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CHESTERTOWN---Christmas is a whole lot brighter this year for North Country Gazette publisher June Maxam.
Virtually every year for the past seven and a half years, the publisher has been threatened with jail or has been in jail for Christmas as the result of charges filed against her by the Warren County Sheriff's Department and now sheriff Larry Cleveland.
This Christmas, there is no threat of jail. On Thursday, Dec. 21 Saratoga Springs City Court Judge Douglas C. Mills signed the final order to dismiss the 1998 charges brought by the sheriff's department on complaints of Chestertown residents Eleanor and Donald Lambert, and Jay Becker.
In 1998, following a prohibited ex parte conference with Larry Cleveland, now Warren County Sheriff, on Dec. 23, Queensbury Town Justice Michael J. Muller tried to put the publisher in jail for Christmas because Cleveland said she gave "the finger" to Jay Becker of Chestertown sometime between 1997 and 1998 although there were no dates, no times and places of the alleged incidents contained in the complaint signed by Becker.
Lambert's complaint concerned alleged incidents from May, 1998 until August, 1998 during which time the Warren County Sheriff's Department directed Eleanor Lambert, a long-time antagonist of the publisher, to walk past the publisher's house virtually daily during July, 1998, and try to elicit a response from the publisher, an alleged entrapment scheme.
Maxam had been arrested in August, 1998 on the Lambert complaint and was then rearrested in September, 1998, when Lambert claimed that Maxam violated an order of protection by smiling and laughing at her and because Maxam's father took a picture of Lambert from his own front lawn. On Dec. 23, 1998, two state troopers accosted Maxam on her own property, breaking the door to her residence, and transported her to the state police station where she was chained to the wall, denied bathroom privileges and denied water. After the town justices from Chester and Johnsburg refused to arraign her, she was transported to a non-jurisdictional court of Queensbury and Muller.
Cleveland, acting as the prosecutor, wanted $1,000 bail set although the maximum fine for the non-criminal charge was $250. Muller set bail at $250. Both were surprised when Maxam produced the bail money, using money saved for heating her home. She didn't have much heat for Christmas in 1998----but she wasn't in jail. Cleveland irately stomped from the courtroom, yelling, "we'll get you in jail yet".
But Muller and Cleveland succeeded in having the publisher jailed for 17 days over Christmas in 2000, with Muller forcing Maxam to represent herself at a six-day jury trial held between November 30 and Dec. 19, 2000, a violation of her Sixth Amendment rights. She was acquitted by the jury of the criminal contempt charge that Cleveland and Lamberts had filed against her for allegedly giving Lambert "an intimidating grin". Although the prosecution had no objection to bail being set pending appeal so that Maxam could be released for Christmas, Muller refused to sign the bail bond produced, instead without cause raising the amount of bail causing Maxam to remain in jail until after New Year's when cash could be raised for her release.
Queensbury Town Court then lost the bail money. Although state law requires that such cash as paid for Maxam's bail be deposited in a bank within 48 hours of receipt, Queensbury claimed that they "found" Maxam's bail money in the court safe three years after it was received.
For nearly two years, court stenographer Jayme Harvey and the People refused to produce the trial transcripts so that Maxam could perfect her appeal. When the transcripts were finally produced in 2004, Maxam provided proof positive that Harvey had falsified the transcripts, trying to hide the fact that Muller had denied Maxam's Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Acting Warren County Court judge Felix Catena refused to allow charges to be brought against Harvey and in fact, ruled that the issue of the falsified transcripts could not be raised in the appeal. Although Harvey had defied three court orders to produce the transcripts and had produced false billings in addition to the falsified court record, no charges were brought against her and she remains the Grand Jury stenographer for Warren County.
In December, 2003, Catena revoked Maxam's stay pending appeal, saying that Muller had not had jurisdiction to grant the stay and Maxam was ordered to report to the Glens Falls City Court on New Year's Eve, Dec. 31, 2003, to be remanded to jail.
However, at the last minute, Fulton County Judge Richard Giardino signed a new stay for Maxam. At that time, the Glens Falls city court judge David B. Krogmann announced in open court that Queensbury Town Court had lost Maxam's bail and didn't know where it was.
Maxam and her attorney, Theresa Suozzi of Saratoga Springs filed her appeal in September, 2004, raising 12 issues including numerous constitutional grounds for the convictions to be reversed and dismissed. In addition to the denial of counsel and a hearing conducted outside the presence of Maxam which violated her constitutional right to be present at all proceedings, other issues contained in Maxam's appeal included police, judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering by the Warren County Sheriff's Department, legal insufficiency, improper warrants and Fourth Amendment violations as well as violation of speedy trial rights and jurisdictional issues.
By the time the appeal was filed, the original special prosecutor in the case, Gary Hobbs, had been forced to leave the case, despite his objections, because he had been appointed a part-time judge in Glens Falls City Court. A new special prosecutor, Mary Moule, was appointed.
Last Christmas, on Dec. 20, 2004, Moule filed her response to Maxam's appeal, agreeing with the defense that the convictions and charges should be dismissed due to legal insufficiency and constitutionality, saying that the conduct complained of was not criminal and that the charges never should have been brought and prosecuted.
Three days after Moule's response was filed, Catena was mysteriously removed from the case with a backdated order and newly elected Warren County Court judge John S. Hall, with known conflicts of interest regarding Maxam, was appointed.
But rather than reverse the convictions and dismiss the charges as requested by the prosecution, Hall dragged his feet, allowing one of his campaign contributors, attorney Kurt Mausert to insist that his clients, the Lamberts and Becker, had standing to oppose the prosecution and defense. After Mausert delayed the case for nearly eight months, Hall finally ruled that Mausert, the Lamberts and Becker had no standing to intervene in the case---the same position that the People and defense had been arguing for eight months.
After the first four months of legal maneuvering by Mausert, even after Hall denied his request to file briefs in the matter, in April, 2005, Hall vacated the convictions but refused to dismiss the charges, ordering that Maxam be retried on the then seven year old charges.
Moule refused to prosecute and thereafter, Mausert and Hall were successful in removing Moule as special prosecutor. Thereafter, Hall appointed Marc Zuckerman, said to be renting office space from Hall for his legal office, to be the special prosecutor against Maxam.
But Zuckerman also refused to reprosecute Maxam, said that any prosecution was time barred, the charges were legally insufficient and agreeing with the defense and Moule that Maxam's speedy trial rights had been violated.
On Dec. 1, Zuckerman filed his request with Mills to dismiss all charges against Maxam and on Dec. 21, Mills signed the final order.
Three separate charges filed against the publisher in 2000 were dismissed in August by Mills for failure to prosecute and denial of Maxam's constitutional right to a speedy trial.
Thus far, the maliciously prosecuted, legally insufficient and unconstitutional Lambert/Becker complaints against Maxam have cost Warren County taxpayers over $200,000 and the matters are far from over. Civil litigation is already underway in the matter of three charges from 2000 which were dismissed in August on constitutional grounds and additional litigation will be forthcoming as a result of the established constitutional violations in the Lambert/Becker complaints.
In the meantime, Mausert tried unsuccessfully to block Moule being paid as a special prosecutor in the case, even threatening to file a criminal complaint against her if Moule billed the county for her legal services.
Moule was eventually paid despite Mausert's objections. http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/092505DisgruntledChester.html
12-23-05
© 2005 North
Country Gazette
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