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Response to Supreme
Court Suspension
of Attorney Caroline Douglas "Let’s
Roll"
In response to the New Hampshire Supreme Court ruling suspending her
from law practice for six months, Attorney Caroline Douglas wrote this
public response:
It is classic for a convicted person to earnestly assert: I have done
nothing wrong. Ironically, as an attorney, I once considered it a
caricature of life. Now it is my life that has become the caricature. The
State Supreme Court not only found me to be a wrongdoer and suspended me
for six months from the practice of law - but wrote that it was because I
did not recognize the error of my ways that I was suspended. Similar to
16th Century Ecclesiastical Courts, 17th Century Salem witch trials, and
modern day punishment of sexual offenders, the Court demands admission of
guilt and a demonstrable test of my conversion. In each of these types of
legal proceedings, the accused/guilty person is suppose to vindicate the
court. Here, the court also ordered me to study legal ethics and
demonstrate my rehabilitation to their satisfaction as a condition of
reinstatement (not to mention payment of the six- figure cost of
prosecuting me.)
The trouble is, I not only deny wrongdoing, but asserted that this process
for disciplining attorneys is dangerously over-controlling, retaliatory,
selective, and persecutes good attorneys by a judicial mafia using insider
dealings. The purpose of the case against me was not to protect the public
or a former client, but to punish and silence a good gal, put her outta
the law business, and discredit her ongoing accusations that the court
often functions more on insider cronyism than by the fair and impartial
practice of law. Like Enron, Arthur Anderson, Xerox, the Catholic Church,
and Providian, the Supreme Court protects and cover up transgressions and
self-dealing through behemoth power over victims too small, too weak, too
poor or too embarrassed to fight back.
The myth is that the Supreme Court must exercise oversight and control of
attorneys (as opposed to state legislature, which is responsible for
regulating every other occupation in New Hampshire) in order to protect
the public, expose corrupt attorney practices, and make courtrooms safe
from unethical attorney behavior. In fact, this arrangement only increases
a judge’’s power to control embarrassing information about biased and
unethical court practices by threatening internal discipline against an
attorney. That fact alone usually is enough to chill others from speaking
out because the power to suspend a professional license is the power to
destroy a professional career and livelihood. Now, my case will serve as a
more blatant example to other attorneys of what can happen if they get
heroic or try to rescue cases hijacked in the system.
It is necessary to remove the power to regulate and discipline attorneys
from the authority of the Supreme Court and transfer regulatory authority
of attorneys over to the legislature. Then we need a law which prevents
the court from forcing attorneys and judges to join the bar association
where mandatory dues, membership, and insider regulation can threaten
their careers and livelihood for doing what is morally right and legally
correct.
The insider process of disciplining attorneys allows the court to
minimalize and marginalizing me as a whistle blower first by diverting me
into defending multiple frivolous and biased conduct complaints (Since I
blew the whistle in 1997, the PCC perpetuated almost two dozen complaints
and six-month audit of my law practice.) However, this ruling is biased
and unethical on a second level: it is a further example that illegal
insider influence on court deliberations is still alive and well. Hello?
That was the Thayer case three years ago. After that, the Court was not
suppose to permit anyone - even an insider like the Professional Conduct
Committee - have special access and influence over a pending appeal. Two
years ago however, we saw Judges Broderick and Duggan improperly
interfering in Justice Brock’’s misconduct case - as friendly bystanders,
they claimed, - not as judges. Now a year later, this order further
demonstrates on its face that there was illegal influence behind the
scenes which affected the outcome of the case. It is a continuing pattern.
Nothing apparently will stop judges from talking to their buddies and
permitting illegal influence in high profile cases.
For six years I have exposed the ol’’ boy system of justice in our courts
as pervasive, profound, and illegal. I scrutinize cases and patterns of
court abuse and improper influence. This is the real basis for fashioning
an order which kicks me out of a country club that I would never have
joined in the first place. The idea that only the Supreme Court can
discipline attorneys is a myth - giving the court a back door to
controlling all attorneys. As long as the Supreme Court administers its
own peculiar insider system of control and justice and uses that power to
retaliate, then good attorneys are chilled into silence, marginalized, and
can be threatened with loss of livelihood and reputation.
I have been hijacked sounds like another caricature but this ruling
takes my professional integrity and personal reputation, as well as my law
license. It is based in sneaky tricks, distorted facts, ex parte
communication and a pattern of ignoring exonerating exculpatory evidence.
It is the first case of its kind in the country: The PCC prosecutor cited
no law, rule, case or similar complaint anywhere in the country supporting
a complaint, discipline or suspension of an attorney for what I was
alleged to have done. The lack of fair and impartial process and the
appearance of blatant sneaky tricks, misuse of power, and selective
prosecution is reason for alarm because of the implications for all
attorneys. This case however warrants a public investigation by an
independent prosecutor and impeachment of any judge who replaces ol’’ boy
cronyism for law.
Wednesday, April 17, 2002
Signed: Caroline Douglas
carolinedouglas@mindspring.com
For more on the Douglas case click on
here.
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