From a post @ iraeinhorn.blogspot.com... presented to you on this day of celebration, honor and mourning. 420 is one of the most memorable dates on the calendar, and let us take a moment to pray for peace, and another moment to read why All Ira Einhorn exists.
AN AMERICAN TRAVESTY
By Ira Einhorn
“WHERE LAW ENDS, TYRANNY BEGINS”
John Locke
SUMMARY
I did not kill Holly Maddux, on September 12th of 1977 as four people, including two Philadelphia police detectives, saw her alive, six months after her alleged death in September. The attempted suppression of this information by Assistant DA Barbara Christie, set the tone for my treatment by the entire Pennsylvania police and judicial system.
The total thrust of the prosecution’s case has been focused on the September 12th date for over thirty years. Thus the failed attempt to suppress eyewitness data, that obviously contradicted their case, forced the judicial system into a series of lies in order to maintain my guilt.
Below you will find a detailed, but not inclusive presentation of the constitutional violations committed to obtain a guilty verdict and make it stick, by refusing to look at what has been done in the name of ‘justice’.
I will also mention a few other issues.
The on-going violation of my basic constitutional rights began on Day 2 of my confrontation with the Commonwealth when the present DA of Philadelphia, Lynne Abraham, then a magistrate, signed a poisonous second warrant, based on an illegal general search allowing the police to seize over ten thousand (10,000) pages of personal diaries – material protected by the blood spilled in our American Revolution and the 1st, 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution.
They also took, for no apparent legal reason, every other piece of paper in my apartment.
This treasonous process of abrogating the law has been reinforced by a continuing attempt to defame my character and erase my history, aided by behavior, described below, that is unique in American judicial history.
To take 10,000 pages of personal diaries, under the bond of a warrant, then to hand them over to a journalist who uses them for hiss own monetary gain, paying off the DA who released them, Edward Rendell, now the Governor of Pennsylvania, by his jaundiced use of such material, has no parallel in American judicial history. While this process was underway, Ronald Castille, the present Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, took over responsibility in the DA’s office.
I was convicted by media opinion manufactured by the illegal seizure and release of my journals. A created opinion that a court just rubber stamped.
THE ISSUES
1. Assistant D.A. Barbara Christie withheld exculpatory evidence and treated the forensics in the case – the heart of any murder case – as if she had written the law.
2. The Pennsylvania legislature ignored the very basis of our constitutional structure to pass the unconstitutional Einhorn Law.
3. Ex-Assistant DA Joel Rosen tried to insure conviction by having his assistant hold up a “bullshit bag” while I was testifying; suborned perjury and used material (my journals) in the courtroom, contrary to all of our legal history.
4. The judge did away with our defense with one aside to the jury, part of a series of actions that no honest judge would ever permit himself.
5. The smell of a decaying body is unmistakable and impossible to bear as both Drs. Fillinger and Arden made clear in their testimony at the trial. The body could not have decayed in the apartment as will be made clear.
The smell is part of the media fostered myth that has grown up around the case mixed with an entire farrago of precedent setting behavior that is a shame of American law.
6. The Superior Court acted as if the Constitution and their own legal precedents were non-existent when they made their decision on my appeal.
7. The billion dollar civil suit was farcical in many ways.
8. In April of 2009, I was told that my entire file was missing.
PREFACE
“Judges are umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules. They apply them.
The role of an umpire and a judge is critical.
They make sure that everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role.
Nobody ever went to a ball-park to see the umpire.”
Chief Justice of U.S. Supreme Court, John Roberts
Those who know the law say that my case contains the most egregious violation of judicial norms they have ever encountered.
BUT
The tendency to bend the law and rupture due process has now become integral to the Pennsylvania Judicial system. What two judges in Lucerne County did: send juveniles to a facility that kicked back some of the profits to the judges. This is, alas, not that far from the norm of irrational and capricious behavior that is now characteristic of the entire criminal justice system presided over by Chief Justice Ronald Castile.
He cannot defend what is presented below, thus he ignores it; an act of total abrogation of responsibility, for he , like so many others in high judicial and legislative authority in Pennsylvania, has his finger in the pie.
THE HEART OF THE MATTER
The law is slow, arcane and very formal as it is the cumulative accretion of many 1000s of years of human history. This is done as a protection of heat and emotion, very real to all of us. It leads to lynching, vigilante activity and a court room that is poison to deliberative rational activity, as the innocence project has demonstrated in hundreds of cases.
The jury is to be convinced not incited.
The judge must maintain fairness at any cost.
Judge Mazzola, the Roger Clemens of Philadelphia jurisprudence – a victory at any cost – made a mockery of these supposed standards. He wanted a conviction at any cost.
The descriptions found below mainly concern legal errors. Most errors of the type described below lead to a retrial, but some scream for the case to be dismissed.
All one needs is one major error.
I have chosen from a slew of such errors, those that are most comprehensible. I have given some of the wider context when it is necessary for understanding.
Documentation can be found by clicking on the blue references
THE ISSUES
“Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pressured until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.”
Federalist Paper No. 51
1. The Einhorn Law
The law should apply to me. It should apply not due to the fact that I’m a good guy or a bad guy. It is applied to me as a citizen who lives under the aegis of a written constitution. To violate the Constitution in the way described in this article is to destroy the covenant that exists between those who are elected or hired to serve, for our benefit, and the people as a whole. It threatens the very fabric of our lives and it demeans the union of the people, by the people and for the people that so many have bleed to preserve.
It is Tyranny.
When the American political system was formulated in the Constitution, one of the strongest enabling principles was the separation of powers.
It is a principle reinforced in an early Supreme Court decision: Marbury v. Madison. It has been held as the LAW of the land since that time.
Ira Einhorn was tried in absentia in 1993.
His decision became final in 1995.
Only a court can open a final decision.
A legislative act can’t tamper with a final decision as it violates the separation of powers and makes nonsense of judicial finality.
The Einhorn Law is a travesty of American Justice.
In addition it violates the jurisdictional nature of a PCRA (Pennsylvania Court Reporters Association). Thus any decision it makes is without jurisdiction and a nullity.
The arguments put forward in response to these facts by the judge and the DA’s office have been puerile.
The Superior Court wrote a decision on the Einhorn Law that was based upon an outright lie, and so twisted a judicial principle that everyone who has looked closely at the reasoning has said: “It isn’t law.”
The Superior Court avoided a decision on the merits of the challenge to the constitutionality of the Einhorn Law by claiming that they could not grant the remedy, therefore they would not rule on the merits.
A first year law student would say: “Duh”.
One only looks at a remedy after one has made a decision on the merits.
This is how the law functions 100% of the time.
For a court to refuse to rule on the merits of an issue declares that due process does not exist for Ira Einhorn.
Pariahs need not apply.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the final arbiter of law in Pennsylvania, has twice refused to rule on a controversial issue of outstanding public interest.
The case has received more publicity than any case in modern Pennsylvania history. It is sheer avoidance, Chief Justice Castille must be vociferously reminded that there are sins of omission as well as commission – to avoid ruling on the Einhorn Law is to diminish the meaning of law in Pennsylvania and to spatter mud upon his recent pledge that justice will be done in Pennsylvania courtrooms.
2. Barbara Christie
Barbara Christie left the DA’s office in disgrace after tormenting defendants with her own version of the law, for too many years. She left behind a large murder case that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out due to her misconduct. That she was able to act in such a manner for so long casts a shadow on the Pennsylvania judicial system as a whole.
If justice is to return to our criminal justice system, the court must adhere to its own rules and punish those who don’t. The playing field has tilted totally against defendants. Only judges who genuinely believe in Justice can reassert the fundamental rights that are now in tatters.
Ms. Christie withheld exculpatory evidence through the use of subterfuge. A criminal trial is an adversarial proceeding, but it is a public open process that requires the DA to turn over all important information. To the defense, in particular: exculpatory information.
Not to do is a so is a Brady violation which can require a new trial or a quashing of the charge.
The DA has always claimed that Holly Maddux was killed on September 12th of 1977, but four people, one twice, claimed to have seen Ms. Maddux alive, six months after this date. These four people related their sightings to 2 ex-FBI agents who were paid by the Maddux family to investigate her disappearance.
The information concerning these sightings was placed in a report due to the defense under discovery – a pre-trial procedure in which information is shared.
In spite of this normal procedure which would have destroyed the DA’s case, Ms. Christie took a paginated report, blew it down in a copy machine thus removing the pagination and then she conveniently trashed a umber of the pages:
1. All of the sightings
2. A statement by the 2 ex-FBI agents which began: “If we are going to pin this on Einhorn…”
3. A third item (a picture I think) that the defense has never obtained.
After 5 court hearings, the defense got item ‘2’ above and some of the sightings.
The defense did not get two of the sightings until 2002. They were sighting made by Philadelphia police detectives. Sightings of great significance as the defendant and his girl friend were known to these trained police officers.
By 2002, one officer had died, thus introducing a Brady violation into the second trial. N.B.: The entire logic of the DA’s case depends upon the September 12th date – this is why Ms. Christie withheld this information; this is also why judge Mazzola, after hearing testimony about the multiple sightings, told the jury to disregard the time of death, destroying in one sentence the very basis of the defense.
FORENSICS
Ms. Christie did not follow formal procedure with the forensics. Instead of allowing the local man Dr. Tumosa to do the work, she sent it to the FBI.
She got a goose egg.
She withheld this result from the defense.
Then she tried another nationally respected lab.
She got another goose egg.
She again withheld the results
It took a court order for my defense to get these very negative results. Results due to US under normal discovery procedure.
The forensics are the heart and soul of a murder case.
Ms. Christie had no forensics that supported her case.
The defense later learned that she also had other information, damning to her case, that she should have but didn’t pursue.
She had a series of fingerprints from a locked back closet that only Ms. Maddux and Mr. Einhorn had access to; fingerprints that were not those of either Mr. Einhorn or Ms. Maddux.
She didn’t ask the FBI to identify them.
These fingerprints, that could have identified other suspects in the case, were left unidentified.
It was typical of the way the case was handled: do not bother me with the facts.
The clothes that Ms. Maddux was presumably wearing when she was killed, should have been covered in blood as her wounds bled profusely and would have been spattered all over the apartment in which she was supposedly killed.
THERE IS NO BLOOD IN THE CASE
These forensic results should have caused the DA’s office to deeply question their conclusion about the case. It didn’t.
Going back for a third dip, Ms. Christie now gave the material to the man passed over twice: Dr. Tumosa. He invented a new test that produced a ‘maybe’ not confirmed by further testing, but his former boss, Dr. Cordova, made it clear at the trial that the ‘maybe’ was invalid as his results were not valid and did not belong in the court room as they were brought about by undocumented tests that had never been submitted for publication and hence not peer reviewed.
They should have been challenged under the case law standards established by Frye/Daubert.
The clothes and the fingerprints went missing, so we could not retest them and bring the evidence into the courtroom: A travesty of Justice as both facts point to an incorrect theory of the case and exoneration.
3. Joel Rosen
“And what has happened in this case – and I challenge defense counsel or anybody else to cite any case ever – and I really do mean that – ever in the state of Pennsylvania – possibly the whole country – that has so personalized and so sensationalized not just the case but a defendant.
Joel Rosen, N.O.T, 9/10/2002 P.37
Mr. Rosen, who also left the DA’s office in disgrace, won an easy in absentia trial at which he demeaned Ira Einhorn by calling him, among other things: “A bum who Zeroxed things.”
This demeaning of the defendant was a constant theme in Mr. Rosen’s conduct of the case. A theme that Judge Mazzola (see below) reinforced and has been continued in a recent attempt of Ira Einhorn to regain private prosperity (his journals) that never should have been taken.
Mr. Rosen attempted to seize the defendant’s journals, that were created after his arrest, by putting extreme pressure on a friend who was attempting to provide Ira Einhorn with an adequate defense (surely a preserved right even in a very changed judicial climate); lambasted, in granted private encounters, witnesses with a barrage of demeaning statements about their daring to testify for Mr. Einhorn; suborned perjury from a rebuttal witness – Dr. Nathanson – whose testimony was 100% falsehood; had a “bullshit bag” at the defense table that his assistant, Carman Lineberger, allegedly held up while Mr. Einhorn was testifying. A Remmer violation (Remmer v. United States, 347 U.S. 227 (1954)) that the judge – contrary to all case law – ignored when brought to his attention.
There are a number of other serious instances of prosecutorial misconduct, but I wish to elaborate on just two instances:
Joyce Brodsky
At my first trial, Mr. Rosen suborned perjury from Joyce Brodsky by having her describe her going into my apartment on 9/12/77 and seeing the body of Holly Maddux.
This was a blatant lie as her girlfriend Cindy made clear in her various statements and testimony at my second trial.
Pause and reflect for a moment: If you had an eyewitness who could substantiate your case, would you not have her testify?
It is obvious that her failure to testify, casts a shadow on the veracity of the rest of the testimony that Mr. Rosen presented, but there is more to the lie.
Soon after I won my first extradition battle, Joyce Brodsky called me: shortly before Christmas in 1997.
I had read her lying testimony in July of that year; I was disgusted by it.
I hung up on her twice.
My wife, Annika, insisted that I take the third call.
Joyce was hysterical and apologetic about her lying, suggesting that she had been coerced into lying by Mr. Rosen’s talk about Holly.
She also said that Senator Specter had called her.
She called me around 3:30 in the morning.
She sobbed out her apologies for over an hour as my wife sat beside me and listened in our bed.
We both made contemporary journal entries about the incident [see the documentation for this article]
Joyce could lie when I was not in court.
She could not repeat her lies while I was in court
When our investigator went to see her, she cursed him out, refusing to talk to him.
She did not testify.
After my second trial, she attempted to clear her name by talking to a reporter about the call.
She said she had called Annika Flodin – my wife – whom she thought was living separately from me and in danger from me.
She said she got Annika’s number from information and called her.
Annika of course lived with me. Our telephone was listed under the name of Eugene Mallon.
Her blatant lie has no basis: it is symbolic of much of the case against me.
Guilt plagued her, so high or drunk one night, she called me to expiate that guilt.
Then sober, she wished to erase what she did, but two people recorded the event, telephones others and pursued the truth.
Her explanation to the Philadelphia Inquirer was based on a lie.
BULLSHIT BAG
The guilt of Ira Einhorn constantly reiterated by a leading acting media, is belied by Ms. Christie’s withholding of exculpatory information or Judge Mazzola’s behavior (described below), but the use of a bullshit bag in a court of law while a defendant is testifying, forces any honest individual to question how secure a case can be when a DA resorts to such a ploy. Compare such an action to Mr. Rosen’s quote (above).
The Judge’s failure to investigate the incident only reinforces the questions posed by such behavior in a courtroom free of adequate counsel or the supportive wife or Ira Einhorn [she was kept away by the refusal to grant her immunity from arrest.]
4. Judge Mazzola
“But juries are frequently influenced by the opinions of the judges. They are sometimes induced to find special verdicts, which refer the main questions to the decision of the court. Who would be willing to stake his life and estate upon the verdict of a jury acting under the auspices of judges who had predetermined his guilt.”
Federalist Paper, No. 65
Judge Mazzola wanted a conviction very badly and then wanted to protect it at all costs: the law be damned.
He also joined in the personal attack on the defendant that the Rosen quote above refers to.
At the end of the trial the judge demeaned Mr. Einhorn by calling him an ‘intellectual dilettante’ who reads the first and last chapter of books, ‘a pseudo classicist’ [whatever that means] and said that the defendant used the word ‘psychotronic’ in his testimony.
He said the word wasn’t in his dictionary – there truth ended, for he then went on to say that the word didn’t exist and should have been ‘psychotropic’.
The DA uses the word ‘psychotronics’ in his letter brief, and it indeed does exist. In fact, at the time of the trial, google.com would have returned over 4,000 hits, 3 of which were long articles about Ira Einhorn (all 3 in the top 20) which dealt with his activities and interaction with a now deceased friend, Phillip K. Dick, a world famous writer whose work is the basis for Blade Runner, Minority Report and a number of other movies.
The judge’s words of derision were pure projection. They are not based upon evidence – miming a good deal of the trial.
Moments after insulting Mr. Einhorn, Judge Mazzola reseated the jury in the box and invited TV cameras and the rest of the media into the courtroom for extensive celebration and interviews.
My lawyers looked on in amazement for TV is forbidden in the court room without expressed consent: we were not asked.
The function of the judge is to serve as a referee, to keep the playing field level as Chief Justice Roberts made clear in the quote above.
The bias becomes even more evident when one considers what Ira Einhorn was doing during these years in question.
In the documentation for this article, you will find such a description from a very hostile book, followed by a small list of some of the activities that were integral to Ira Einhorn’s life during the 70s.
That is the partial record.
There is nothing in the court record to support the judge’s outburst.
It was pure projection.
It continues to this day, as the following quote from a recent submission of the DA’s office indicated – it concerns my illegally taken journals:
Reproduced below is Asst. DA Beth C. Grossman’s argument in Section C of her motion”
Text: “C. Petitioner presents no evidence demonstrating any emergency warranting the expeditious return of these petitions.
Finally petitioner sets forth no evidence or support demonstrating any emergency warranting the expeditious return of these journals other than his overblown, egotistical statement that he has had inquires from writers who are researching his life. Frankly it has been almost six years since petitioner was convicted a second time of first degree murder. The legitimate question can be asked – is anyone really interested in him at this point?”
Pure insult and again 100% inaccurate as the ten letters I submitted to the court, as part of my answer to Ms. Grossman’s brief, made clear.
Law? Our forefathers would weep, if they read such ad hominem arguments masquerading as law.
During the trial, judge Mazzola heard the testimony about Ms. Maddux being sighted at least five times, 5 months or longer after her alleged murder on September 12th, 1977.
And let us not forget that Ms. Christie lied and created prosecutorial misconduct in attempting to disappear these sightings.
Unasked by either side, he gave the following instruction:
“As an aside, I would advise that you are not necessarily bound by the date alleged in the indictment in this case. The date of death is not an essential element of the crime.”
There are no asides in the law.
The entire focus of the trial, when alleged prior acts did not occupy the stage, was based upon the alleged date of death as stated in the indictment.
The prosecution focused upon it; the defense focused upon rebutting it.
When Judge Mazzola issued his aside, he made nonsense of the trial.
This is how he defends against such behavior on 1 of page 143 of his 1925(a) statement:
“Any variance I the charged date of the crime, from indictment through conviction and final sentencing, could hardly be characterized as fatal. Any variance here could only have been a few hours before the actual day and time of the murder, or a day or two after the completed crime.”
Compare the two statements: the two statements have nothing to do with each other.
Judge Mazzola refused to hold a Remmer hearing – a hearing which would have forced the DA to explain what they were doing with a ‘bullshit bag” as part of their case.
He permitted fifth amendment protected material to dominate the trial.
He referred to the impact that the verdict would have on the Maddux family (“the family of the deceased.”). Emotion not fact: improper for the consideration of the jury, tilling even further the imbalance in the court room, filled with the Maddux family; Mr. Einhorn’s wife not there as the judge would do nothing to grant her immunity from the threat of arrest.
His 218(!) page Rule 1925(a) statement is even more troubling, as it producing an ice cold record, a lawyer who forgot to file and a 48 month wait, en toto, for a superior court decision.
A Rule 1925 (a) statement is due forthwith.
It should have been about 10 pages long.
More bizarre and even more indicative of bias is some of the content in the 1925(a) statement. Three times the judge Mr. Einhorn’s lawyers:
(1) “Counsel arduously labored and assiduously prepared.” (p. 5)
(2) “It is apparent from the record in this case that the defendant’s trial was impeccably prepared and presented by all counsel, both for the Commonwealth and on behalf of the defendant himself.” (p. 173)
(3) “Clearly, the defendant failed to do this, as there is no indication on the record that a Frye hearing was ever requested, let alone even considered, except here as an untimely afterthought on appeal. Still, defense counsel cannot be said to be ineffective in that not requesting a Frye hearing was sound strategy, especially where, as here, the defendant is notorious for trying to manipulate a legal system for which we clearly has nothing but contempt.”
Defending the actions of defense counsel is not the function of a Rule 1925(a) statement.
Ascribing an egregious error to the alleged character of the client is absurd.
The Frye issue was waived as was the issue of prosecutorial misconduct.
A number of other major outcome determinative issues were not even raised, including the bullshit bag issue.
“Impeccably prepared’, ‘arduously labored,’ ‘assiduously prepared’ – me thinks the judge doth protest too much.
AND last but not least are pages 173 (last paragraph) to page 178, of the judge’s Magnum Opus.
In these five pages the superior court is asked to rule on something not before it which would abrogate the petitioner’s basic right to be heard by closing out all appeals.
5. The Smell
So much of the enormous media noise around the instant case has to do with the smell of a decaying body which both the prosecution and the defense agreed in court was impossible to sustain for any period in time, let along months and months.
Yet the closet in which the body was supposedly decaying was about 4 feet away from the room in which all the activity (reading, sleeping, love making and desk work) took place in the apartment.
Two women testified to having spent extensive time in the apartment during the time when others reported a smell outside and in other parts of the building.
They were not restricted in their movements in any way. They smelled nothing.
Many other men and women, including a police detective, were in the apartment subsequent to the time that the Commonwealth has always insisted that the death took place.
They were not called to testify, by the defense as the time of death was fixed in stone by the indictment and their testimony would not have added anything to the situation.
There was no smell in the apartment itself.
Impossible, if a body had decayed there.
Also not a drop of blood was found in the apartment or on Holly’s clothes.
Add all this to five sightings of a dead woman 6 months after her death;
The withholding of these sightings:
A judge who says ignore the time of death.
Also, during the trial, a long discussion about a fire escape next to the door – a red herring – as the actual fire escape door, in the kitchen, was left off the drawing of the apartment, by the man who spent eighteen hours in the apartment.
And the real kicker: Holly was found with keys to the apartment in her pocket.
There was no problem about bringing a body into the apartment as the deceased had keys to the apartment on her person.
The smell, as with so many other aspects of the case, does not point to the defendant, but into other directions that the neglected and now lost fingerprints reinforce.
6. The Superior Court
The Superior Court was the first line of defense against the defendant having an honest appeal.
The proceedings were delayed by Judge Mazzola for so long that the record was so cold that Mr. Strutin (one of my lawyers) forgot to file.
Then the Superior Court made a travesty of the appeal by refusing to rule on the Einhorn Law, first lying about what the defense said, then saying they could not rule on the issue as they could not grant the remedy.
The absurdity of such a position has been called many names by those who look at it and know the law.
The situation is simple:
An issue has two parts: The merits and the remedy.
The remedy comes into play only if an issue has merit.
You can’t speak about the remedy until you rule on the issue.
Not to rule on the merits of an issue is to abrogate the very nature of the existence of a court. Court’s exist to rule on the merits of an issue.
Travesty is a mild word for what the Superior Court did.
To use a remedy to avoid ruling on an issue is unique, and has nothing to do with LAW.
For the Supreme Court not to correct such a misuse of the law is to make a hypocrite out of Chief Justice Ronald Castille.
The entire court system has continually twisted the law to avoid dealing fairly with one case.
The case screams for honest exposure.
SUNLIGHT
7. Civil Suit
In 1999, years beyond the allowable time limit, a civil action went to trial, against the defendant Ira Einhorn, again in absentia.
A judgment was returned against the defendant for a sum that now, with interest, is well over $1,000,000,000.
8. File
Then in April of 2009, after waiting eighteen months to have a lawyer appointed, a PCRA Action began. At that time Mr. Einhorn was told that his entire file had been lost – 100’s of pages just vanished –
Again Unique
An accident – HA! You decide.
Just another indication of a judicial system gone to an extreme to avoid facing up to its own mistakes.
August 2, 2009
