Sticks & Stones

Sticks and Stones

©2013  Ross Williams

“It’s dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”
- Voltiare

James D Humphrey.

Get a good look.  This is the picture of a corrupt dictator, a tyrant, ... a criminal and a child abuser.

Yes, that’s a judicial robe he’s wearing.  Yes, that is [ironically] the American flag he sits before.  I’m somewhat surprised that his skin hasn’t begun sizzling from his proximity to it.

Mr Humphrey sits as a judge in Lawrenceburg IN, just outside the interstate beltway around Cincinnati OH and a whoop and a holler from the boonies of KY.  He apparently picked up everything he learned about the law and the US legal system from Mein Kampf.

In the course of Mr Humphrey pretending to be a judge, he hears divorces.  In the course of him hearing divorces, he sanctions improcedural nonsense to include taking expert testimony from those not allowed to provide expert testimony in the state of Indiana, and prohibiting the sharing of discovery.  He either seems to be unaware or unconcerned that he is required, as a judge, to treat all divorce litigants before him as equals, and give them equal consideration, unless and until there is sufficient cause to not do so.  As a judge, he is strictly forbidden to indulge hearsay provided by others, and is not allowed to brownbag his own.

Finally, as a judge he is absolutely required to grant all litigants their full slate of civil rights.

Civil rights include the right to call ass hats who studied law under Stalin and later graduated to a black robe criminals and child abusers.  Whether they are or not.  It’s pretty much guaranteed that a judge in a divorce, though, is those things.  And more.

There’s a gentleman in the Indiana state prison system convicted of “intimidating” a judge – this judge.  By blogging.  Blogging also constitutes, somehow, “obstruction of justice”.

Among the statements made on that Repository of All Truth and Veracity which is the internet is that Mr Humphrey is a criminal; he is a child abuser; he is corrupt; and he engaged in unethical and illegal behavior regarding this divorce.

Aren’t they all and don’t they all?

The answer, naturally, is yes they are and yes they do.  That is the nature of divorce in our country.  ...our free country, where all citizens are required to be treated the same until they prove they cannot be trusted with the consequences.  In divorce, where the primary issue is simply that two people have stopped liking each other anymore, there is no allowable assumption of distrust that can – or should – be found acceptable by the government to excuse giving one litigant preferential treatment.  None.

Any official distrust must be earned.  Certain actions which do permit official distrust to sufficiently justify treating two divorce litigants manifestly differently are physical child or spousal abuse ... abuse which has been proven to a degree sufficient to satisfy a criminal court.  Allegations with only circumstantial evidence behind them, and even those without evidence of any sort, are all too common in American divorce courts, and are all too commonly swallowed whole by idiot divorce judges.

Any judge who would not require some manner of corroboration for the accusations he allows to be made in his courtroom and upon which he will, in whole or in part, base his rulings has a very imperious notion of his place in the legal landscape.  He believes he can listen to what he wants, silence what he doesn’t want to hear, and in the end he gets to render decisions which satisfy him and not the presumptions of limitation of authority our government has over free citizens.  This is the very definition of corruption, not to mention unethical and illegal behavior on the part of a judge.

This judge, Mr James D Humphrey, allowed – hand-picked, even – a custody evaluator, Edward Connor, who is licensed only in the state of Kentucky and not in Indiana, to conduct a custody evaluation of a divorcing couple.  The man, father of two girls from the marriage being dissolved, had no attorney and was acting pro se.  The father is entitled to all discovery materials which would include, here, not simply the final report from the custody evaluation, but all notes and rough drafts as well.

He was denied access to that material.  This, also, is the very definition of corruption, as well as unethical and illegal behavior on the part of the judge.

While the divorce was pending, the father – whom I am leaving nameless for the moment because his name could be, almost literally, any of a few million men at this point in the narrative –  ...the father was given access to his children 3 days a week.  Three days out of seven temporary custody arrangements.

It had been a different judge which assigned this.

Three days out of seven, if they are full days and not simply an evening or a weekend which both bring with them artificial parenting constraints, is called joint physical custody and it is all the rage among those who know that standard preferential divorce adjudication brings with it a whole host of psychological traumas inflicting themselves upon children.  There are justifications, of course, for awarding sole physical custody with visitation for the noncustodial, but they are pretty much limited to the physical abuse mentioned above, the non-custodial’s own preference to not have equal time, and certain types of work schedules – military deployment, for example.  And when it comes to those work schedules, when the schedule gets normalized, any excuse for not, then, granting joint physical custody betrays a gross non-comprehension of the principles of our legal system.

The bottom line is that children, even children of divorce, who are raised by two parents in virtually equal amount fare significantly better in all – not in a few, not in some, not even in most – ALL studies of the effects of divorce on children where the two parents were

1] not provably physically abusive; and

2] willing to take on the assignment.

ALL.

Across ALL measures of potential childhood social pathology.

ALL.

This holds true even in cases where the one parent – most notably the mother – was against the other [i.e., father] having equal time.  The children fared better in long-range studies even then.

The notion that sole physical custody is “in the best interests of the child” was born out of the false notion that court cases must have a clear loser, and the political preferment that certain demographic groups enjoy in this day and age when it comes to divorce litigation.

There is virtually no excuse for reducing around 90% of America’s divorces to a custodial mother, and a father who is seen by The System® as little more than a live-action ATM, and by his children as less important than an uncle or – let’s face it – any random male Mom picked up off the street.  Provable physical abuse is thankfully rare; as is, since the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, the unwilling father.

Let me be clear: These winner-take-all solutions should not be de rigueur in divorce.  There’s a whole raft of other social issues and realities swirling around the subject of children born out of wedlock that this is neither the time nor place to address.  But in divorce? Routine sole custody is the fallback position of the legal dinosaur.

Or, in other words, it is, in and of itself, sufficient evidence to support a claim that the judge so ordering is corrupt and engages in unethical and illegal behaviors.

Any judge who would – knowingly or otherwise – subject the children of parents whose sole legal claim is that they no longer like each other to an entire litany of social pathologies which are sometimes preventable when they are not drastically mitigated, by ordering sole custody when there is no need, is abusive of those children.  To explain it all away as “the best interests of the child” is to advertise that the judge making that claim has all the integrity of a white-slaver.

In the case in question, the final custody evaluation report made not one mention of physical abuse of a spouse or the children, nor contained any of the other typical red-flags: drug or alcohol addiction, or verifiable “neglect”.  None.  About either parent.

Yet Mr James D Humphrey, “judge”, gave the mother sole physical custody and reduced the father’s access to his own children – commonly, and offensively, called “visitation” – to zero.

It was at this point that the father took to the internet, calling the judge a criminal and child abuser, corrupt, and engaging in unethical and illegal behaviors.  ...but not so refined as I just did.  And, waddaya know?  The guy is right.

Which led Mr James D Humphrey, “judge”, to quiver his chin and get all misty-eyed because someone – to quote the prosecutor’s charges in this charade – exposed the judge to public “hatred, contempt, disgrace or ridicule”.  Humphrey asked the county prosecutor, Aaron Negangard, to prosecute and – lackey that he is – Negangard did.  By all accounts, the kangaroos were out in force for the proceedings.

[N.B.: the charge of, and conviction for, perjury was apparently predicated on an incomplete statement Brewington made under oath where he was interrupted by the prosecutor himself and not permitted to complete his statement.  As I said, the kangaroos were out in force.]

The father also laid into the “judge’s” wife as well as the good doctor practicing in Indiana without a license; the doctor was called a “pervert” for his predilection for asking women – but not men – sexually provocative questions during the course of his custody “evaluation”.  Interestingly, the charges of similarly intimidating Mr Humphrey’s wife and the doctor were either not prosecuted or resulted in no conviction.

The father ended up being convicted of 5 of 6 counts against him, by a jury that was told it could not take into account a free citizen’s right to say what he wants in defiance of the government which rules over him.

This father, Dan Brewington, sits in Indiana state prison for petitioning the government for a redress of his grievances over the government’s complete lack of comprehension of its duties and obligations to the free people it claims to serve.  Unless the Indiana Supreme Court does what IT is required to do now – nullify the conviction and pillory Mr Humphrey – Brewington will be there for 5 years from last July, with possible early release later this year.

There are, naturally, quite a number of individuals and organizations on Brewington’s side in this ... like, all of them.  This cuts across all political stripes and even most demographics.  But the folks who are filing amicus curiae briefs are busy genuflecting in the direction of the same type of autocrat that Mr Humphrey has shown himself to be: they are dismissing Brewington’s internet rants as completely “figurative”, “hyperbolic” and “opinion”, thus granting him the ability to inelegantly say what he wants about the judge who deserves every inch of it.

That is grade-A prime, loyyerly cowardice.  Brewington – incoherence aside – was completely accurate in the statements he made about Mr Humphrey which were prosecuted as “intimidation”.  Thoroughly.  Wholly.  Without factual or analytical error.  ...incoherence aside.

It is simply that no one in our legal system cares to acknowledge their individual part in giving a wink and a nod to the petty tyrants of divorce judges who do what they want, legal principles be damned.

Without a substantial finding of gross unfitness [and very little else], there is no legal reason, sustainable by the principle of Equal Treatment Under the Law, for granting one parent who simply dislikes another a grossly disproportionate amount of time with the children she shares with him.  There is, further, no scientific reason for doing it, either.

The reason it’s done is because the judge simply does it that way, carrying into the courtroom his opinion, his bias, his prejudice ... unverified by any evidence or testimony, whatsoever.  The judge serenely falls back onto hearsay, supplied by none other than himself; he listens to those who corroborate his prejudice, he silences all who challenge his prejudice.  If they won’t go away quietly, as Dan Brewington did not, he has them sent to prison.

For daring to be correct.  In public.

Here’s a hint, Mr Humphrey: if you don’t want to be exposed to public “hatred, contempt, disgrace or ridicule”, then stop inviting it.