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