"And Don't Let the Door Hit You In the Ass . . . "

A Wadsworth, Ohio resident was so nettlesome that his hometown prosecuted him for harassment and banned him from city limits.  Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio) reporter, Michael Sangiacomo has the following tale of modern day banishment:

"Jeffrey Aberegg hasn't set foot in his former hometown in nearly two years and would have been arrested on sight if he had.

A Wadsworth Municipal judge ordered Aberegg on Sept. 26, 2008, not to go on Wadsworth property after ruling that he was a nuisance. But the judge's order went too far, Aberegg's lawyer argued to the 9th Ohio District Court of Appeals. The appeals court has not ruled on the request but it doesn't have to.   The city agrees that Aberegg must be re-sentenced. He still won't be allowed to enter Wadsworth governmental offices, but he will be allowed back into the city where he lived from 1988 to 2003.

'I have not been able to go to the parade in Wadsworth for years,' he said. 'I miss that. I'm a handyman and I get calls from people in Wadsworth to do work, but I have to turn them down. It will be good to be able to go back into the city when I want to. I want closure.'

The trouble started in 2001 when Aberegg was going though a difficult divorce and other problems, including thefts from his handyman business. Aberegg, 50, of Barberton, admits that he was a bit insistent when he repeatedly contacted the Wadsworth police and the law director to complain about inaction by police on his complaints against his ex-wife and others he believe wronged him.

He also filed numerous lawsuits against the city and others.

The city said the calls were 'bizarre and threatening on some occasions' and so frequent that they interfered with the city's office staff getting work done.  Law Director Page Schrock III ordered Aberegg to stop calling city offices and warned that he would be arrested for harassment if he called again.  Aberegg believes his letters of complaint to the FBI and the Ohio attorney general's office about the official inaction prompted the warning.

Schrock's office denies that.

Aberegg said he complied, mostly, after receiving the warning. But he admitted calling the city a few more times. Then, he left a message in 2008 at the law director's office demanding the city compensate him for losses he suffered because of a false arrest.

That's when the city carried out its threat.

Aberegg was arrested for telecommunications harassment in May 2008. A jury convicted him four months later in Wadsworth Municipal Court. Judge Stephen McIlvaine suspended a jail sentence but, as condition of probation, ordered Aberegg to stay away.   'For the next five years, [Aberegg is] not to be on any property owned or operated by the city of Wadsworth including, but not limited to, City Hall, transfer station, WCTV, sanitary, engineering, fire station, police station or city parks,'  the judge ordered. 'He shall not call any city of Wadsworth office.'

Aberegg's original lawyer did not bring up the unusual sentence in his appeal, but it came to the attention of the public defender's office in Columbus. They asked in January that the appeal be reopened, calling the sentence a 'miscarriage of justice because banishment is so far outside of the normal and appropriate community-controlled conditions. Banishment simply cannot be ignored on appeal.'

'The judge ordered that he cannot set foot on any property at all owned by the city of Wadsworth,'  said Spencer Cahoon of the Ohio public defender's office. 'My reading was that he was not to set foot in the city itself, since that would include the streets and sidewalks. If he did, he could have gone to prison.  He was banished from the city,' he added. 'We really don't do that in the criminal court system.'

Schrock said that was not the intent.   'The intent was that he not be in City Hall, the court or our offices,' Schrock said. 'But since the city owns the streets and sidewalks as well, he could not use them either.'

Schrock agrees that the sentence needs clarification. The re-sentencing date has not been set.

'Since the city does not object to the ruling,' Cahoon said, 'we expect the Municipal Court to hand down a proper sentence.'"
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I previously related the story of the client that I briefly represented who telephone harassed her estranged husband.  The lady, Carol Italianlastname, was diagnosed with a "borderline personality" disorder and was charged in multiple jurisdictions with "telephone harassment," of her ex- and others.  Her divorce attorney referred her to me to defend her in the pressing criminal case because I had developed a reputation for representing women with mental illness legacies.  I was able to obtain dismissal of the harassment charges against Carol based on the claim of marital privilege.  Carol subsequently refused to pay me to represent her in the city's appeal from the dismissal.  She hired new counsel, lost her appeal went to jail, sued me, and everyone else she ever encountered including the judges that presided over her cases.  After several years Carol's claims were dismissed and I've lost track of her. 

At some point in the "unfolding" of her illness Carol was deemed by the courts of OurState to have become a "vexatious litigator" and Carol was ordered to cease and desist filing lawsuits without prior permission of the courts.  Carol was not banished from her hoemtown or OurState.  We can all be relieved that banishment is reserved for use in Maricopa County, Arizona.

Your Wife Has Bathroom Privacy Rights!

TwinCities.com reports the on the appellate opinion of the Minnesota Court of Appeals upholding the misdemeanor convictions of a husband for video taping his wife as she used her bathroom.   Here's a excerpt from Emily Gurnon's story: 

"Beware, guys: That wedding ring does not give you the OK to secretly videotape your wife disrobing in the bathroom.


The Minnesota Court of Appeals has ruled that a spouse has a "reasonable expectation of privacy" when alone in her home bathroom.  'A spouse does not lose all claims to privacy through previously sharing some intimate information, activity or viewing with the other spouse,' Judge Doris Ohlsen Huspeni wrote for a three-judge panel that included judges Terri Stoneburner and Matthew E. Johnson.  'Even in marriage, consent can be bounded,' the ruling said.

In a published decision issued Tuesday, the court affirmed the Mille Lacs County District Court conviction of Richard Allen Perez of four counts of gross misdemeanor interference with privacy.  Perez, 39, admitted that in 2006 he created a hole through an adjoining closet to videotape his wife at their Princeton home. They were getting divorced. He also told police he was on methamphetamine at the time. 'We weren't having sex anymore, and I did that for me, nobody else,' he said.

But he argued that his wife did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their shared home bathroom because they were married."
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I may have talked about the case of the wife who "telephone harassed" her ex-husband.  I represented her!  She was totally out of control and was charged all over the region in various municipalities for misdemeanor telephone harassment, which subsequently became felony telephone harassment when she didn't learn her lesson after going to jail in multiple suburban courts. 

In the case I handled, I was able to get the charges dismissed when I argued that the husband could not testify against her based on marital privilege which she would not waive.  She fired me after the case was over, the prosecutor appealed and the Judge who dismissed the charges was reversed on the theory that of course "marital privilege" is waived, when the spouse is the victim of the crime.  Sounds right to me. 

Unfortunately "Susan" was mentally impaired and the break up and divorce from her husband was a shattering disaster of epic proportions played out in myriad courtrooms across the area, and in the newspapers.  This formerly affluent couple lost all their assets in the divorce and aftermath occasioned by frivolous litigation mostly initiated by Susan.  I was glad that my involvement was brief and relatively painless, others who got involved as lawyers ended up as parties to increasingly unhinged lawsuits she filed against everyone she knew. 

Oregon Justice of the Peace Opens Mouth, Is Gone!

This story is an eye-opener and I owe a big tip of the cyber-hat to KC Crime Blog for the account. 

A self-described "300lb. asexual virgin," and long-time Justice of the Peace,  lost her job after an investigation revealed a pattern of pathologically inappropriate sexual banter with court personnel, clerks, adult and minor defendants in her court.  This story is breath taking in terms of the sheer scale of what was tolerated for so long by this Oregon community.   Here's the account from Karen McGowan at the Eugene, Oregon's Register-Guard:

"A longtime justice of the peace at Central Lane Justice Court has resigned after a county investigation found that she made repeated offensive comments to her staff — and sometimes to parties appearing in her courtroom.  County officials and Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski confirmed receipt Monday of Cynthia Sinclair’s resignation letter.  It followed a three-month probe in which an outside investigator concluded that the 58-year-old judge made unwelcome sexual comments to court clerks 'with such frequency that it permeated their work environment and … unreasonably interfered with their ability to do their jobs.'

The investigation by human resources consultant Bev Russell found that one longtime clerk resigned years ago because of Sinclair’s behavior, while another complainant said she would also quit if Sinclair remained because her repeated sexual references made work unbearable. Sinclair was elected three times and served 13 years in the post. She is a former court clerk who has no law degree, which is not required for a justice of the peace position.

Sinclair was known for her colorful pre-court statements dramatizing the dangers of the minor offenses she handled, from speeding to truancy. But five female clerks who worked under her in the justice court banded together in December to complain to county officials about some of those comments — as well as about her sexually fixated statements to them. Among Sinclair’s in­-appropriate courtroom remarks, her accusers said, was asking a mother of five children, one of whom was in court for delinquent behavior, 'Don’t you wish you could shoot all teenagers?'

The judge also allegedly warned truant girls that they would 'end up dancing naked on tables' at a Springfield strip club. She also reportedly told young defendants: 'You will learn about sex when you are in jail showering with other people.'

One clerk allegedly balked at typing Sinclair’s letter warning a truant child that 'any man with a penis will do a sixteen-year-old girl.' The judge reportedly disagreed with her objections and sent the letter unchanged. Sinclair told Russell she 'probably' wrote letters to parents of truant children warning them that adults would take advantage of their offspring.  Sinclair told Russell she warned juveniles that 'bad things can happen in jail' because she wanted them to understand it is not a good place for kids.

The clerks said Sinclair also privately made disparaging remarks about defendants of certain races and generations. They said Sinclair made disparaging remarks about 'Arabic' men, about a 'new class of blighters with no moral code' and Latinos.  They also said she gave Latino children piñatas, while other children were given toys unrelated to their ethnicities. Sinclair denied such bias, adding that, 'if she had to choose' a favorite clientele, it would be Latinos.

Current and former Central Lane clerks told Russell that Sinclair made comments to them about dancing naked on their tables; about vibrator use and masturbation; and about their partners’ sexual functioning.  She reportedly asked them about their degree of sexual experience in front of co-workers. And she allegedly drew a 'very gross' picture of one employee being lifted by a crane on top of another employee.

Also included among the 284 findings:

The judge gave court employees a written quiz about what they would do if there were a fire in the office. One of the optional answers the judge listed was 'masturbate.'

One witness said the judge tells employees at least once a month to take off their clothes and dance naked on the tables, and did so as recently as this past February.  When one employee received a gift basket at work, the judge said to her: 'Who did your husband have sex with this time? Is he having more affairs with other women?'  One witness said she heard the judge say repeatedly that a sheriff’s deputy would have an orgasm when he learned how many of his cases were on the docket. Witnesses said, and the judge agreed, that she told employees their clothes were sexy.

One clerk complained that Sinclair signed the names of two troublesome defendants in the clerk’s wedding guest book. And she reportedly gave an employee with sleep apnea a gift catalog with the employee’s name written above two alarm clocks.  Sinclair told Russell that such actions were intended as jokes for co-workers she considered friends rather than employees. The investigator concluded that Sinclair made no effort to hide her comments, sometimes making the remarks in a public area of the court clerk’s work area.

In a 10-page letter responding to the complaints, Sinclair denied that her conduct was sexual harassment, saying she had never “hit on” an employee, posted “nudie” photos or made “naughty telephone calls.” She described herself as a 300-pound, hetero­sexual, 'essentially asexual virgin.'  She also wrote that the U.S. Constitution protects free speech and trumps 'sexual harassment claims based solely on verbal insult, pictorial or literary matter.There has to be some tangible element of threat to overcome the free speech component,' said Sinclair, who twice completed county sexual harassment training that makes clear that no such element is required. Sinclair also wrote: 'While there is a requirement that a RAPE victim must make clear to her attacker that the physical assault is unwanted,'  employers do not have to tell a supervisor that a joke is unwanted.

Several court workers told Russell they did tell the judge her remarks were offensive and inappropriate. Sinclair often responded, they said, by 'pouting' and shutting workers out of her office for days at a time.

One clerk declined to join in the complaint, telling Russell that the others could have done more to let the judge know her behavior was unwanted.  One of the complainants called Sinclair a personal friend, but said she had been unable to persuade the judge to stop her explicit comments. That clerk told Russell she believed Sinclair may suffer from some sort of mental illness that compelled her behavior. Sinclair is accused of allegedly retaliating against the court workers who filed the complaint. She reportedly changed the job evaluation of one, and told others that their complaints could prompt the county to close the Central Lane Court.

She allegedly put up a sign in her office, saying: 'NEVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER JOKE WITH THEM AGAIN. THEY ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS.' And she suggested in her rebuttal, 'If I was trying to push someone over the edge, trying to make them suicidal, I could not do a better job than what my ‘friends’ have done to me here.'  The clerks charged that Sinclair locked her office door and slept from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. most days, not responding to their knocks or phone calls when they had questions about court matters. The judge said the county bought her a couch for her to nap on. Sinclair resigned effective July 1, meaning Lane County taxpayers will continue to pay her $50,939 annual salary until then. Because she is an elected official, the county has no authority to halt her pay before that date, Lane County Counsel Liane Richardson said Monday. Area voters could theoretically force a recall election to remove her from office, but it’s unlikely that could be accomplished before July 1, Richardson said."
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Years ago there was a court that I practiced in regularly that had a Judge who was on par with this character. 

In those days, Judges would smoke in their courtrooms and this guy was a chain smoker.   Even after the rules changed he continued flouting the no-smoking bans.  He was a totally creepy guy, and at the same time there was something pathetic and slightly endearing about him.  Maybe it was just because he was such a loser, and you knew he knew it.  Then again that was a different era.  It is a good thing that things have changed but a lot of colorful people have been left behind. 

I'm sure it wasn't easy being around Ms. Sinclair.  She certainly had no appropriate role in lecturing youngsters.