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It's
Harvest Time...
(News for
12/22/04)
Summary: This update discusses government marriage and an activist
judiciary that ignores law and common sense, shocking
admissions regarding involuntary commitment abuse, property
confiscation without due process, state abuse of families, and
November's election mishaps.
Topics:
1. Judge Grants Rights to Homosexual Partner...
Despite Amendment 3
2. State Contractor's Shocking Admission as to
Dramatic Rise in Involuntary Commitments
3. SLC Confiscation Thugs Settle Over Tortilla
Factory Brutality
4. Legislative Audit: No Evidence for Removal
of Bierly Children
5. Utah's Election Mishaps
1. Judge Grants Rights
to Homosexual Partner... Despite Amendment 3
On December 7, third district
court judge Timothy Hanson granted visitation rights to, and
required child support from, a non-birth partner. The former
couple in question were joined under a Vermont "same sex"
union arrangement. One partner, Cheryl Barlow, decided to end
the arrangement and has sought sole legal and physical
custody.
As predicted in our
analysis of Constitutional Amendment 3, judges can twist
the law, ignore Amendment 3, and rule according to their
personal persuasions. This particular judge stretched "in loco parentis" (essentially the concept where the person is
considered equivalent to being a parent) as follows:
"The court sees no legal
reason to discriminate in applying the doctrine… to a couple
who are in a committed lesbian relationship. The
heterosexual or homosexual relationship between the two
adults is irrelevant to the doctrine of in loco parentis."
Source: "Judge says
girl is better off with two mothers," Elizabeth Neff,
Salt Lake Tribune, 12/8/2004.
In other words, this judge is
attempting to grant equal status and rights to non-birth
partners in relationships — be those partners heterosexual or
homosexual.
Dangerous precedents like these
are commonplace in Utah courtrooms. Amendment 3 proponents
are particularly up in arms over this ruling. But they,
including Barlow’s attorney, Frank Mylar, also a legal advisor
for "Yes! For Marriage", were given ample notice that there
were fatal flaws in their approach.
We also warned Mylar specifically
that it is possible for natural birth parents like Ms. Barlow
to actually lose rights under Amendment 3, rather than gain
rights.
For more information on judicial
reform, see our discussion of the recent, so-called
retention elections for judges, and the
Judicial
Reform section of our Issues & Alerts page.
Back to Topics
2. State Contractor's
Shocking Admission as to Dramatic Rise in Involuntary
Commitments
The pseudo-governmental
organization, Valley Mental Health (VMH), has seen a 48% rise
in involuntary commitments this year (366 versus 247 in the
same time frame last year). VMH is the state government’s
largest contract "mental health provider." The
widely-recognized cause:
Senate Bill
(SB) 27S3 by Sen. Leonard Blackham (Republican), passed by the legislature in the 2003
session.
As we repeatedly warned, persons
forced into commitment receive neither justice, nor due
process. Currently under Utah law, when you are merely accused
of mental illness, you can be involuntarily committed to a
mental institution. Your fate is decided by a judge or his
appointed commissioner, and you will likely contend with the
"professional" opinion of state-funded psychiatrists. You have
no right to a trial by jury, you do not have to commit a
crime, and you have little recourse if committed. Once
committed, you have fewer rights than a convicted felon. You
may be subjected to mind altering drugs and other experimental
"treatments," and the length of your incarceration is
determined by the same judges or commissioners.
SB 27S3 made it easier for these
unjust court proceedings to commit people against their will
by, among other things, eliminating the current "immediate"
standard of protection. SB 27S3 utilized a looser definition
called "substantial danger." As we warned, SB 27S3 was poorly
written, vague and open-ended, and can be used to commit just
about anyone for just about any reason.
See our
2003 Legislative
Performance Report to see how your legislators voted on SB
27S3.
Jim Whear, chief operating
officer for Valley Mental Health, stated:
"Depending on the situation,
it's not good for anyone to get scooped up and have their
rights taken away and put in a hospital against their will.
It sometimes puts the mental health center in an adversarial
position with the client. We become the enforcer."
Source: "Involuntary commitments rise: Law has had an impact
on the state’s largest mental health provider," Amy Joi
Bryson, Deseret News, 11/15/04.
From the same article, Whear
also made the following shocking admission:
"It does meet an immediate
community need. For those who are very ill, who cannot make
decisions for themselves, it is helpful to get them into a
stabilizing environment… For 70 to 80 percent, it is
helpful. In the rest of the cases it is harmful and
expensive." [emphasis added]
Whear is suggesting that 20-30
percent of the people who are involuntarily committed to their
facilities are harmed! That would equate to between 73 and 110
people out of the 366 that VMH has "treated" this year!
Imagine if you, or someone you love, is one of those people,
locked in a mental institution with no way out.
But Vicki Cottrell, executive
director for the Utah branch of the so-called National
Alliance for the Mentally Ill, doesn’t seem too ruffled about
those harmed. She stated: "I do think it is working."
Success
appears to depend upon one's particular agenda. For more information on this
ongoing battle, see the
Mental Health section of our Issues &
Alerts page. For more information on the importance of
trials by jury, see our
Issue in Focus: Why Are Jury Trials Crucial to Your
Freedom?"
Back to Topics
3. SLC Confiscation
Thugs Settle Over Tortilla Factory Brutality
In 1997, a combination of seven
federal, state, and local police agencies stormed the
Panaderia La Diana (a tortilla factory) in Salt Lake City
under the guise of a drug raid. Seven years later, Salt Lake
City is paying $290,000 to 19 plaintiffs on the receiving end
of that raid.
Accountability Utah investigator
Terry Trease visited the business after the incident and spoke
with a representative of the factory. He claimed that he called
police and asked them to come and curtail the drug dealing
that was going on outside his restaurant. The police came and
he naively gave them a tour of the factory. He told Trease that he believes the police were
actually casing the factory (via the "tour") to determine whether they wanted to seize it.
Within days of the tour, seven
police agencies stormed the factory. During the raid, the
factory owner, Rafael Gomez,
asserted that he was hit in the face and knocked to the floor,
his secretary was dragged to the floor by her hair,
approximately 80 of his customers, including children and
pregnant women, were roughly handcuffed and forced to remain
on the floor for several hours.
Trease observed a 4-inch hole in one of
the doors the police had apparently shotgunned through. There was no
lock on it. A second door, going to an office, was also shot
off, nearly taking the hand of the secretary inside with it. Again, it was
apparently unlocked. The tour gave Trease the impression that
the police officers had carelessly put innocent people in
danger.
The
result of this raid? Two bottles of the painkiller Darvon and
two bottles of penicillin were supposedly found in the
building.
And what of the officers who
perpetrated this violence? As far as we know, none of them
have been disciplined or charged with any crime. To add insult
to injury, the legislature has rewarded these agents and
agencies with the following legislation:
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Senate Bill (SB) 175S2 by sen.
Chris Buttars, passed in the 2004 session, effectively
repealed Citizens Initiative B, passed by 69% of Utah voters
in 2000. Police will again be allowed to profit from property
confiscated from innocent owners, destroying due process of
law. Under SB 175, forfeitures are again authorized and
encouraged to be performed at the federal level, where
property owners are presumed to be guilty, and are denied
justice.
See our
2004 Legislative
Performance Report for more details and to see how your
legislators voted. Also see a
detailed analysis of SB 175S2, and
the
Property Rights section of our Issues & Alerts page.
Companion legislation to SB
175S2 diminishes or eliminates accountability for brutal acts
committed by public officers:
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SB 55S1 by sen. Leonard Blackham
(Republican), passed in the 2004 session, shields government
employees who engage in these types of abusive activities from
personal liability.
See page 4 of our
2004 Legislative
Performance Report for more details and to see how your
legislators voted.
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SB 225S1 by sen. Leonard
Blackham (Republican), passed in the 2003 session, severely
limits damages against government agencies that perpetrate
this kind of abuse.
See page 4 of our
2003 Legislative
Performance Report for more details and to see how your
legislators voted.
Unfortunately, too many
officials like senators Chris Buttars and Leonard Blackham
have been returned to office by
citizen enablers, where they can continue to
promote this type of corruption and destruction of your most basic rights.
Additional source: "Hard
justice," Editorial, Salt Lake Tribune, 11/30/2004.
Back to Topics
4. Legislative Audit:
No Evidence for Removal of Bierly Children
After years of trivializing the
rape of innocent Utah families, a Utah legislative audit has
taken a baby step toward confirming what we have been telling
you all along: DCFS is out of control. The audit can cite no evidence for the forced removal of Jordan
and Leigh Bierly.
In 2003, we provided the public
and officials with an
extensive report on the irregularities and abuses
perpetrated against the Bierly family. As Accountability Utah
is not a jury, we do not pretend to know all of the
particulars of every case we profile. However, we believe we
can recognize when basic rights and decency have been
violated, and this case provides a horrific case study of
that.
The audit is weak, and fails to
expose and adequately criticize a long history of evidence
that we believe clearly shows malicious mind games, deceit,
and fraud perpetrated by DCFS against this family.
The children, in particular,
have been put at significant risk. Jordan, a brittle diabetic,
was nearly killed by medically-unskilled caretakers, and both
have been bounced around in the system through nearly a dozen
different providers. In 2002, soon-to-be-ex-House Speaker
Marty Stephens apparently agreed to conduct a legislative
audit of the Bierly case . As is
typical with corrupt officials who cover for each other, the
audit was not completed until after Jordan and Leigh had been
adopted out. Adoption decreases the chances of ever being
returned to their home.
We have been dismayed at the
number of people who have turned a stubborn, blind eye to
blatant abuses and who choose to rely upon hearsay and
innuendo (typically from government bureaucrats and complicit
media outlets) to form their opinions as to the guilt or
innocence of their fellow citizens.
Too many citizens still prefer
to spend their energies making excuses for indecent officials
in government who deny their neighbors basic due process. Too
few citizens respect the notion advanced by the founders of
our nation that people are to be presumed and treated as
innocent until they are convicted by a jury of their peers of
a legitimate crime.
For more information on the
fatal weaknesses of these citizens, see our
Issue in Focus: "How Citizens Enable Political
Corruption". Source: "Audit: DCFS
removal of 2 children flawed," Kirsten Stewart, Salt Lake
Tribune, 12/2/2004.
For more information, see the
Parental & Family Rights section of our Issues & Alerts
page.
Back to Topics
5. Utah's Election
Mishaps
Were you aware that Utah County
dropped 33,000 ballots from the total number of ballots? Had
private citizens been asleep, those ballots likely would not
have been counted prior to certification of the election
results.
Utah County elections
coordinator Kristen Swensen stated:
"The card readers were fine;
it was just the way it was programmed initially. It was just
off by one letter."
Source: "33,000 ballots
lost in shuffle," Dan Harrie & Mark Eddington, Salt Lake
Tribune, 11/13/04.
Utah County information systems
director Neil Peterson stated:
"It was a simple problem, but
a little tricky to find. The readers worked fine, everything
worked like it was supposed to. It was a setup mistake by
our programming team that sets up the election."
Source: "Utah County
votes counted incorrectly," Tad Walch, Deseret News,
11/14/04.
It takes a programming team? Who
monitors this "team"? Are they skilled enough about
programming to oversee what was programmed? Obviously not in
this case.
As we warned in our
election
analysis and described in our
2003 Fraud Advisory, the entire State of Utah has an even more disturbing
problem: There is no way for citizens to verify that the
election results are, in any way, secure or accurate. In order
to believe the election results, citizens must rely solely
upon the word of officials like the two quoted above.
Reminiscent of third world
elections, the
very elected officials whose names are on the ballot, and who stand
to lose money, influence, and their jobs, govern the entire,
secretive process.
Grand County officials have also forwarded numerous complaints
regarding their electronic voting machines. One of the many
problems is that there is not a paper ballot of any sort to
verify the accuracy of the machines.
Source: "Voting machines
aren't a hit in Grand County," Carrie Switzer, Deseret News,
11/29/2004.
Finally, citizens in Salt Lake
County reported that pencils were not provided for in many
Salt Lake County voting booths so that voters could write in
candidates. We wonder whether this oversight would have
happened if mayoral candidate Ellis Ivory had remained a
write-in candidate.
We hope citizens are growing
tired of shady elections. If you are in this situation,
familiarize yourself with the reforms we believe must
take place before elections can again be considered legitimate. For more information, see the
Voting/Elections section of
our Issues & Alerts page.
Back to Topics
Accountability Utah
recipe: Take our information and opinion, research their
information and opinion (if it is available), and then examine
the law and draw your own conclusions. If you have
comments or suggestions, please email us at
info@accountabilityutah.org.
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