From Unemployment to Jail,Via Family Courts

It took me a week to swallow Ethan Bronner’s piece in the New York Times, “Right to Lawyer Can Be Empty

Russel Davis (Raymond McCrea Jones for the New York Times)

Promise for Poor,” on March 16. The punchline: everybody has a constitutional right to a lawyer in the US since 1963 (bless the sixties) in criminal courts, but Gideon v. Wainwright does not guarantee this right in civil matters. Hence, there are a bunch of folks in Georgia (the State that Bronner gathers his evidence from) who end up in jail for cases as varied as foreclosure, job loss, spousal abuse and custody, for lack of proper representation; like Bill Jerome Presley, no criminal record, who spent 17 months in jail for failing to pay… $2,700 in child support.  Mr Presley lost his job in the recession, could not pay child support, was sent to jail and brought back to court shackled to be sent back to jail again, cause, I guess, the judge could not understand why Presley had not saved enough in jail to come up with the child support money; or Russel Davis, Navy veteran with post traumatic stress disorder, also jailed for failing to pay child support.

Like the other guy, I can’t but lament the dire political times we are in, when debt is made a national priority by the republican aisle in Congress. Were this not the case, perhaps more public money would flow into family justice – among others- and lawyers would be provided to poor folks who cannot afford their services. But it’s only part of the problem. Poor folks – mostly poor non- custodial fathers – would not be facing jail in the first place if not for those imbecile family laws – obviously  in Georgia, but in New York State too, as readers of this blog know- that bloomed in the wake of the dismantlement of “the welfare system as we knew it.” The free-market feminist underpinnings of these laws was that idleness is an incentive to more idleness. Stop subsidizing idleness and everybody will lift oneself up out of poverty. And if that does not happen, at least  family courts will make sure the bastards pay child support. As for the right to see their kids, they have the market.

Poverty breeds crime, as the proverb says. Nowadays, it sure breeds jail time irrespective of crime. That’s the upshot of these brillant legislative changes.

The funny thing, at least for New Yorkers, is that city’s ads against teen pregnancy are covering these days the subway trains and bus stops. This campaign has been highly criticized, and rightfully so. The gist of it: poor, black, latina, female teen, don’t get pregnant. The campaign did not forget any cliché: on one of these ads, one can read “chances are he won’t stay with you.”  You know, men. Irresponsible deadbeats.

Every time I am in the train and I see the whipping children of Bloomberg’s ads, I have popping up in my mind a poster with a man, race indifferent, casually dressed, and the slogan: “Dude, if you cannot foresee 21 years of uninterrupted employment, beat it. Don’t have kids. You may end up in jail if you don’t pay child support.”

And below the picture of this fellow: “And if you are not happy with it, take it to Congress, or wherever you have to, to the street or on cranes.”

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The NRA and Us, Non-Custodial Fathers

Sometimes when I come back to the US from abroad, I have some cultural adjustments to make. At the beginning of this New Year, I had to go over a big one.

A few days ago indeed, it was Black Friday all over again, not for electronics but for guns. In anticipation of new laws following  the Newtown slaughter, people rushed to buy guns. Gun dealers sold out their inventories. I can’t wait for Walmart advertising a Martin Luther King day sale on semiautomatic rifles.

I never had a gun. I don’t get the drive for it, although I have hunters in my  family: real ones, the type that run miles after a wild boar. Also, let’s face it: the political justification for the American rights to bear arms ought not to fly.  All in all, the second amendment was about keeping the slaves slaves.

Now for the cultural/in- defense-of- the-American-democracy line you hear from gun owners an the NRA: that’s all about the government, stupid. The government wants to deprive you from your right to own weapons. First they take your weapon and  tax the wealthy, then communism.

Back in New York at the beginning of the year, I received my annual New York State Child Support Processing Center: annual child support paid in 2012. I did not see nor talk to my girls last year, but New York State could care less. I am no father, I am a permanent resident paying for his children.

And I have news for the NRA and gun owner nuts: folks, it’s been a long time you have lost much more than the right to own a semiautomatic rifle, a machine gun or a tank: You have let the right to see your kids slipped and have not done zip about it.

Maybe there is one way, the only one, to have folks wake up to the cause of father rights: Forbid non-custodial fathers to own a gun, of any kind. At least we would have the NRA with us.

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Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Restores Karen Atala Parental Rights

It is already old news but it is major news. Karen Atala, the Chilean judge who had lost custody of her three daughters because of her sexual orientation – and had appealed the Chilean Supreme Court to no avail- has finally prevailed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The Chilean justice system had deprived Karen Atala from her parental rights on the grounds she was a lesbian, hence her children could turn homosexual; a variant of the “best interest of the child stuff.” On March 21 of this year, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights acknowledged that Atala was discriminated against, and that the damage caused by the Chilean justice was beyond repair. The Chilean government is required to pay Atala $50,000 in addition to $12,000 for legal expenses.

Simon Romero (the New York Times) talks of a landmark gay rights’ victory. Certainly, but I would also think of the outcome of Karen Atala’s versus Chile as potentially having critical implications for fathers rights. In most US States, fathers have second-class parental rights, on the grounds that women have a predisposition for parenting that men don’t have; in short, since “men hunt and women nest,” to plagiarize Seinfeld, women get full custody of the children. Fathers’ relations with their children are further damaged by lengthy divorce and child abuse trials. As fathers try not to be expelled from the lives of their children, family courts opposed the fait accompli of their severed relations with their children, which proceeds from these custody battles.

That’s the ultimate trick that Jaime López, Atala’s ex-husband, tried to pull on her. According to López, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights did not care about what his daughters think; his daughters don’t see themselves as victims. They are part of a happy heterosexual family. Too bad that their mother have not seen them for years. Fortunately, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights did not make the mistake that US family courts consistently make, that is to give credence to “the best interest” of the alienated child, who inevitably sides with the alienating parent.

Atala’s case may help the US family court system protect better gay parents rights. Let’s hope it also help US family courts to figure out that fathers- gay or not- ought to have the same parental rights women have.

Hat tip: Vinka Jackson

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On Florence Cassez’s Path to Freedom, Felipe Calderón

I have been holding my breath for more than a  week, since the President of the Mexican Supreme Court Arturo Zaldívar put on the Court agenda Florence Cassez’s unconditional and immediate liberation. I thought this time, Florence would be whiffing Spring time outside of jail for the first time in six years. The Court decision came yesterday, March 21 and it is disappointing, for Florence Cassez and for the Mexican justice system: although four judges acknowledged serious violations of Florence’ human rights had flawed due process, only two voted for her immediate liberation. A majority of three was needed.

I am no Mexican constitutional lawyer, but I have to confess that the positions of those judges who did not see yesterday the legal imperative to let Florence go are quite puzzling: Pardo Rebollado for instance, stated that it was not “the appropriate legal moment” for the Supreme Court to take on the task to liberate Florence (when will it be if not now, let alone yesterday?); For Ramón Cossío, violations to due process in Cassez’s case were not serious enough to warrant her liberation; he wants another trial.  As if the Mexican justice system had not shown enough it was prone to commit type I errors – put innocents in jail and for that matter, Florence- not to give it another chance to do so…

It is clear one would not be that tempted to second guess the Mexican Supreme Court decision had President Calderón refrained from telling it how he wanted it to rule. Before the Supreme Court rendered its decision, Felipe Calderón urged it to take into account the victims of kidnappings. In so doing, Calderón encroached on the prerogatives of the judiciary. This is actually quite consistent with his administration practices, which blur the borders between justice and police actions:  Genaro Garcia Luna, the Secretary of Public Safety since 2006, cooks proofs, produces victims and culprits and stages them for TV.

President Calderón posturing as the knight of victims of kidnapping has something tragically ironical to it.  According to Damien Cave in a March 17 New York Times article, reported abductions in Mexico are up 300% since 2005.  There is even a new trend going on: the kidnapping of entire families.   Keeping Florence Cassez in jail at any price is about all that Calderón has yet left to mislead the Mexican people on the calamitous outcome of his administration in the area of crime prevention, kidnappings included.

One day will come, soon I hope, when Mexicans will not buy anymore the Calderón-Wallace propaganda that sells Florence’s liberation as a favor to a foreigner,  but will realize that liberating an innocent – who happened to be a foreigner- is a favor to the Mexican justice system and to Mexicans. Meanwhile, hold on Florence.  Abrazos.

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Family Courts in New York State Finally Get Some Scrutiny from the Media

Gosh, I wish the New York Times had sneaked in Manhattan Family Court when I was a regular customer there, from 2001 to

Guantánamo

2009. But later is better than never. William Glaberson’s article from yesterday, Friday November 18, describes the making of  people’s family justice in New York City. Readers can learn what divorced fathers have come to know as they tasted family courts. It is Guantánamo right here in the city.

I guess many people don’t know the most important piece of news one learns from this article: Family courts in New York City are not supposed to be the secretive places they are. On the contrary, they have been ordered to be opened to the public since 1997. Yet it looks that for fourteen years now, the media has not been welcome there. Glaberson mentions arrogant cops denying reporters entry to court rooms, judges asking reporters to show their credentials to court clerks, who ask them to get the approval of the state’s chief administrative judge. As a result, accountability is nil. The little world of family court does as it pleases and prospers. Trials last what they last – mine lasted more than six years, law guardians sleep on the children’s  interests which they are to represent; unsupervised social-agency workers that supervise the visitations with your children have the leeway to bully you while you are trying to keep your relationship with your kids from deleting.

The media should not stop halfway in this most welcome attempt to lift the veil on the nauseating secrets of family justice in New York State. There is a lot of investigating to do about the work of  support magistrates, these gracious people who behind close doors decide about child support payments that too often put non-custodial parents in the red and sometimes in jail. And please, pay a visit to the nasty fellows of the Support Collection Unit on 151 West Broadway, in the City.

When is the reform of family justice be on the agenda of New York State Attorney General, Eric T. Schneiderman?

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Whitmire Brings the End of Last Meal Glutony to Texan Justice

The U.S. justice system is crumbling. We divorced fathers that have experienced family justice know where the flaws lie: prejudice -

John Whitmire, Texas State Senator

against men and fathers- and more credence and weight given to accusation than to defense. You have to prove your innocence, when prosecution should be bearing the burden of the proof.  In the case of capital punishment- the icing on the rotten cake- there is the combination of racial prejudice and prejudice against the poor. If you are flushed, you might save yourself; Otherwise, too bad.

Thursday September 23 of this year, Troy Davis was executed in Georgia. His execution was opposed by an international movement led by Amnesty International. One would have thought that might have spurred proposals to mend the capital punishment system.  Indeed it did, in the most unexpected area: John Withmire,  a Houston democrat and chairman of the Senate criminal Justice Committee, put an end all by himself to the last meal in Texas.

According to Manny Fernandez from the New York Times, this is the profligacy of Lawrence Russel Brewer’s last meal that set Withmire’s creative legislative mind in motion. Brewer was executed by lethal injection in the Huntsville Unit on Wednesday, September 22, one day before Travis. One would think that the chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee in Houston had better things to do than micromanaging last meals. In any case, we don’t know for sure if it is the ethnic ingredients of Brewer ‘s last meal – jalapeños, fajitas- or worries for the State of Texas’ budget that troubled Whitmire. But even at the pace Texas executes inmates on death row, I bet last meals are not the most crucial budgetary issue of the state.

John Whitmire’s score to the Political courage test organized by Project Vote Smart is 0, because he refused to tell where he stands on issues addressed in 2010 Political Courage Test. No wonder;  To me, Whitmire belongs to the most despicable type of politicians: Those who seek exposure while beating on the weakest and the defenseless. Who in these glorious days we are leaving in will oppose scaremongers like Whitmire? For God sake, until the day medieval capital punishment is abolished in the U.S., let’s those to be executed enjoy a last meal…and a last cigarette. Their  fellows on death row won’t mind second-hand smoking.

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