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Warren County Court Judge John S. Hall is an icon.
No, not one which personifies reverence and respect, more like the buffoon-type.
He's quickly become known as a judge who is rendering decisions with total disregard for the Constitution and ignorance of even basic concepts of law.
John S. Hall personifies every favorable argument against judicial immunity.
He should be stripped of his robes and banished from the bench before he violates the rights of any more defendants and causes any more illegal incarcerations.
 In yet another case, a conviction and ruling of Judge John S. Hall has been reversed because he doesn't know the law, because he shouldn't be a judge. Time and time again, he has ignored established constitutional law, established statutory law and seems to make it up as he goes along.
On Thursday, the Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court reversed the felony sexual abuse conviction of a Warrensburg man because John Hall didn't give a prospective juror the "expurgatory oath", asking him if he could be fair in the case. Hall also allowed prohibited hearsay medical evidence into the trial which the appellate court ruled must be omitted from any retrial.
http://www.courts.state.ny.us/reporter/3dseries/2006/2006_09964.htm
Good ole John Hall, defendants are constitutionally guaranteed a fair trial but it's becoming increasingly evident that many aren't getting one in any proceeding before Hall. His reversal rate is steadily increasing and he's becoming a laughingstock. Perhaps part of the problem is his court attorney, Robert Smith.
Maybe Hall's in some kind of a perverted contest with Rensselaer County district attorney Patricia DeAngelis to see how many reversals they can rack up.
In July, he was reversed for denying a defendant his due process rights. http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/070206HallVacated.html
In November, the gun conviction against Queensbury activist and constitutionalist Von Lindahl was reversed because Hall had refused to dismiss the indictment against Lindahl after Lindahl argued that he had been denied his constitutional right to appear before the grand jury. Hall was wrong. Lindahl knows the Constitution better than Hall and it's not just a historical document, it's a living document. http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/102706GunConviction.html
Lindahl had already served 20 months of the sentence imposed by Hall before the conviction was overturned.
In the case of Warrensburg resident Cale Carpenter, on trial for first degree sexual abuse of an 8 year-old girl and endangering the welfare of a child, a prospective juror made statements during jury selection that cast serious doubt on his ability to be impartial and thereafter, he didn't give an unequivocal assurance of impartiality. The district attorney's office even conceded this point in their response brief. When asked whether he could be impartial, the juror responded, "the more I think about it, no", adding, "I've got little ones". The defense had exhausted its peremptory challenges and Hall denied the defense's challenge for cause. The appellate court found Hall's denial to dismiss the juror to be reversible error and ordered a retrial.
Carpenter has already served 17 months of the sentence imposed by Hall.
Public officers in Warren County seem to have a problem with any oath and it's been demonstrated time and time again fairness and impartiality is hard to find in Warren County court rulings.
Hall is at odds with the Warren County district attorney's office with sentencings, the public defender's office and many defense attorneys. Defendants whose constitutional rights he's trampled on demand that he be removed from the bench. Voters and taxpayers should be irate that his repeated reversals and apparent lack of knowledge of the law is causing cases to be retried at double the cost and setting the county up for liability claims.
Is Hall protected by judicial immunity? Does he have carte blanche to ignore the law, ignore the Constitution, improperly convict and wrongfully incarcerate individuals? No.
Many eyes are upon a lawsuit recently filed in Texas by an attorney who alleges that a district judge had him improperly removed from her courtroom and detained in a holding cell. The attorney has sued District Court Judge Lauri Blake for false imprisonment.
The attorney was trying to enter an exhibit into evidence which the judge obviously didn't want admitted into the record and for which the attorney had already submitted for identification. When he protested that the exhibit had already been marked for identification, she ordered him removed to a holding cell and told him that when he decided he "had good manners", he could return to the courtroom.
He claims she had no jurisdiction and that she is protected by absolute immunity.
And that is absolutely wrong.
Jurisdiction---that's something that seems to be foreign to judges across the country. Raise a jurisdictional issue and they'll pass by it, claiming that because they're wearing a black dress and carry a big gavel, that the law is what they say it is, not as it is written. The issue of jurisdiction is one most abused and ignored by today's judiciary but then of course in most town and village courts, and even in county courts like Hall's, they have no concept of jurisdiction and believe that they can handle any case they wish. Judicial independence, you know?
Judges have become corrupted with power and as evinced by the cries which are becoming louder and stronger across the nation which are demanding judicial accountability for the growing number of wrongful and illegal judicial acts, often done outside of jurisdiction. Charges of judicial tyranny are gaining strength in numbers.
Naturally the Texas judge and her attorney are claiming that she has absolute immunity, saying that she can do whatever she likes. Her attorney asserts that judges have immunity even if their actions are wrong and even if the judge has acted outside their jurisdiction. He's wrong.
No profession or job title should have that type of unreined power, certainly not judges. Can you imagine the chaos that would create if doctors, accountants, mechanics were held immune from their negligence and wrongful acts; a doctor couldn't be found negligent if he mistakenly cut off your arm when he was supposed to be removing your tonsils?
Judges should be no different.
It is well-established case law that in order to claim judicial immunity, a judge must first have jurisdiction and one of the basic principles to claiming jurisdiction is to be able to claim that you have title to the judicial office.
Not only are public officers required to both take and file their constitutional oath of office but many public officers, including some judges, are required to file a bond or undertaking indemnifying the town against loss for misconduct or malfeasance in office. The courts have consistently held that if there is no oath filed, the official cannot claim title to the office and that ignorance of the law or oversights are not an excuse. http://www.northcountrygazette.org/articles/050706VoidDecision.html
New York State law specifically provides that every public officer must take and file a constitutional oath of office within 30 days of the commencement of their term and failure to do so constitutes a refusal to serve and vacancy in the office by operation of law. No court challenge is necessary, the position is automatically vacant.
NYS law mandates that state officers take and file their oath of office in the Secretary of State's office within 30 days of the commencement of their term or they automatically vacate that office by operation of law and the vacancy must be filled by the Governor. State Appellate Courts have consistently held that there is no remedy under the law and that there can be no nunc pro tunc filings---now for then-or retroactive filing.
In a 1998 formal opinion on the issue, requested by Jonathan Lippman, then the state's chief administrative judge, the state attorney general's office ruled that "before public officers, including justice of the Supreme Court, undertake the duties of their office, they must take the required oath of office" and subscribe to it, citing the New York State Constitution, Article XIII, Section 1.
James Alfini, president and dean of South Texas College of Law and a judicial ethics expert affirms, contrary to some opinion, that judges don't have unlimited power. As an example, he cites the 5-4 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Pulliam v. Allen (1984) in which the majority concluded that judicial immunity is not a bar to prospective injunctive relief against a judicial officer acting in her judicial capacity. The ruling affirmed a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judgment allowing an award of attorney's fees against a judge. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=466&invol=522
An article in the Cato Journal by Robert Craig Water entitled "Judicial Immunity v. Due Process: When Should a Judge Be Subject to Suit", states that the immunity doctrine is at odds both with American legal history and the Constitution.
"Congress never intended to except state judges from suit when it passed the 1871 Civil Rights Act. Moreover, the judiciary is wrong when it asserts that immunity was a settled doctrine incorporated into the 1871 act by implication. To the contrary, the doctrine in its present form did not exist in the U.S. or England when the civil rights legislation was passed in 1871. Moreover, the immunity doctrine is inconsistent with the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Even if the doctrine did exist in common law, constitutional supremacy dictates that it must bow before the American idea of a procedural justice embodied in the guarantee of due process. http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj7n2/cj7n2-13.pdf
The Texas attorney cites a 2004 decision by the 14th Court of Appeals in Twilligear v. Carrell in which the court held that "judges acting in their official judicial capacity have immunity from liability and suit for judicial acts performed within the scope of their jurisdiction.
www.14thcoa.courts.state.tx.us/opinions/HTMLOpinion.asp?OpinionID=80001
Ah, there's that word again, jurisdiction. No jurisdiction, no immunity the courts have ruled. http://www.caught.net/prose/immunity.htm
"This immunity extends to actions that are done in error, maliciously and even in excess of the judge's authority. It is overcome only for actions that are non-judicial, i.e. not taken in the judge's official capacity or taken in the complete absence of all jurisdiction.
In Twilligear, the dependent administratrix of an estate sued past and current county judges for failing to require a sufficient bond for a guardian ad litem. The Houston appeals court ruled that the judges' actions were judicial acts and reversed the probate court's denial of their motion for summary judgment.
The decision found that non-judicial acts can include tasks that are essential to the functioning of courts and required by law that judges perform, such as selecting jurors, promulgating and enforcing a code of conduct for attorneys and making personnel decisions regarding court employees.
The attorney's argue will center on the judge trying to enforce a code of conduct when she had him removed for "bad manners".
In another instance regarding judicial immunity, if a judge requires the posting of bail by persons charged in criminal court with offenses for which they cannot be jailed or in a situation for which he has no jurisdiction, such as a town judge setting bail in case before an appeals court as Queensbury town justice Michael Muller did in a First Amendment case in 2000, the judge will not be given judicial immunity. In that Muller has been named as a defendant in a federal civil rights claim, upon losing the case, he will be forced to pay the plaintiff's attorney's fees and court costs pursuant to Pulliam. Muller has an additional problem in that he had no jurisdiction to act as a town justice in the 1998 harassment case which took seven years to wind through the state courts at taxpayer expense as he had failed to file his oath of office and bond as required by law and had vacated the office as a matter of law. There are other jurisdictional issues in the case as well which Muller consistently refused to address.
The convictions in that case were also reversed by an appellate court and ultimately dismissed, all at a substantial cost to the taxpayer and an even greater cost, financially, emotionally and professionally, to the defendant. A court decision found that Muller had acted without jurisdiction in not only setting bail in the case following the convictions but then arbitrarily increasing it.
Warren County Court Judge John Hall and his "judicial acts" need to be placed under a microscope. There's already been some alleged violations of the state's Code of Judicial Misconduct and perhaps more review and complaints are warranted. While New York State doesn't have a provision for recall, Hall is a perfect example of why it should be implemented.
And no, just because he's wearing a black dress doesn't mean he's absolutely immune. All it takes for a class action suit is three plaintiffs. Considering that Hall has already racked up more than three reversals, made some rulings that have already been proven outside of his jurisdiction and has established a history in his short judicial career of violating constitutional rights, Warren County could make history.
Hall was the first Democrat in many years to be reelected to the bench in Warren County, the county would be well served for him to be the first one to be removed. 12-29-06
© 2006 North
Country Gazette
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