What's His Goal?

It's a fair question. And sadly, for some, it may remain the only question. Seriously though, what does this guy want? He's not acting like the typical scorned litigant. What does he think he can get? What would make him go away? Does he even know? Is he even stable? All this talk about God, is he even fully sane? Sure, some of his filings, are not horrible. Others are what I expect from someone that can't accept defeat and leave well enough alone. Will he ever grasp that nobody is ever happy with the end result of a lawsuit? Still can't rule out the possibility that some attorney is helping him periodically. If I find out who...


But how else could it have gone? First hearing he learns about Sharon Land, and with further research would have figured out she has been run through the mill to the success of her opposition, or at least their lawyer's pocket. Then that gaff where Judge Welch indirectly admitted on the record that Indiana courts might be worse than Chicago. And those early procedural games, may have only left him trying to control anything he could, damn the consequences.

So it only makes sense that I try to get out of Indiana and to Chicago. That is where the 7th Circuit COA resides. But this was never my goal. I did have an idea where we were going once I nailed down personalities and likely motivations of the various parties. Still, I haven't been directing this, and you have to know that if you are honest with yourself. There is absolutely no way that any human could have kept turning every action back on itself, yielding one more siren call for legal professionals to reflect on themselves and their profession.

Sure at the beginning I would have wished for individuals to be punished for unjust actions. And if I am being honest, probably every so often still now. But then what? If the disciplinary display matches history, then a few years from now nothing will be different. Even if a few 'bad apples' are thrown under the bus, they will be removed and everyone else will continue on.

We are not far away from our next and worst in a generation social crisis. If these United States are to survive as a beacon of freedom, it will be the courts, acting with true integrity, judging the corrupt and vile, and not just when no other option exists, or no personal advantage is to be gained from a pass. It has only ever been the courts that have stood at the door to justice and denied entry to the self-serving from the other branches backed by the powerful and wealthy. Still courts prefer history remember when they got it right. We are taught Brown v. Board of Education, and hear about the jailing of MLK and other demonstrators numerous times for peaceful assembly, but never the judges who put them there. I never understood before now that Cooper v. Aaron meant a whole bunch of members of justice had to be ignoring precedent for a long period of time for this to even be in the position for the Supreme Court to reaffirm four years later.

Nor do we learn about the extraordinary and useless maze necessary for a matter to continue to higher courts. And I assure you I never learned that nobody holds the court accountable to honoring its own rules.

So I wonder, because the next changes are going to be so swift, less than a decade, how today's professionals will look back on this time. Because I can assure you, if the legal system doesn't ascend to its higher calling, it will quickly become a shell of its former self, and it will take down society with it, while serving as the vehicle to further segregate the 1%. Courts will have even less respect than during the gangster days of Prohibition.

I may be the one litigant in all of Indiana judicial history before and after to have irrefutable proof that a judge backdated an order, er inadvertently misdated it, 3 times exactly the same. Imagine if I had been able to know this prior to filing the appeal. Then it would be an easy argument that I waived the right by not bringing it up. Or what if it had been possible for me to know that forged evidence was introduced? We wouldn't be here now. But the system wasn't opened up until after the appeal for me to see the fraud. There were so many opportunities for me to lose procedurally, for everyone to have even one argument to hang on and give the court justification for a ruling. And it seems that every action has been countered by clear Providence, even the funny story about how I came to video one critical meeting--it wasn't on purpose! Each new bend in the road has become one more siren call, usually to an added party, and once again ignored. If the justice system and the courts fail to self-reform, the door will be wide open for the worst characters from the other two self-aggrandizing branches who would love nothing more than to have clear justification to cut back the authority of the courts. And who will stop them? Certainly not the thousands in for profit prisons for minor offenses.

For the current matter before us, I wonder if it will just continue to drag on for years, even if outside the court as long as everyone continues to deny a problem exists.

Which comes back to the opening question...

First, let me reiterate, I am still really trying to simply be obedient to what I believe God is asking of me, and why he brought me to this place. But what do I believe God wants? I believe he is working really hard to get your and my collective attention.

"It cannot be taken for granted that our system of justice will survive indefinitely without the attorneys that we hope you become,” Vaidik said. “Each client you serve fairly, compassionately and diligently will be another block in our system of justice, ensuring its longevity despite today’s challenges of discrimination, poverty and dysfunctional government, and tomorrow’s challenges no matter what they might be."

While I appreciate Judge Vaidik's sentiment,1 it seems the seeds of "tomorrow's challenges" have been sown, taken root, and are now sprouting under ideal growing conditions. But I fear most court professionals have already "taken for granted," they are too close, self-interested, busy, vested, or conditioned to see it, and participate in correcting it before it is too late.

Some of you have seen my hints on Twitter, and at least paused. See if you agree with these assertions:

1. Courts are no longer able to function without actively digitizing all functions, filing, ruling, scheduling, finances, even tracking offenders. Courts are not now, and will not be going forward, allocated enough budget to work by paper. If they could afford it, society would bypass them. Imagine if laws and court rules along with updates were still written by scribes, while society had the internet. The courthouse would be empty. Other, more efficient methods, would be used.
2. With digitized court records AI is already at a point that it can uncover statistical anomalies at very low cost, effort, or setup. Add a little training and those outliers will be reduced to observations that are extreme enough that it cannot be dismissed as coincidence. We call this regression. After that, we take it one step further to attribution analysis for explanation of the the outlier. Most AI doesn't even need to be told to do this, which is the point of AI. It is constantly looking at all the data for an explanation. Who are the parties, what streets do they live on, where did they go to school, how old are they, who do they know in common, have they attended any events together, etc. Or the more likely, how often is that attorney successful in front of that judge in comparison to appearing in front of other judges? See the problem? The only barrier to this right now is the restriction on the data. But that's a very thin barrier with no disincentives to avoid, no matter what happens to Snowden. 
3. Having a working knowledge of judicial 'preferences' used to exist in the minds of only the most sr. partners at the most respected law firms. Today, lawyers are being offered AI created info for preferred venues, best judges for certain issues, even very specific drafting guidelines to increase odds of a favorable ruling.2

Now some less resourced litigants might complain that these applications make already overwhelming odds become even more extreme. To that I say, "Probably!". But if so, even more will lose, and the outliers will become even more extreme and apparent. Judges will begin to see the same very specific situations in their courts, with the same citations, and likely the same counsel. And the opposing party will lose at a higher than reasonable percentage. But here's the problem. Statistical analysis and AI isn't restricted to supercomputers anymore. Shoot, I used it on Andy Hull's writings with his own client's technology to get an idea of his personality. Thanks IBM for making it free!

So it is impossible to lock down, hide, or destroy ALL of the data. Really point #4. If someone does destroy data, it is really hard, practically impossible to cover their tracks. And with cloud based data, backup mechanisms and archiving processes continue to push old data down the line to further compression and lower throughput storage. But a person who thinks that they can, say, delete a Microsoft hosted email user account, and wait until the end of the backup policy, and expect it to be gone, really doesn't understand how those systems, storage technology, and sysadmins work. Data storage is cheap--far cheaper than trying to keep track of which gigabyte can be safely destroyed or overwritten. And very few IT admins ever, ever, trust that to be the one copy. The very survival of these businesses is predicated on the ability to guarantee data retention. There is always another copy, just in case. But you don't know this unless you have actually worked in IT.

So then nobody can really keep the data fully walled off. Deleting one version of information, only proves guilt of destruction and is a somewhat insignificant obstacle to someone who understands data structures. Let's take an example. Say that the State of Indiana courts probably should retain certain data in their online case management system that is the subject of a current lawsuit against them. Now they might think that eliminating that data from their system is all that is needed. But Tyler Technologies that administrates the system has a much greater vested interest in not appearing to collude with someone to destroy data if they want their company to exist. So it would be more productive for the Plaintiff to request preservation of them. AWS (Amazon Web Services), the back-end host for Tyler's cloud-based applications, is equally motivated to ensure that data is not inadvertently destroyed. And while AWS hopefully can't get into an encrypted, archived database, either the organization (e.g. Indiana court tech admin) provides that key with court order or would then be in contempt.

So a thoughtful pro se plaintiff would send a preservation notice, with copy to the FBI, and be satisfied when getting an affirmative response that various organizations will preserve that data either for use by that party or investigators. Do you see the problem we have here? It isn't 5 years until all these kids messing with iPhones become adults that for one reason or another appear in the justice system. And many of them would not give a passing thought to the potential consequence to society of cutting down the reputation of our courts.

So maybe what needs to happen is a little less game playing, and a little more introspection and self-improvement. Because the courts won't be able to hide from the data. And I assure you it will overcorrect to the extreme, maybe even fail to prevent widespread destitution of our society. And that will happen long before even most elder judges reach retirement. And yes, it has been painful to watch this continue. So I ask you, WHAT IS YOUR GOAL?

Andy Stanley shared recently that your direction will determine your destination. And everyone ends up somewhere, so why not end up somewhere on purpose?

I can only do so much and keep prodding while trying to avoid causing the exact destruction of the judicial system that I fear is imminent. I have given thousands of hours learning an occupation and skill set that I hope become useless in the future, and the thousands of hours I have spent researching various parties and anything that might connect them. If nothing changes, then I would guess I am to keep serving as a gentle caution to incoming attorneys of how not to practice. Some people here could already be 2 years in to a nice private practice salary, or a cozy regulatory capture job. I wonder if that option is still on the table for many here, unless with strings attached.

Are you going to be in charge of your profession's destination, or are you going to wait until you end up somewhere else that you wish you hadn't, but was where the path you took was leading.

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1. Ran across her dissent in State v. Evans (Ind. SC later agreed with) and really believe that Vaidik wants / wanted the rule of law. Then why is she named in the lawsuit? Because she knew and it would be unfair to target one party.
2. For any non lawyers still reading this, some apps go so far as to guide sentence length and structure, such as using or avoiding specific phrases. All offer case citation frequency by judges either in favorable rulings or in their actual judgments. 

--please excuse the poor writing. This was started at 2 am and mostly finished by 5 am with a few additions later the next night while still not fresh. I may revise later.