THREAT TO INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY

Governor Abbot wants to take away the Right of Texans to elect their Judges. 

He wants to take the power of our Political Parties to vet and appoint candidates, and our power to then vote for those candidates away from us and give it to himself. He has selected some Senators and Representatives, as well as some friends of his from the private sector, to assist him in achieving this objective. 

I’m urging my fellow citizens to do as I have done. Write to the members of the Commission he has formed and tell them that we will not surrender this essential feature of a civil society: AN INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY.

Follow this link to get the names of the members. And read my letter stating the reasons for my opposition to this idea. https://www.txcourts.gov/tcjs/members/

Dear Senators serving on the Texas Commission on Judicial Selection

I’m aware there are Judges in Texas that want to be Independent of the Voters. 

Rather than be Independent of the Executive Division of Government, and the Legislative Division to the extent they have a duty to insure Statutory Laws are Constitutional. 

Why do they want to be Independent of The Sovereign People of Texas, the Voters? Because the voters are the means by which We the People can keep the Judiciary – somewhat – Independent of the other powers of government. 

Our Judiciary is not what it should be. It is NOT independent. But the cure some Judges, and some others want, will only serve to make our Judiciary even LESS independent. 

Truth is (in my opinion) – It is not because of the election of our Judiciary that we are lacking in an Independent Judiciary. And it is not because of campaign contributions from private citizens. 

It is because of contributions, and endorsements, from PUBLIC citizens and their organizations. 

AND the other means utilized by those on the inside to oust from Judicial Office those who do not Judge in favor of those employed in positions of public trust or in favor of the entities in which they are employed. 

ON THE CLAIM CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS ARE CORRUPTING JUDGES OR GIVE THE APPEARANCE OF CORRUPTION

The excuse utilized by those that want to limit the accountability of Judges via partisan elections is the assertion that campaign contributions from private citizens and the attorneys operating in the private sectors have a corrupting influence. This can be cured with laws that limit or otherwise govern campaign contributions. 

ON THE MOTION FOR NON-PARTISAN ELECTION OF JUDGES: 

In my case; I was able to utilize the PARTY system to get the Judge who acted as a co-prosecutor to secure my conviction removed from office. 

HOW? The Republican party, his party, was in control at the time. So I helped challengers in the primary by working on the primary voters to insure his defeat BEFORE the general election. Senator Huffman might remember this. 

The political parties can, and should, vet the Judicial Candidates and review their Judicial Records. Make Judicial elections non-partisan and you eliminate this method of selecting competent candidates and holding the those elected to the Judiciary accountable. 

ON THE MOTION FOR EXECUTIVE (The Governor, or a panel selected by him) APPOINTING JUDGES TO THE BENCH: 

DEEP STATE ACTORS / AKA “PUBLIC SERVANTS” (bureaucrats, both elected and hired, whose career is dedicated to living off the public payroll) WANTS TO LIMIT THE ABILITY OF THE SEPARATION OF POWERS TO ACT AS A CHECK ON THEIR ACTIONS AND THEIR PERFORMANCE OF THEIR DUTIES !!!

Many of them consciously desire, and others desire without conscious awarness of their desire, a Government of ‘Government Employees, by Government Employees, for Government Employees’ to replace what has been intended to be a “Government of The People, by The People, and for The People“. 

They want to be our Titled Nobility with “We the people”, who generate tax revenue in via our activities in private sector, relegated to nothing more than their subjects who provide the royalties (taxes) that they can then live off of without working for. THE STATE is the new Monarch, replacing the King and those he titled as Nobles, under the Monarchies that pre-existed the modern State. 

It appears to me that all that has been proposed will only help to stregthen the influence deep state actors (IE; primarily those from the Executive Division from the Constable all the way up to the Governor) – already have on our Judiciary. And weaken the already limited ability the PRIVATE citizens have to counter it. 

Governor Abbott’s political career began in Houston, Harris County, during the same time that my business and career was destroyed. His started as a Prosecutor and used the influence of the DA office and Police Union to become a Judge. He is beholden to the Deep State more than he is to the voters for his success. He very much wants the power to appoint our Judges. I would expect no more Independence from his Judiciary than I would from Hitler’s Henchmen (a GREAT documentary on the Judiciary in Hitler’s Germany).

 Under the reign of Johnny Holmes and Chuck Rosenthal, when Abbott’s life on the public payroll began – the number of people on death row rose to where Texas had put more people on Death Row than ALL OTHER STATES COMBINED !! And HALF of those were from Harris County !!! We now know that many of them were innocence of any crime. Johnny Holmes and Chuck Rosenthal had every Judge in every criminal court in their realm, and the First and Fourteenth Court of Appeals, in their pocket. They attempted and eventually succeeded it getting the Appellate Court Justices that reversed my conviction removed. They caused their loss in the a later election. It did not matter if they were Demoract or Republican. The voters used the party system to clean the slate. Removed ALL of one party. Then removed ALL from that party. The only relief available was by means of a partisan vote. YES, some or maybe many “good”, experienced, judges were toss out with the bad. But the fault was with the parties for failing to be proactive AFTER the election to insure Judges maintained independence from Holmes and his gang of authoritarian thugs who thought they were “the law” – rather than our Constitutions and what the Legislature enacted. 

Search Results on Johnny Holms

Former DA ran powerful death-penalty machine – Houston …July 25, 2007 – Johnny Holmes, who was Harris County’s district attorney for 21 years, bluntly rebuffs critics who say his prosecutors were overzealous in seeking the death penalty.

I, personally, think it is good that Judges are forced back into the private sector on occassion before coming back into Judicial Office. I think we’d all be better off if Federal Judges had term limits or were required to take a break. 

THE SEPARATION OF POWERS is eroded when the power of the executive is involved – in any way – in the selection of our those who exercise the power of the Judiciary. 

The Judiciary’s primary role is to keep the power of the Executive, and all who act within that division of government, in check. So why would we allow the Fox to help select or have a say in who guards the chicken koop ?? 

The LEGISLATURE is supposed to be a check on the Judiciary and remove Judges who refuse to “preserve, protect, and defend our Constitution and Laws” from destruction by an Executive Division that treats the Law as a suggestion rather than a dictate from THE PEOPLE, via their Constitution and the Laws of their elected Representatives in our Legislative Division. But it has been a very long time since the Texas Legislature did their job. And the problem only became worse after they relegated this duty to the Commission on Judicial Conduct when “Justice for Sale in Texas” was exposed on the TV show 60 minutes in the early 1970’s. 

DISASTROUS RESULT OF OUR LACK OF

INDEPENDENT FEDERAL JUDICIARY –

Due to an system of Executive Branch Appointment

Hamilton’s intentions, as expressed in The Federalist Papers, were good. And his rational prevailed. He believed that a Judge that received a lifetime appointment to the bench would not be beholden to the Executive Branch. He was wrong. Appointed Judges remained loyal to the President that appointed them. And ambitious Judges appointed to be District Judge knew they were dependent on Presidential appointment for consideration to a seat on an Appellate Court or the Supreme Court. 

As a result our Federal Judiciary is NOT independent. The Federal Judiciary is responsible for the loss of Liberty we have suffered for over a generation now. Most today are too young to remember. There was a tremendous amount of social upheaval in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. President Nixon, elected in 1968, was determined to crush the civil rights movement with riots in cities across the nation, the anti-war movement, and the well organized radical left funded by the Soviets who were robbing guns from National Guard armories, kidnapping daughters of the elite, such as Patti Hearst, and converting them into bank robbers, inspiring riots that almost took over the Democrat National Convention in 1968, bombing buildings, and organizing huge protest on University campuses. One of which resulted in the death of 4 students at Kent State. 

Unknown until decades later; President Nixon, the Attorney General, and the Justice Department contacted police departments and district attorneys across the nation. They told them to arrest those involved in these movements WITHOUT PROBABLE CAUSE! And to deprive them of Due Process of Law in attempts to secure convictions. The Justice Department promised to do all it could to insure police and prosecutors involved would not suffer any consequences for their illegal, unconstitutional, violations of civil rights. 

As a result our Federal Courts across the nation were inundated with civil rights lawsuits from the victims. Partly to free their dockets, and partly out of loyalty to Nixon for their appointment, the Federal Courts developed the immunity doctrines. Government Immunity under the disguise of State Sovereign Immunity, Absolute Immunity for Judges and Prosecutors, and Qualified Immunity for police officers.

 It is the Federal Judiciary, appointed by Nixon and then by those who were upset by Nixon’s removal from Office, as well as others wanting to crush the various movements of the late 1960’s and early 70’s (anti-war, civil rights, as well as others considered ‘influence’ or supported in someway by Communist) who are responsible eliminating checks on our police establishment. As a result our incarceration rate began a rapid rise in the 1970’s and eventually became more than 10 times what it is in every other developed nation on this planet. It reached a point matched only by the Soviet Union before the rise stopped. It remains at a level that is an embarrassment to our Nation. 

It was those who were appointed to the Federal Bench during that time that restored “the Divine Rights of Kings” by replacing “The Rights of Man” with Government Immunity disguised under the euphemism of “Sovereign Immunity”. And so victims turned to seeking restitution directly from the employee rather than the employer. It was then that those appointees decreed that Prosecutors have absolute immunity. And those appointees that then decreed that police officers have qualified immunity. As a result many innocent citizens, such as myself, have been incarcerated and denied any restitution what-so-ever for the crimes they suffered at the hands of those in positions of public trust. 

All of the foregoing is the result of the lack of an INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY that Governor Abbott now wants to impose upon us in our State Judiciary !!!

Sure – there were some cases in history where government or government actors were given immunity. But it was NOT the “stare decisis” or “well established judicial precedent” that we have since then been led to believe. 

I pray that someday LIBERTY is restored to this Land. The RULE OF LAW will, once again, mean what is did. That is; that the LAW ruled over the actions of the government. Rather than government actors ruling arbitrarily and capriciously in the name of “order” at the sacrifice of the protection of the Law. 

And that JUSTICE will again have the meaning it had for centuries. Sir William Blackstone and Saint Thomas Acquinas BOTH defined Justice as “giving to each that which is due”. It meant FAIRNESS. It meant RESTITUTION and REMEDY. Today it’s meaning has been perverted to mean punishment. The more people are punished by government then the more justice has been served. That is not justice. That is a perversion of justice. 

Unfortunately. I don’t see how any of the changes proposed so far will advance this desire of mine in my lifetime. 

For your consideration, Ed H

For more see:

Informed Citizens & Citizens United 4 Accountable Government