Tomorrow I begin a two week seminar on handling your own legal work pro se. That is bypassing the lawyers, screwing the prosecutors right back, defending yourself capably, getting what you want, and helping others, showing them how.
My next door neighbors want my building because I have the elevator in what used to be a single use double commercial storefront and upstairs. They were so awful from the first day that they cannot come to me and ask to use it knowing I will snarl and say no.
So my dog gets off her leash, runs across to the park to find some garbage tidbit some teen has tossed. Voila! A ticket to pay a fine of $57 for dog running loose or go to court, guilty verdict is foreordained, and pay the $57 plus $100 in court costs. I got 2 of them, both very explainable incidents, so I go and find out no chance for justice for me or anyone else in the room that day. Dog running loose is to anyone without shit for brains is when you open the door-or not-and let your dog go out alone to piss, poop, and generally disturb anyone it wants to for however long it wants to do so before it gets bored and comes back home.
Me, I run after mine and grab her. So I think that's self explanatory. Not.
Continue on. It gets worse.
I call my friends who do the legal thing and find they are now at a point where they are teaching it. I can't do the first one so I get tutoring.
1.Delay. Ask for time to get counsel. They can't do anything to you if you don't have counsel. Call some attorneys and tell them you need representation but don't have any money. They will of course refuse and refer you to the public defender's office. The PD won't help you because this is not a serious criminal case, even though I am being prosecuted with a criminal charge.
2.Go to the next court date and tell them you are still trying. You have been turned down by X,Y, and Z. More time goes by.
3.Now this is administrative court where you have no rights. So they tell me, the judge, who is rather nice, does, that he is going to hear it anyway. The prosecutor steps up to the bully plate. Everytime I open my mouth I say I don't understand and that's why I need counsel. I refuse to plead guilty or not guilty. You do not plead not guilty ever.
4.The judge renders a verdict of guilty. He cannot do this legally at all but he does it. You cannot convict anyone who does not have representation, who does not enter a plea. He does it anyway.
5.I wait until the 10 days for appeal are almost up and request a Trial de Nova . I also file for pauper status so I don't have to pay anything to do it. Now it starts all over again in civil court where I have all my American citizen rights. So we have gone from Auguest 2005 to February 2007.
In the meantime I have gotten a ticket for my garden. My neighbors slave school their children (they can't read)and don't want me out in my garden where they talk to me and tell me things mom and dad would rather I didn't know, such as the fact they can't read and are "home-schooled".Not.
So now it's $57 dollars for my climbing morning glories as they are over 12 inches high and there can be no vegetation over 12 inches high. So I put pics on a CD and take my laptop in and freak out the prosecutor. He tells me to talk with the mayor, the mayor says he is the decider (see how it trickles down)and that's the way it's going to be.
So now I am told by my friends to start studying Rule 37 of the criminal code. This is a Supreme Court Ruling on local ordinanaces and what the administrative court can and cannot do. Actually the administrative court is a license to steal and fill up the town coffers. No one who goes in there knows their rights, so they might just as well not have them.
So we are up to March 2007 when I go to civil court and ask for time for obtaining counsel. I get until May 2007. We are getting close to one year now, aren't we? In April 2007, just last week, I go back to administrative court with my laptop in case I get railroaded again into being tried. I walk in, well dressed for a change, and the prosecutor takes one look at me and motions for me to go to the back room and make a deal. He says he will dismiss all the cases if I will clean up my back yard a little. I think about two seconds whether I want to continue on to yet another Pyrric victory in my life, and instead say OK. He comes on Sunday to tell me to get rid of this, and this, and this, and this. I tell him to look around and look at all the other yards around him. He says take it inside, write a letter to the city telling them you will put it all back again in 30 days if everyone in the city doesn't clean up their yard.
So I moved some stuff around and organized it differently and am waiting to see what happens next. The mayor now knows that my neighbors are extreme bullshitters and he has finished with them as has everyone else in town.
I don't expect to hear anything more, but if I do, well.......... we will go for round five is it now, in the game? Meanwhile starting tomorrow I am going to learn how to do them some damage. The man teaching it is from St. Louis and he is 75. I plan to pick his brains until nothing is left for me to know or else where to find it. Other people who do what he does are mostly dead or in jail.