My website proves I am a bad person
There are many excellent examples of how the justice system is broken in our country. Unfortunately, I have a terrific example that just happened to me. (“Terrific” has the same root word as “terror”.) The lawyers for the ARDC printed portions of my website and want to use those portions as exhibits (evidence) at the hearing. There are at least four unbelievable problems with this.
First, the law prohibits the ARDC lawyers from introducing portions of documents unless the document includes everything necessary to understand the document. In other words, the ARDC lawyers cannot take things out of context. The ARDC lawyers have selectively plucked some statements and documents from this website, removed them from the larger context, and changed the meaning of the statements. This is the first page of the portions they plan to use, and you can compare their document with the parts of my website that they did not choose to include. (Inexplicably, some of the pages are from 2003 and 2004.)
Second, the law prohibits the ARDC lawyers from last-minute surprises. The hearing is two days from now, but the ARDC is springing this on me at the last minute. It is even more absurd than that. Because it is unfair to bring up “last-minute” surprises, in January 2012, the ARDC chairman prevented me from introducing any evidence at the hearing that is taking place in June 2012. Yes, you are correct: the ARDC chairman ruled that unless I gave more than six months notice about my evidence to the ARDC lawyers, then it would be unfair to the ARDC lawyers. The ARDC lawyers, however, are giving me less than 48-hours of notice.
Third, every lawyer has an ethical duty to follow the law and the rules of evidence. In the first issue, the ARDC lawyers know that they may only introduce a document if the document is complete enough to be fair. If a lawyer attempts to introduce an incomplete document and that lawyer knows that it is unfairly taken out of context, then it is unethical. In the second issue, the ARDC lawyers claimed they would be prejudiced and that it would be unfair if I were allowed to introduce evidence at the hearing in June 2012 because I did not tell them about the evidence before January 2012. If that claim is untrue, and they merely made that claim as a tactic to “win”, then it is unethical. (No one ever “wins” in law. If an issue is in court, everyone has already lost.) In other words, attempting to use this portion of my website is almost certainly unethical even if I do not object to it.
Fourth, and this is the most disgusting part, the job of the ARDC lawyers that did this is to make sure that lawyers in Illinois act ethically. If these ARDC lawyers act unethically, who would be in charge of investigating the possible unethical behavior? The same ARDC lawyers.
None of this really matters, however. I do not have the power to change things at the ARDC, virtually no one knows what has happened (nearly all of the “visitors” to my website are search-engine-computers storing my website for searches, and nearly all of the humans visiting my website work at the ARDC), and if the whole world did suddenly know everything that has happened, it is nearly certain that nothing would change because I am not a “sympathetic defendant”. (Technically, I am not a defendant, I am a respondent.) Most people do not care if an innocent person was held in jail at Guantanamo Bay, for example, because someone accused of being a terrorist (just accused, not proveD) is not a sympathetic defendant. Rosa Parks, on the other hand, was a sympathetic defendant and it was much easier for people to demand justice for her.
26 June 2012: Today, the ARDC lawyers emailed me an “Amended exhibit“. It has different set of pages from my website, but it still has the same problems as before.
