Richard Fine – in Prison 7/31/09 Page 1 of 4

8/14/2019 Richard Fine in Prison 7/31/09 Page 1 of 4

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RICHARD FINE IN PRISON

7/31/09 Page 1 of 4

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FINE: Okay. The status of -- the status of my motion is that it is still pending. I filedthe motion on July 9th for -- as an emergency motion to be immediately let out of jail andto have the writ granted. As of the present time, there has been no opposition to themotion. In the District Court, there was not any opposition to my Petition for Writ ofHabeas Corpus. The Sheriff did not even respond to the Petition for Writ of HabeasCorpus, and the Superior Court and Judge Yaffe did not oppose anything in the Writ forHabeas Corpus. And in addition to that, neither of them certified why I was in jail. Thereis something that is very, very seriously wrong in this case.

DUTTON: The Sheriff filed, in his Motion to Dismiss. What was the outcome of that?

FINE: His Motion to Dismiss was denied on June 30th by Judge Walter, and Judge

Walter denied it as being moot.

DUTTON: So the Sheriff didn't certify why you were being held, having made a motionto dismiss, and Federal District Court Judge Walters said it was moot?

FINE: He said -- Yes, he -- he denied it as being moot after he ended up denying mywrit. So basically we had the situation that the Sheriff did not answer -- the Sheriff didnot answer the Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus. And did not certify why I was here.

DUTTON: Now, for our viewers' sake, a Writ of Habeas Corpus is basically -- it'spresumed that it will be granted unless the respondent can demonstrate otherwise, that

you should remain in custody.

FINE: Well, that's correct. The law says -- and the law is 28 United States CodeSection 2243 says that when the writ is filed, the judge either has to do one of two things:He either has to grant it immediately or he has to enter what is called an Order to ShowCause ordering the respondents -- which in this case was the Sheriff -- to show cause whythe writ should not be granted, unless for some reason the writ itself is just totally fails.In my case, the writ didn't fail and the judge ordered the Sheriff to show cause why thewrit should not be granted. Instead, what the Sheriff did is, the Sheriff moved to havehimself be dismissed as the respondent, or in the alternative, have the District Attorney --have the Superior Court answer. And what happened is that Judge Walter ended up

denying that motion, and the Sheriff never answered or certified why I was being held.The Superior Court came in and they never certified why I was being held, and they neverended up showing cause why I should -- why the writ should not be granted.

DUTTON: And were they -- was the Superior Court and Judge Yaffe a party to thisWrit of Habeas Corpus?


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FINE: No. Actually, they were not. The only party to the Writ of Habeas Corpus wasthe Sheriff. The -- so they were not a party, but they could be called what is called RealParties in Interest, but they were never named as that by the Sheriff, and when they cameinto the case, they never applied to be named to intervene in the case or to be named as aparty. So they actually were strangers to the case.

DUTTON: Now, from a legal standpoint, does that make their arguments of anyconsequence, if they don't have standing?

FINE: Well, it makes their argument of no consequence, but had they intervened, theycould have achieved some type of a standing. But even if they had achieved the standing,then they would have had to respond with reasons why the writ should not be granted,

and they never did that. And also, they would have had to have ended up certifying as towhy I should -- why I was being held, which they also didn't do, and also they would havehad to have produced the entire record of the contempt case, which they also did not do.

DUTTON: Now, there have been reports of judicial abuse of the contempt of courtcases, instances where some people have been held in jail for decades. Do you see thisbreakdown of the court not following the United States Code as an abuse?

FINE: Oh, there's absolutely no question. In my particular case, there's no question thatit's an abuse because the Code has specific rules as to what is supposed to happen, and inmy case, they broke every one of the rules. You could go -- go right down the Code -- I

won't enumerate them all here -- but you can go right down the Code as to each rule thatwas supposed to take place and they broke them rule by rule by rule.

DUTTON: What is the recourse now? What is your recourse?

FINE: My recourse is to be in the Ninth Circuit, and that's where I have gone, and in anormal situation, when you make a motion -- in the normal situation, when you make amotion in the Ninth Circuit and there's no opposition, your motion is grantedimmediately. And so that's the next problem that we have here is that I have the motionin the Ninth Circuit; there's been no opposition, and we're sitting -- I've been sittingaround waiting for almost a month now.

DUTTON: Is it con- --

FINE: This is a very, very strange part.

DUTTON: Is it conceivable that there is, like, a code of silence here among the judgesto just keep you imprisoned without allowing the case to go forward as prescribed bylaw?


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FINE: Well, I think it's more than conceivable. Actually, in my papers, I called it acode of protection. Because what we have in this particular case is that with respect tothe Superior Court, you have criminal activity that has occurred, and that's not myviewpoint. That's actually the viewpoint of the legislature of the governor because theypassed Senate Bill SBX2 11, which gave the Superior Court immunity from criminalprosecution. So the governor and the legislature has said that the payments that JudgeYaffe got and that what every other judge got from the County are criminal. So you havecriminal activity that has taken place. And now you have the District Court going in andprotecting these judges from being prosecuted for this criminal activity, because my Writof Habeas Corpus goes in and says that these judges took -- engaged in criminal activityby having taken these illegal payments, and therefore they can't sit on either the

underlying case or the contempt case. And so what the District Court did is, the DistrictCourt then broke federal law by denying my writ. And now we're up in the Ninth Circuitand the Ninth Circuit is sitting on my motions and delaying, which basically means thatthey're going along with what the District Court has done, which is effectively notprosecuted the Superior Court judges for having taken the illegal payments. That's whatit really comes down to.

DUTTON: Okay. Well, we're going to release this update on the internet very shortly,and we will have it transcribed so people can download it from our website, and we aretrying to reach the legal counsel for the Sheriff -- that's Mr. Aaron Fontana -- and thenwe're going to reach Kevin McCormick from Ventura, California, who represented the

Court and Judge Yaffe, and ask them why they refused to certify the reasons that youwere being held in jail. And we're going to try to get a statement, if we can, from theDistrict Court, because of Judge Walter's denying the writ and denying the Sheriff'sMotion to Dismiss as Moot. So is there any last comment you'd like to make before wemove on with this report?A

FINE: Yeah, I think my last comment is that recently, the United States Supreme Court,in the case of Caperton versus Massey Coal Company, came down and said that when ajudge gets a large payment into his campaign committee, and the person who gave thepayment is coming up in front of him with a case, that the judge has to recuse himself. Soin our case -- or in my case -- what you have is, you have a judge having gotten an illegal

payment and refused to recuse himself, so my case is even worse than what the SupremeCourt has just decided as being the duties of the judge. So we know that what ishappening here is really horrific, and it is affecting over 1600 Superior Court judgesacross California, a number of Appellate Court judges, and a minimum of four of theseven California Supreme Court justices, and another two Supreme Court Justices thatwrote the legislation that gave them the retroactive immunity. So this is a major, majorproblem in the California Judicial System, which has basically overturned and wrecked


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the entire California Judicial System and which has denied 38 million people access tothe courts and has denied them a fair judicial system.

DUTTON: Okay. Well, thank you very much. Just one last question: Are youprepared to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get your release from jail?

FINE: Absolutely. I've already gone to the Supreme Court with respect to thedisbarment, which is dealing with exactly the same issue that we're dealing with here. SoI'm prepared to go all the way up and do what is ever -- what is ever necessary to curethese problems in our dysfunction judicial system.

DUTTON: Now, we know that you are in solitary confinement and that we are -- at

least can talk to you from this phone in your jail cell. What access do you have to thelegal documents and to the records? How are you --

FINE: What access? The -- the so-called law library at the jail does not have really anyaccess to Federal Reporters or anything else. They have some access to, you know, tosome cases and things, but all of those things are on the disks, are on disks, and there isn'treally any way to go in and trace them in the normal way that one does legal research. Sobasically everything that I have -- that I do really has to come off of memory or off ofdocuments that come in to me from the people that work with me.

DUTTON: Okay. Well, thank you very much for this explanation and update. We're

going to get this out as soon as possible. Thank you.

Richard Fine – in Prison 7/31/09 Page 1 of 4

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