Recommendations of the Special Prosecutor:
1. A no fault system for harm to parties/clients in the justice system.
Just as marriage were once fraught with each spouse attempting to prove some type of misconduct by the other, just as those involved in car accidents used to expend precious resources trying to show how the accidents had happened and who was at fault, my disciplinary case has shown how many resources we use in attempting to prove fault in ethics and misconduct matters for lawyers and judges.
When spouses had to go after each other, things got crazy, with people hiring private investigators to slink around and try to get audio or pictures of the other one doing wrong. Uh, remind you of anything? (I know that Lucy Wieland (or according to her, her husband) sent a private investigator to a press conference I held in December 2006, to get an audio of me speaking about her.) I attempted to obtain audio of cour hearings, literally for years, and got blocked, presumably because the people who had the authority to make the decision, were influenced by their own fear that if the audio got into my possession, that they would get in trouble.
Many of the “ethics” issues aren’t really ethics issues. They are attempts at preventing harm. Once the harm has occurred, punishing the person who someone believes violated a rule, can cause more harm. And, more to the point, it can distract those of us in the system who should be spending our time focusing on the customer of the courts – the clients.
A lof more could be said on this point; there is a lot more to figure out about how it would implement. But the recommendation is sound; it worked in the marriage and car accident arenas, and it could work for us.
2. Amnesty for all wrongdoers.
This is a big one, folks. I think that sometimes when people think about me, they place their own values onto me, assuming I think the same way about the world as they do. They see me through their own eyes. I am not a vindictive person. Sure, I get angry now and then and spew a bit. But I really am not driven by revenge. I kind of don’t even get it. I’m not saying I am better than those of you who spent (inordinate amount of) time thinking of ways to “get” someone who you think slighted you. I’m just saying I’m different. The up side of my way of thinking is that once done, it’s done. And if we can heal it, we can move past it.
I don’t have any desire to see any judges in jail, and I don’t even have any desire to see police officers in jail. Unless they have committed a violent act, most people do better with self-improvement (healing themselves from within) than they do with someone scolding them and making them give penance. As I said when I was talking about the Catholic church, we had to go throug this phase. Judges had to feel what it is like when you are the accused; when you are the one with the fear that your career could be over, that you could have your freedom taken away from you. It’s all been a great learning experience. Time to move on.
3. That said, we do need to expose what happened.
The fact that I am willing to move on doesn’t mean we are entirely done. We have a public to serve. And although some of you might be the unfortuante ones who are the “examples,” we do need to expose the evidence so that the public knows what is going on “back stage” in the courts.
The public can only help us fashion reform, if they first know what has happened.
I won’t hear anyone grouse about their reputations being tarnished by this process. After the humiliation I went through this past year, really, yours will be trivial. I paid the biggest price, and you all know it.
4. Establish a fund for those harmed.
People were harmed in the past decade. And people were harmed in the process. Rather than spending years litigation about fault, and because the defendants (from my estimation) are all or nearly all state employees (and the state has a duty to defend them, but also to pay annuities for those harmed by negligence), establish a fund much as that the State funded following the bridge collapse.
Although I would never compare our situation to that tragedy, there is allure in the notion that we could “cut to the chase,” acknowledge that people were harmed by accident (or, more precisely, because that was the way it had always been done) and that there should be compensation.
Minimal time could be spent assessing damages (and there are plenty of good mediators and special masters who could serve in that function), and we could spend our energy figuring out what to change so that it does not happen again.
I guess I need to realize that there may be some of you who think you can still go on the way you have been. I really don’t think that’s true. Denial is not a river in Egypt, and it attacks us all at times. If you are caught up in it, if you are still fighting because you think you can reclaim “the way things used to be,” I caution you.
First, consciousness, once raised, can never be “un”-raised. That’s something we learned in the 60’s.
Second, your public won’t allow it. Cetain insiders have been telling members of the public, for many, many years, essentially, that if they questioned judges, they were crazy or worse. Turns out, many of them were right, their suspicions justified, their concern warranted. So you owe it to them to consider that they had a point. And that they should be listened to better in the future.
Third, I think you’ll find, if you can slow down enough from the evidence creating and evidence destroying, that you have left a trail as wide as the Grand Canyon. What made me so irritating to system insiders, for many years, was my uncanny ability to first sense of
Jill Clark continues 