HOME  DISINFORMATION  PEOPLE  RAMBAM  KLAUSNER  DUNN  KUHL  DUKES  L.A. JUSTICE
Relevance of Rampart Scandal to Rambam v Prytulak
"CORRUPTION:  The act of an official or fiduciary person who unlawfully and wrongfully uses his station or character to procure some benefit for himself or for another person, contrary to duty and the rights of others." � Black's Law Dictionary
Is LASC Reform Motivated by
Insight-Courage-Contrition
or by
Self-Preservation?

(The following quotation was added to this page on 14-Dec-2002)
Former LAPD officer-turned-informant Rafael Perez, the scandal's central figure, says he and his colleagues planted illegal guns and drugs on suspects and, in at least one case, deliberately shot a gang member, then framed him for trying to kill them.  The alleged audacity of Perez and his colleagues came to light not because of checks and balances in the criminal justice system, that is, not because some judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers or police colleagues had moments of spectacular insights, courage or contrition, but only because Perez was himself caught stealing cocaine from a police locker and confessed to win himself a deal.
Ted Rohrlich, Scandal shows why innocent plead guilty, Los Angeles Times, 31-Dec-1999 www.nettrash.com/users/socialjustice/fastplea.html



Lubomyr Prytulak
Ukrainian Archive, www.ukar.org
[Address]
[Telephone]
[Email]

24 November 2002


Gary Klausner
Supervising Judge, Civil Division
Los Angeles Superior Court
111 North Hill Street
Los Angeles, CA
USA     90012


Re: Rambam v Prytulak   BC271433   James R. Dunn


Gary Klausner:

Two characteristics stand out in James R. Dunn's management of Rambam v Prytulak:

  1. James R. Dunn has turned a deaf ear (for six months if timed from Motion-to-Quash B, and for eight months if timed from Motion-to-Quash-A submitted in the related Case 02E00326) to Defendant urgings that he evaluate in personam jurisdiction over Defendant Prytulak � urgings which should have been superfluous to a sua sponte evaluation triggered by either, and especially by both,

    1. Plaintiff Steven Rambam living in Brooklyn, New York, USA, while Defendant Lubomyr Prytulak lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and triggered also by

    2. the California Court of Appeal having already told the same Plaintiff (Steven Rambam), represented by the same lawyer (Gary Kurtz), complaining in the same court (the Los Angeles Superior Court) of similar allegedly defamatory material (originating with the JDO and published on the Internet), that California does not have jurisdiction over Mordechai Levy (whose ties to California are stronger than are those of Lubomyr Prytulak).

  2. James R. Dunn has suppressed or destroyed six litigant submissions (seven if he does the same to Prytulak-Reply-D7 delivered to the Court on 22-Nov-2002).  A listing of the submissions so spoliated is appended below.

The question of how this instance of judicial corruption could have arisen and could be tolerated leads to my discovery of evidence suggesting that the Los Angeles Superior Court is so mired in corruption that the example of probity set by other judges may have failed to achieve the critical mass needed to inhibit James R. Dunn, and their feeble committment to defending the integrity of the Court is today inadequate to stopping him now that he has gotten going.

Wondering whether my use of "corruption" might be excessive, I verified its meanings in law, and discovered that it is exactly the word that I want, applying to James R. Dunn's behavior in Rambam v Prytulak not only in some of its meanings, but in all of its meanings:

CORRUPTION.  Illegality; a vicious and fraudulent intention to evade the prohibitions of the law; something against or forbidden by law; moral turpitude or exactly opposite of honesty involving intentional disregard of law from improper motives.
      An act done with an intent to give some advantage inconsistent with official duty and the rights of others.
      The act of an official or fiduciary person who unlawfully and wrongfully uses his station or character to procure some benefit for himself or for another person, contrary to duty and the rights of others.
•  Black's Law Dictionary, Revised Fourth Edition, West Publishing Company, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1968.  Citations omitted.

One piece of evidence in support of the hypothesis that James R. Dunn's corruption does not stand out above general Court corruption comes from the Rampart Scandal, summarized as follows:

The Rampart scandal is a sordid story of police murder, robbery, assaults and frame-ups against the people. The CRASH cops stole drugs from drug dealers to sell them on the street.  They robbed people of cash and jewelry.  They beat up or framed anyone who resisted or got in their way.  They used "throw-down" guns to cover up police murders.  The scandal started at Rampart, but the same things were exposed in divisions all over the city.  And behind the cops were police commanders, judges, prosecutors and legislators who rewarded the cops, took part in railroading people who were framed by lying cops, or covered up for the cops' crimes.

At one point the DA released a list of 3,300 people who had been convicted on the testimony of 20 cops who were suspended or fired through the scandal (out of a total of 70 cops who were eventually implicated).  Other people were simply deported out of the U.S. by INS agents when CRASH cops couldn't come up with anything to frame them on.

Of these thousands who may have been framed by corrupt cops, only a handful � a little over a hundred � have had charges dismissed.  And most of these people had already done years of prison time.  The city paid out over $100 million in claims to people who were assaulted or framed by Rafael Pérez and other cops.  But none of their cases went to trial.
Revolutionary Worker #1118, September 16, 2001 rwor.org/a/v23/1110-19/1118/rampart.htm  Bold emphasis added.

Although blame is conventionally directed at the police, it occasionally attaches as well to the Los Angeles judiciary, as it did above.  Furthermore, as police wield the least power of the three groups police-prosecutors-judges, and judges wield the most, Los Angeles judges might be viewed not merely as acquiescing to the wrongdoing, and not merely as participating in it, but as orchestrating it and bearing the ultimate responsibility for it:

The System Has Become Dysfunctional
By CHARLES L. LINDNER

Charles L. Lindner is past president of the Los Angeles Criminal Bar Assn.

The criminal-justice system in Los Angeles is broken.  No spin doctor can mask the institutional breakdown at the Los Angeles Police Department.  The Rampart scandal could not have occurred without the district attorney and the judiciary looking the other way for years.

The reasons for this near-chaos in the local enforcement of the law have been exposed by the Rampart scandal.  Police Chief Bernard C. Parks. Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti and the Los Angeles criminal bench, collectively, have made decisions that inevitably led us to Rampart.

The judiciary has turned a blind eye to police perjury.  Judges have a constitutional duty to protect defendants' constitutional rights.  The judicial appointments of Govs. George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson have filled the bench with former prosecutors.  One result is that it has been 10 years since I heard a judge say, "I do not find the officer's testimony credible."

Outside the presence of jurors, the equation has become hauntingly simple.  State court judges will accept police fabrications as the "truth" because they do not want "technicalities" interfering with the apprehension and imprisonment of "bad guys."  Those "technicalities" include the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution.  Defense expectations of fairness have fallen so low that the highest compliment a defense lawyer can pay a judge is, "He gave me a fair trial" � and it is not said with great frequency.

In too many cases, the judge is the de facto prosecutor because the deputy district attorney is either so inexperienced or inept that he or she needs a little help.  So the judge steps in and questions the officer testifying, strengthens dubious parts of his or her story and withdraws after bolstering the cop's testimony.  With the singular exception of the court's most senior jurist, judges never take over cross-examination to hammer at a cop for what seems a questionable story.

This abdication of constitutional oversight and the virtual merger of judge and prosecutor have contributed to an environment in which cops assigned to the anti-gang CRASH unit at Rampart believed they could break the law with impunity.  Cops can lie on the stand because they fear no judicial sanction.  With the exception of Mark Fuhrman, the detective who testified in the O.J. Simpson double-murder trial, no police officer in modern times has been prosecuted for lying under oath, as long as he lied for the prosecution.
•  Jail4Judges www.jail4judges.org/JNJ_Library/stak0/corrupt/Dysfunctional.htm

Responding to Lindner's statement above, retired police officer H. Johns ends his own statement with the following indictment:

Over the years, the courts, instead of protecting the peoples right to have justice for all, have merely capitulated to the demand to quash the people and their rights in order to have ever more compliant public ever-ready to be monetarily fleeced by a voracious bureaucracy.  There is truly no more justice or law in ANY court.  And we, the People, have docily accepted that metamorphosis.
•  Jail4Judges www.jail4judges.org/JNJ_Library/stak0/corrupt/SpeakOut.htm

These are strong words, and were it not for my education concerning the Los Angeles Superior Court in the school of Rambam v Prytulak, I would be predisposed to dismiss them as falling somewhere between intemperate and hyperbolic.  However, this recent education has brought an awakening which predisposes me to similar language.  The fact that the Rampart scandal applies to Criminal cases, whereas Rambam v Prytulak is Civil, makes little difference to the view that it is the Los Angeles judiciary in its entirety that is corrupt, and that corruption in one division can be expected to find its counterpart in the other.

Thus, Charles L. Lindner's statement that

State court judges will accept police fabrications as the "truth" because they do not want "technicalities" interfering with the apprehension and imprisonment of "bad guys"

takes only trivial re-writing to summarize Rambam v Prytulak:

State court judge James R. Dunn accepts Plaintiff falsifications as the "truth" because he does not want "technicalities" interfering with the financial and career destruction of "bad guy" Lubomyr Prytulak.

The relevance to you is twofold:

  1. As Supervising Judge of the Civil Division, you might be under a continuing obligation to attend to the restoration of the seven spoliated documents to the Rambam v Prytulak trial record, so as to make them available to the Court of Appeal in case of any unjust decision that may be handed down by James R. Dunn.

  2. Before being elevated to the Federal Court, you might be under an obligation to demonstrate that you have yourself passed untainted through the corruption that seems to permeate the Los Angeles Superior Court, as perhaps by having yourself observed the corruption, and having spoken out against it, before the scandal was broken by others, or at least by having taken a leading role in implementing measures to reduce the possibility of similar corruption in the future.







Lubomyr Prytulak


Litigant submissions (in two cases along with filing-fee money orders) that have been suppressed or destroyed, with the effect of leaving a trial record too expurgated to support Defendant's appeal:

  1. Motion-to-Quash-B dated 27-May-2002
    www.ukar.org/temp/quash02.html

  2. Prytulak-Query-B dated 14-Jun-2002
    www.ukar.org/temp/query01.html

  3. Motion-to-Quash-C dated 29-Aug-2002, accompanied by a money order for US$193
    www.ukar.org/temp/quash03.html

  4. Rambam-Objection-C dated 03-Sep-2002
    www.ukar.org/temp/obj03sep.html

  5. Prytulak-Reply-C dated 13-Sep-2002, accompanied by a money order for US$23
    www.ukar.org/temp/rep13sep.html

  6. Prytulak-Reply-D3 dated 05-Nov-2002
    www.ukar.org/temp/rep05nov.html

  7. Prytulak-Reply-D7 dated 21-Nov-2002
    www.ukar.org/temp/rep21nov.html

cc:

LASC
James A Bascue, Presiding Judge • LASC • 111 North Hill Street • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90012
G Beavers, Deputy Clerk • LASC • PO Box 151, Main Post Office • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90053
John A Clarke, Executive Officer/Clerk • LASC • PO Box 151, Main Post Office • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90053
Robert A Dukes, Assistant Presiding Judge • LASC • 111 North Hill Street • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90012
James R Dunn, Judge • LASC • 111 North Hill Street • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90012
Richard Fruin, Judge • LASC • 111 North Hill Street • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90012
Carolyn Kuhl, Assistant Supervising Judge, Civil Division • LASC • 111 North Hill Street • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90012
Gary Kurtz, Esq • 20335 Ventura Boulevard, Suite 200 • Woodland Hills, CA • USA 91364
Charles W McCoy, Judge • LASC • 111 North Hill Street • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90012
S James Otero, Assistant Supervising Judge • LASC • 111 North Hill Street • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90012
V Ponce, Assistant Clerk • LASC • PO Box 151, Main Post Office • Los Angeles, CA • USA 90053
Barry A Taylor, Judge • LASC • 6230 Sylmar Avenue • Van Nuys, CA • USA 91401

WHARRRF
Mike Wallace • 60 Minutes, CBS Television • 524 West 57th Street • New York, NY • USA 10019
Don Hewitt, Executive Producer • 60 Minutes, CBS Television • 524 West 57th Street • New York, NY • USA 10019
Irving Abella • Department of History • York University • 4700 Keele Street • Toronto, ON • Canada M3J 1P3
F David Radler COO • Hollinger International • 712 Fifth Avenue • New York, NY • USA 10019
Steven Rambam • Pallorium, Inc • PO Box 155 � Midwood Station • Brooklyn, New York • USA 11230
Moshe Ronen • Chair Board of Governors • CJC • 100 Sparks Street, Suite 650 • Ottawa, ON • Canada K1P 5B7
Bernie Farber • Executive Director, Ontario Branch • CJC • 4600 Bathurst Street • Toronto, ON • Canada M2R 3V2

OTHER
Gray Davis, Governor • State Capitol Building • Sacramento, CA • USA 95814
Martha Escutia, Senator • 12440 E. Imperial Highway, Suite 125 • Norwalk, CA • USA 90650
Bill Lockyer, Attorney General • California DOJ • PO Box 944255 • Sacramento, CA • USA 94244-2550
Bernadette Torivio, Executive Secretary • CJP • 455 Golden Gate Avenue, Suite 14400 • San Francisco, CA • USA 94102-3660
HOME  DISINFORMATION  PEOPLE  RAMBAM  KLAUSNER  DUNN  KUHL  DUKES  L.A. JUSTICE