
Well, that's all the time I have for today. I will hopefully be here to type more tomorrow...
Ron Glick
Political Prisoner since 2004
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
A Personal Aside
I am going to set aside continuing the topic of [*]'s affidavit for tomorrow. Instead, today I wanted to talk about something more general.
Last night, I was watching Heroes on NBC. Anyone following the show knows that the present storyline basically revolves around Peter's brother, as US Senator, forming an extra-legal organization to capture and contain people with powers, ie, the heroes. But Peter had a line last night that really struck home and I wanted to go off-topic today and talk about this a bit while it was still fresh.
Last night, Peter retrieved a video file that showed government officials taking US citizens, hooded and shackled, into custody without trials. The line that Peter says is something to the effect of, "What would people do if they knew they were abducting US citizens on US soil and holding them without trial?" Of course, that's paraphrased, but it gets across the general message. Ironically enough though, that is almost exactly what is going on in Montana and has been for decades at least!
As I have previously said, anyone who is charged with a crime in Montana immediately loses the first two safeguards of criminal justice: the rights to a grand jury and to challenge probable cause. But it's a bit more complex than that...
Essentially, the way it works in Montana is that any prosecutor can allege a crime was committed, submit that accusation before a judge and have that person arrested without that person even being forewarned that such an allegation has been made. It's the ultimate blindside. If John Doe is not liked by a prosecutor for any reason, all that prosecutor needs to do is submit an application to file an information and have the judge, acting solely upon the prosecutor's sworn statement (though the law actually requires that the statement be "supported by evidence", the courts in Montana consider the affidavit as the evidential requirement), can determine probable cause and have Mr. Doe arrested. After that, since the determination of probable cause has already been made, Mr. Doe does not get a preliminary examination of evidence hearing to challenge probable cause.
Of course, everyone thinks that a person arrested can bond out while waiting for trial. However, this does not happen properly in Montana. The Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution provides for no excessive bonds, which basically means that a person be permitted a bond which they can reasonably pay. Unfortunately, in Montana the entrenched system relies upon keeping accused people in jail and they routinely post excessive bonds upon people accused to keep them incarcerated. And I have personally witnessed the courts in Flathead County actually raise the bond amount if a person actually manages to raise the original bond amount! The idea here is that the system is designed to first deprive a person of his liberty without constitutionally mandated protections and then to keep that person incarcerated indefinitely in order to coerce them into accepting plea deals or to provide the State an exorbitant amount of time to railroad an accused into a conviction.
Take my own experiences. I sued the City of Kalispell and became a political enemy to those in power in local government. When it became clear that they could not really defend against my suit, the powers that be elected to remove me from my own support structure by charging me with a crime that had been previously investigated and dismissed. They filed for an information and got an arrest warrant issued on February 20, 2004, and then sent that warrant to Washington to have me arrested that night in Goldendale. I grand jury was never convened and my later pushes to get one convened were ignored. A week after I was arrested, the State did the same thing to arrest [*], my girlfriend and business partner, and [*]'s mother, upon a fabricated claim of witness tampering.
Keep in mind, [*] never supported [*]'s accusation, except for the brief period following being told by Officer Myron Wilson that I had a "prior record" (which I proved through police and sheriff records to be untrue). She knew her daughter's penchant for lying and knew the background of the allegation well enough to know that [*]'s story did not add up. As such, [*] was a staunch supporter of my innocence and as such I had entrusted all of the original documents that exonerated me into her care when I went to Washington. It never occurred to me that the authorities would go after her or that she would bow to threats if some kind of pressure was exerted. Proves how badly I misjudged [*]...
At any rate, the point here is that the local authorities were able to remove a political enemy and isolate him from his support structure without any constitutional prerequisites. After a week, when it became obvious that I would continue to have support from [*] (all outgoing communications from jail, both phone and post, are monitored and while I was in Washington, they were being conveyed to Kalispell authorities), the authorities trumped up a false charge on her and had her arrested. They released [*] after roughly a week in jail (I have never been able to get exact dates), but she was only released upon the very specific limitations that she would have no contact with me, direct nor indirect, and that she would not provide me any access to my personal or business records or assets. Effectively, the local authorities not only isolated me, but completely severed me from my primary source of external support.
After this, a rumor began circulating that got back to me that anyone who supported me in any way would go to jail, just like [*]. I heard this from Carrie Beth Mountjoy in a phone call shortly after [*]'s arrest, and she said that the person who had started the rumor was James Valentino, a volunteer worker for the youth program, and another volunteer, Joe (whose last name I cannot recall), joined in shortly thereafter. Conveniently enough, both of these "gentlemen" were engaged also in trying to court [*] (according to reports from another friend, both were publicly kissing [*] and being very physically affectionate within Arcadia). Joe, by the way, succeeded and [*] cheated on me with him within a month of my arrest. Irregardless, the rumor was devastating and led to every single person I ever knew turning their back on me - the explanation that was given to me by one such "friend" was that noone could afford to go to jail and lose their jobs and families and such.
After all of this, I ended up sitting sixteen months in jail prior to a trial that was little more than a kangaroo court. The assigned public defender worked for the State, not for me, and refused to challenge any impropriety. And as a result, I was falsely convicted of a crime I did not commit.
The point of all of this is that the threat of US Citizens being arrested on US soil without constitutional protections is already going on. And everyone is ignoring it. So what happens when the public learns of these things? Well, so far, very little - the public either does not care or they simply choose not to believe that any of this is true. But I've lived through it and I can assure you that all of it, and much more, is tragically very, very true...
Benjamin Franklin said, "Let us all hang together, or surely we shall all hang separately." So why is noone else willing to hang with me to oppose this corrupt agency in our midst?
Okay, enough on this - tomorrow I will return to the account of [*]'s affidavit...
Ron Glick
Political Prisoner since 2004
Last night, I was watching Heroes on NBC. Anyone following the show knows that the present storyline basically revolves around Peter's brother, as US Senator, forming an extra-legal organization to capture and contain people with powers, ie, the heroes. But Peter had a line last night that really struck home and I wanted to go off-topic today and talk about this a bit while it was still fresh.
Last night, Peter retrieved a video file that showed government officials taking US citizens, hooded and shackled, into custody without trials. The line that Peter says is something to the effect of, "What would people do if they knew they were abducting US citizens on US soil and holding them without trial?" Of course, that's paraphrased, but it gets across the general message. Ironically enough though, that is almost exactly what is going on in Montana and has been for decades at least!
As I have previously said, anyone who is charged with a crime in Montana immediately loses the first two safeguards of criminal justice: the rights to a grand jury and to challenge probable cause. But it's a bit more complex than that...
Essentially, the way it works in Montana is that any prosecutor can allege a crime was committed, submit that accusation before a judge and have that person arrested without that person even being forewarned that such an allegation has been made. It's the ultimate blindside. If John Doe is not liked by a prosecutor for any reason, all that prosecutor needs to do is submit an application to file an information and have the judge, acting solely upon the prosecutor's sworn statement (though the law actually requires that the statement be "supported by evidence", the courts in Montana consider the affidavit as the evidential requirement), can determine probable cause and have Mr. Doe arrested. After that, since the determination of probable cause has already been made, Mr. Doe does not get a preliminary examination of evidence hearing to challenge probable cause.
Of course, everyone thinks that a person arrested can bond out while waiting for trial. However, this does not happen properly in Montana. The Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution provides for no excessive bonds, which basically means that a person be permitted a bond which they can reasonably pay. Unfortunately, in Montana the entrenched system relies upon keeping accused people in jail and they routinely post excessive bonds upon people accused to keep them incarcerated. And I have personally witnessed the courts in Flathead County actually raise the bond amount if a person actually manages to raise the original bond amount! The idea here is that the system is designed to first deprive a person of his liberty without constitutionally mandated protections and then to keep that person incarcerated indefinitely in order to coerce them into accepting plea deals or to provide the State an exorbitant amount of time to railroad an accused into a conviction.
Take my own experiences. I sued the City of Kalispell and became a political enemy to those in power in local government. When it became clear that they could not really defend against my suit, the powers that be elected to remove me from my own support structure by charging me with a crime that had been previously investigated and dismissed. They filed for an information and got an arrest warrant issued on February 20, 2004, and then sent that warrant to Washington to have me arrested that night in Goldendale. I grand jury was never convened and my later pushes to get one convened were ignored. A week after I was arrested, the State did the same thing to arrest [*], my girlfriend and business partner, and [*]'s mother, upon a fabricated claim of witness tampering.
Keep in mind, [*] never supported [*]'s accusation, except for the brief period following being told by Officer Myron Wilson that I had a "prior record" (which I proved through police and sheriff records to be untrue). She knew her daughter's penchant for lying and knew the background of the allegation well enough to know that [*]'s story did not add up. As such, [*] was a staunch supporter of my innocence and as such I had entrusted all of the original documents that exonerated me into her care when I went to Washington. It never occurred to me that the authorities would go after her or that she would bow to threats if some kind of pressure was exerted. Proves how badly I misjudged [*]...
At any rate, the point here is that the local authorities were able to remove a political enemy and isolate him from his support structure without any constitutional prerequisites. After a week, when it became obvious that I would continue to have support from [*] (all outgoing communications from jail, both phone and post, are monitored and while I was in Washington, they were being conveyed to Kalispell authorities), the authorities trumped up a false charge on her and had her arrested. They released [*] after roughly a week in jail (I have never been able to get exact dates), but she was only released upon the very specific limitations that she would have no contact with me, direct nor indirect, and that she would not provide me any access to my personal or business records or assets. Effectively, the local authorities not only isolated me, but completely severed me from my primary source of external support.
After this, a rumor began circulating that got back to me that anyone who supported me in any way would go to jail, just like [*]. I heard this from Carrie Beth Mountjoy in a phone call shortly after [*]'s arrest, and she said that the person who had started the rumor was James Valentino, a volunteer worker for the youth program, and another volunteer, Joe (whose last name I cannot recall), joined in shortly thereafter. Conveniently enough, both of these "gentlemen" were engaged also in trying to court [*] (according to reports from another friend, both were publicly kissing [*] and being very physically affectionate within Arcadia). Joe, by the way, succeeded and [*] cheated on me with him within a month of my arrest. Irregardless, the rumor was devastating and led to every single person I ever knew turning their back on me - the explanation that was given to me by one such "friend" was that noone could afford to go to jail and lose their jobs and families and such.
After all of this, I ended up sitting sixteen months in jail prior to a trial that was little more than a kangaroo court. The assigned public defender worked for the State, not for me, and refused to challenge any impropriety. And as a result, I was falsely convicted of a crime I did not commit.
The point of all of this is that the threat of US Citizens being arrested on US soil without constitutional protections is already going on. And everyone is ignoring it. So what happens when the public learns of these things? Well, so far, very little - the public either does not care or they simply choose not to believe that any of this is true. But I've lived through it and I can assure you that all of it, and much more, is tragically very, very true...
Benjamin Franklin said, "Let us all hang together, or surely we shall all hang separately." So why is noone else willing to hang with me to oppose this corrupt agency in our midst?
Okay, enough on this - tomorrow I will return to the account of [*]'s affidavit...
Ron Glick
Political Prisoner since 2004
Monday, March 2, 2009
ACGA Continued Part III
First, I apologize for the break in sequence on Saturday's post. I spent my allotted computer time trying to fix the original website and had only a few minutes to upload the content of the corrupted third page before I lost it for good. This is actually a continuation of Friday's post (February 27, 2009), so please read that post in sequence with this one. Not that anyone as yet seems to be reading this blog, but I continue to hold out hope that someone will someday care...
Okay, as I mentioned last time, after [*] began to recount the story to [*], [*] not only recalled the incident but began to fill in details herself that [*] omitted. It became clear that [*] recognized many similarities between what really happened to her when she was little and the alleged incident she had accused me of, including the fact that (oddly enough) that the two couches in question had the exact same pattern!
After the recounting was finished, [*] asked [*] if she had had any personal recollection of the incident before she had begun talking about it, to which [*] said she had not. Then [*] asked [*] if she knew anything about repressed memories, which again [*] said she did not. [*], having personal experience with repressed memories herself from periods of childhood abuse, explained to [*] that a repressed memory occurred when something scary or traumatic happened and one's mind buried the memory as a means of self-defense, and that such a memory usually stayed buried until the mind felt the person was better able to deal with the pain associated with it. However, as [*] personally attested, such memories do not always return in one complete block and often it is easy to confuse an old repressed memory with something that happened recently since one only recently recalls the memory.
[*] then posed to [*] that the two incidents (the one when [*] was three and the one she accused me of when she was thirteen) had many similar details. [*] asked [*] whether there was a possibility that the old memory could have been confused with some recent event, such as lying beside me on the couch being a similar enough incident to dredge up details (if not the full memory) of what [*] had witnessed when she was little.
And [*] immediately responded that the incident with me had not happened. In [*]'s words, it could not have happened because the two memories were identical in every way. Once [*] recalled the full memory of the assault on her mother, she recognized that the memory she had of me doing something like that was a false memory!
Again, keep in mind, this was all after the official investigations had been completed - there was nothing to be gained by getting [*] to "change" her story at that point. In fact, the new version of events completely undermined the lawsuit [*] and I had filed against her parents ([*]) accusing them of coercing [*] to make up a false allegation; if [*]'s accusation was the result of a false memory, then this actually exonerated the[*] of such wrongdoing. So for myself and [*], there was nothing to gain by getting [*] to "change" her story in October, when all official investigations closed in September, and we had a lawsuit pending against [*]'s parents that was completely undermined by this information!
I point this out to demonstrate that neither [*] nor I had any motivation to pursue this issue with [*] other than for [*]'s own benefit. Had [*] said the two incidents were not the same, there would have been no gain nor loss. [*]'s saying they were the same memory actually hurt our position against the[*], in fact. As one who read the original "Another Case of Gov Abuse" will know, this is a significant viewpoint to consider. And yet, that was completely overlooked late on down the line...
Following this conversation with [*] (of which I had only listened), I asked [*] if she would be willing to write up a statement of what she had said to both create a record and to act as testimonial discovery in the suit against [*]'s grandparents. If my memory is correct, this occurred on October 15, 2003. [*] said she would do this, but after three days she still had not done so.
On October 18, 2003 (again, if my memory is correct), I once again asked [*] if she had written up the statement. [*] responded that she did not really know what to write and asked me for help in doing so. I knew better than to sit down alone with [*] to do this (I still had some significant trust issues with [*], after all), and so we waited until later that day when Carrie Beth Mountjoy (a family friend, board member of both the youth program and business, and a shareholder in the business) came into the store. I asked Carrie Beth if she could act as witness for the preparation of this statement, and she agreed. And so the three of us ([*], Carrie Beth and I) went to the back office to prepare the Affidavit of [*].
Okay, running out of time again - hopefully I will be able to write more on this tomorrow...
Ron Glick
Political Prisoner since 2004
Okay, as I mentioned last time, after [*] began to recount the story to [*], [*] not only recalled the incident but began to fill in details herself that [*] omitted. It became clear that [*] recognized many similarities between what really happened to her when she was little and the alleged incident she had accused me of, including the fact that (oddly enough) that the two couches in question had the exact same pattern!
After the recounting was finished, [*] asked [*] if she had had any personal recollection of the incident before she had begun talking about it, to which [*] said she had not. Then [*] asked [*] if she knew anything about repressed memories, which again [*] said she did not. [*], having personal experience with repressed memories herself from periods of childhood abuse, explained to [*] that a repressed memory occurred when something scary or traumatic happened and one's mind buried the memory as a means of self-defense, and that such a memory usually stayed buried until the mind felt the person was better able to deal with the pain associated with it. However, as [*] personally attested, such memories do not always return in one complete block and often it is easy to confuse an old repressed memory with something that happened recently since one only recently recalls the memory.
[*] then posed to [*] that the two incidents (the one when [*] was three and the one she accused me of when she was thirteen) had many similar details. [*] asked [*] whether there was a possibility that the old memory could have been confused with some recent event, such as lying beside me on the couch being a similar enough incident to dredge up details (if not the full memory) of what [*] had witnessed when she was little.
And [*] immediately responded that the incident with me had not happened. In [*]'s words, it could not have happened because the two memories were identical in every way. Once [*] recalled the full memory of the assault on her mother, she recognized that the memory she had of me doing something like that was a false memory!
Again, keep in mind, this was all after the official investigations had been completed - there was nothing to be gained by getting [*] to "change" her story at that point. In fact, the new version of events completely undermined the lawsuit [*] and I had filed against her parents ([*]) accusing them of coercing [*] to make up a false allegation; if [*]'s accusation was the result of a false memory, then this actually exonerated the[*] of such wrongdoing. So for myself and [*], there was nothing to gain by getting [*] to "change" her story in October, when all official investigations closed in September, and we had a lawsuit pending against [*]'s parents that was completely undermined by this information!
I point this out to demonstrate that neither [*] nor I had any motivation to pursue this issue with [*] other than for [*]'s own benefit. Had [*] said the two incidents were not the same, there would have been no gain nor loss. [*]'s saying they were the same memory actually hurt our position against the[*], in fact. As one who read the original "Another Case of Gov Abuse" will know, this is a significant viewpoint to consider. And yet, that was completely overlooked late on down the line...
Following this conversation with [*] (of which I had only listened), I asked [*] if she would be willing to write up a statement of what she had said to both create a record and to act as testimonial discovery in the suit against [*]'s grandparents. If my memory is correct, this occurred on October 15, 2003. [*] said she would do this, but after three days she still had not done so.
On October 18, 2003 (again, if my memory is correct), I once again asked [*] if she had written up the statement. [*] responded that she did not really know what to write and asked me for help in doing so. I knew better than to sit down alone with [*] to do this (I still had some significant trust issues with [*], after all), and so we waited until later that day when Carrie Beth Mountjoy (a family friend, board member of both the youth program and business, and a shareholder in the business) came into the store. I asked Carrie Beth if she could act as witness for the preparation of this statement, and she agreed. And so the three of us ([*], Carrie Beth and I) went to the back office to prepare the Affidavit of [*].
Okay, running out of time again - hopefully I will be able to write more on this tomorrow...
Ron Glick
Political Prisoner since 2004
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