If
two crusaders succeed, judges
will be liable for decisions
Most days, Ronald Branson
and his wife take turns
at the computer in the
garage of their San Fernando
Valley home, waging war
against what they
see as a major failing of
their country's court system.
Their Web site,
www.jail4judges.org,
blasts the "arbitrary
abuse of the
doctrine of judicial immunity."
They shoot off frequent
e-mails to rally
their troops, like the one
last April when Branson
praised a Nightline
report called "Blaming
the Bench." "We
are only now viewing the
beginning of a looming showdown
in this nation on this subject,"
he
typed to his audience, which
he says numbers at least
1,000 people.
For a decade, Branson, a
prolific pro per, and Gary
Zerman, a Valencia
attorney similarly disillusioned
with the courts, have sought
a way
around the immunity that
shields judges from suits
over their actions on
the bench.
In the 1990s, they tried
to get an initiative on
the California ballot
that would have created
a special grand jury able
to criminally indict
state judges or to strip
them of the immunity defense
in civil suits.
"Members of the group
are not going to police
the group," Zerman
says.
"You have to have outside
independent people to make
sure that
mechanisms of accountability
are there."
But their low-budget operation
ran into a roadblock: It
took far too
many signatures to get anything
on the ballot in their populous
home
state.
More recently, though, things
have been looking up for
the founders of
the JAIL movement, which
now aims to get a foothold
for its Judicial
Accountability Initiative
Law in any state it can.
A feed-machine
businessman from South Dakota,
where the population is
roughly 1/50 of
California's, has enthusiastically
taken up their cause, and
is
sponsoring a JAIL initiative
there. In December, a petition
drive funded
by about $140,000 of William
Stegmeier's money gathered
enough
signatures to put a constitutional
amendment on the November
ballot.
Zerman and Branson hope
a win in South Dakota will
create enough
momentum to propel them
into other states. That's
also the concern for
lawyers and judges who claim
a law like JAIL would be
both infeasible
and philosophically dangerous.
Stegmeier's South Dakota
initiative was a topic of
conversation among
the state chief justices
who gathered last month
for a national meeting,
said California Chief Justice
Ronald George. While he
doesn't seem to be
losing sleep over it, he's
not shrugging it off, either.
"I don't know
that anything like this
has qualified on a state
ballot before, so I
think that means that it
has to be taken seriously."
Branson is already looking
ahead, to other initiative-friendly
states.
He'd like to take on Nevada
next, but he's not ruling
other places out.
If anyone can come up with
a million dollars, he says,
JAIL might take
another stab at California.
"I'm gambling on the
idea that if we prevail
in South Dakota, we'll have
the attention of so many
news sources, and so many
money sources will
come to us," he figures.
"Success breeds success."
GETTING NOWHERE
Branson, who says he's been
a minister since his three-year
Army stint
in the 1960s, peppers his
speech with analogies. The
South Dakota
initiative is like a wick
burning toward a barrel
of gunpowder, a
wrecking ball that will
pick up momentum, the first
domino that will
topple. When he reminisces
about his battles with the
courts, he uses
the lottery, or a baseball
game, to make his points.
He has been a pro per, on
and off, for about 20 years,
typically in
suits against the government,
and by his count, he's sued
more than half
a dozen judges. He says
his legal education began
in the early 1980s,
when his wife, a legal secretary,
lost her job with a district
attorney's office and sued
to demand a civil service
hearing.
"I've had 14 trips
to the U.S. Supreme Court,
and not one time have the
courts addressed any of
the issues I raised in those
cases," Branson
says. His cert petitions
were all denied.
"It would have been
an act of insanity for me
to continue seeking
redress in the judicial
system," he says. "I
said, we've got to do it
some way that doesn't include
government."
When he met Zerman by chance,
he found a collaborator.
They were both at a speech
by then-state Sen. Tom Hayden,
when Branson overheard Zerman
complaining to the legislator
about the state's
Commission on Judicial Performance.
Branson remembers following
Zerman back to his seat.
"I knelt beside him
and I said, 'Hello, I'm
Ron Branson, and I understand
exactly what you're talking
about here,'" Branson
says. "He was getting
nowhere as an
attorney, I was getting
nowhere as a pro se."
Court dockets show that
at least 10 cases involving
Branson have reached
the Second District Court
of Appeal, and at least
five petitions for
review have been denied
by the California Supreme
Court.
The case that really galled
Branson, though, was an
unlawful-arrest suit
against the city of Los
Angeles, in which he contends
a judge never
entered a required default
judgment, leaving him no
ruling to appeal.
Had a law like the South
Dakota JAIL amendment existed
in California,
Branson says, once his appeals
were exhausted, he could
have complained
to a special grand jury
that the judge had blocked
the lawful conclusion
of his case. If the panel
decided his complaint wasn't
frivolous, the
judge could have been prohibited
from claiming judicial immunity
if
Branson sued.
"This is the only thing
that's going to straighten
out the politics in
this country," Branson
declares, before pausing:
"You can tell I get
going like a racecar."
While Zerman, a former insurance
defense lawyer, isn't as
prone to
metaphor, he is equally
passionate in his view that
judicial immunity
from suits is inherently
unfair. "The rule of
law exists for some and
not others," he says.
Zerman's first real encounter
with judicial immunity was
a malpractice
suit, he says, in which
he represented a pair of
clients suing two
well-known California plaintiff
attorneys, the late Melvin
Belli of San
Francisco, and Santa Monica's
R. Browne Greene.
Zerman says he got his head
handed to him by a judge
at trial, and then
got "what I believe
was a fraudulent appellate
opinion." He eventually
sued the trial judge and
appellate panel, but it
did no good, he says.
He also tried filing an
accusation of misconduct
against the two
plaintiff lawyers with the
California Supreme Court,
but the justices
declined to hear it. Then,
in 1995, the U.S. Supreme
Court declined
Zerman's petition to review
the California high court's
decision.
"In some of these cases
when you get hosed initially
and then you start
to appeal, the appellate
system doesn't work,"
he says. "They can't
admit that the system is
that out-of-whack."
CAMPAIGN MANEUVERS
After his chance meeting
with Branson, Zerman says,
"Ron grabbed onto
the initiative [idea], and
he started drafting."
What the pro per wrote,
Zerman and others polished.
They've been trying to sell
their vision ever since,
though as salesmen,
they can be something of
a contrast.
Branson boasts of a national
JAIL organization with military-esque
ranks
and titles. He calls himself
the National JAIL Commander-in-Chief
-
similar, he says, to a five-star
general. When he appears
at
particularly formal events
as a representative, like
a conference he
attended in Virginia, he
wears a blue suit with five
stars on his chest,
and five more on the points
of his shirt collar. The
ranks below him, he
explains, go from lieutenant-commander-in-chief
(the equivalent of a
four-star general), to jailer-in-chiefs
(two-star generals) in charge
of
each state.
Zerman, on the other hand,
refers to JAIL as a "loosely
knit" group, and
doesn't use his title. When
he makes a high-profile
appearance on JAIL's
behalf, like he did on CNN
a couple of months back,
he says, "I just
wear a business suit."
He estimates that he spends
about 30 hours a week working
on JAIL
efforts from his home office
or doing interviews, and
suggests his
crusade to reform has hurt
his civil practice.
"I have a few cases,
but you pay a price for
doing this," says Zerman,
who is acting as a spokesman
for the South Dakota campaign.
"I tell
[potential clients], having
me as your attorney may
be hazardous to your
case, because I've got some
judges gunning for me."
And for all that, he and
Branson weren't getting
very far. That is,
until the Internet extended
the reach of their message.
As best he can recall, William
Stegmeier, whose company
outside Sioux
Falls makes grinders for
livestock feed, ran across
JAIL's Web site and
was intrigued enough to
donate $100 or so.
"You know, a lot of
patriot organizations, sometimes
they link to each
other," Stegmeier said
by cell phone from rural
South Dakota. "The
name
jail4judges does elicit
curiosity, no doubt about
that."
It wasn't long, Stegmeier
added, before he got an
e-mail asking him if
he wanted to be "jailer-in-chief"
for the state.
Since then, he's put up
about $140,000 of his own
money for a
constitutional amendment
based on the California
JAIL proposal drafted
by Branson. Last month,
South Dakota's secretary
of state declared that
the amendment had the 33,456
signatures needed to qualify
for the
November ballot.
Apparently going for a toned-down
image, Stegmeier says he
calls his
statewide campaign South
Dakota Judicial Accountability.
And on the
campaign trail, he's not
really using the jail4judges
name - "We thought
it would be a bit too strong
for rural South Dakota"
- nor going by his
two-star title.
Surprisingly, the amendment's
sponsor says he's never
had a problem with
any judge, himself. "I
really haven't had much
involvement in courts."
He does remember being bothered
more than a year ago, though,
by a case in Fort Worth,
Texas. The judge, he said,
wouldn't allow a defendant
to enter the U.S. Constitution
as evidence. "Now,
how ridiculous is that?"
"I'm a patriot. I have
three young children,"
he added. "I look at
this
as my civic contribution
to the country."
CALL IT YELLOW ALERT
Given Branson and Zerman's
roots, some judges in California
are keeping
tabs on the South Dakota
election.
"It is such a frightening
assault on the bedrock principle
of an independent judiciary,"
says Los Angeles Superior
Court Judge Terry Friedman,
president of the California
Judges Association.
He's not sure how to evaluate
its chances, he adds. "But
I know that many judges
are - and I would include
myself - [concerned] that
if it were to succeed there,
even though it's maybe a
small and distant state,
that could give the movement
some momentum elsewhere."
Still, he's not sure whether
any of the amendment's critics
in California will get involved
in the campaign against
the amendment in South Dakota.
"I don't want to prematurely
or unnecessarily build it
up in order to knock it
down," Friedman said.
"I would rather that
it never got off the ground
in the first place."
Tom Barnett, the Executive
Director of the South Dakota
Bar, would have
preferred JAIL never left
its home turf. "We
wish they just would've
started out in California
and stayed there."
He has talked with South
Dakota judges in passing
about the amendment.
"While they were concerned,
my recommendation is, you
don't dignify this
type of initiative with
a response," he says.
"You let Main Street
businesses and people involved
in civics and [local government]
say this is their fight
- because the attack is
an attack on Civics 101."
Barnett prefers not to go
into too many details about
the counter-offensive, though.
"The last thing I want
to do," Barnett says,
"is to have Mr. Branson
sit out there in California
and read what our campaign
plan is."
That will surely disappoint
Mr. Branson.
"You ever see one of
these fish, they have this
extension on their lip
that looks like a worm?"
says Branson. The fish he's
thinking of, he
explains, hunts by hiding
all but that piece of its
body, waiting for
another fish gullible enough
to try for a nibble.
"They just can't resist
themselves, they have to
attack us," Branson
says. "And every time
they attack us, they're
ruining the element of
surprise."
SIDE STORY:
How to judge a judge
A constitutional amendment
on the November ballot in
South Dakota
threatens to make state
judges there more vulnerable
to civil lawsuits
and criminal prosecutions.
The Judicial Accountability
Initiative Law, which needs
a simple majority to pass
this fall, would create
a special grand jury with
the power to criminally
indict a judge, or to bar
him from using the judicial
immunity defense in a civil
suit.
No one could lodge a criminal
accusation with the special
jury unless a
prosecutor had declined
to file charges. And no
one could bring a civil
accusation without having
exhausted state court remedies.
After receiving the judge's
response to civil allegations,
the 13-member
special jury would decide
by majority vote whether
the judge could claim
judicial immunity if the
accuser were to sue in civil
court. The amendment specifies
that immunity should not
be allowed for any deliberate
violation of the law or
the state or federal constitution;
fraud or conspiracy; intentional
violation of due process;
deliberate disregard of
material facts; actions
without jurisdiction; or
the blocking of the lawful
conclusion of a case.
Judges amassing three adverse
immunity decisions or criminal
convictions
would be kicked off the
bench, with their retirement
benefits cut by at
least half.
Critics say the proposal
is unworkable, and a threat
to judicial independence.
"Every time there's
a dissatisfied person there'd
be a lawsuit," says
James Heiting, president
of the State Bar of California.
Larry Mann, a South Dakota
political consultant working
against the
amendment, also argues that
it would only serve to shift
immunity. "It's
so broadly written that
it creates this special
grand jury [with] almost
unrestrained authority to
do almost whatever they
want, without any
accountability."
But proponents who have
long hoped for such a law
in California counter
that the current checks
on judges aren't enough.
"Until a judge has
become an open embarrassment
to the system, they just
won't be prosecuted,"
said Californian Ronald
Branson, who drafted the
template for the JAIL amendment
about 10 years ago.
Gary Zerman, a Valencia
solo practitioner who's
worked with Branson to
promote such initiatives,
likewise expresses disappointment
in the
Commission on Judicial Performance.
"The CJP just gives
them a public
censure and lets them go
on like nothing happened."
- Pam Smith
Pam Smith
Reporter, The Recorder legal
newspaper
Phone: 415.749.5524
Fax: 415.749.5549
psmith@therecorder.com
