PARENTING RIGHTS INSTITUTE

1518 Genesee Street Utica, NY 13502

leonkoziol@parenting rights institute.com

(315) 796-4000 April 5, 2012 Honorable Jonathan Lippman Chief Justice New York Court of Appeals 20 Eagle Street Albany, New York 12207 Dear Judge Lippman: Until my public criticisms and formal challenges to bench and bar practices in New Yorks domestic relations courts, I enjoyed 23 successful and unblemished years as a civil rights attorney. Today I am filing an appeal to this court from an order of the Appellate Division, Third Department which features First Amendment retaliation and misconduct of named judges which I endured as a consequence of these criticisms and challenges. Over 20 judges have either been disqualified or replaced over the past six years of litigation on this case due to my condition as a father-litigant-lawyer abused by a discriminatory and proliferating court system. This letter is not intended to supply the details of an appeal which might ultimately be heard by this court, but to register my complaint to matters outside of the decision making process which I find to be an insult to the justice system as a whole. In your February 14, 2012 report on the state of our judiciary, you open with a prominent reference to Lady Justice depicted on courthouse walls everywhere, blindfolded and holding the scales of justice. However, on the same walls of this, our states highest court, a visitor or litigant will find a large poster of former Chief Justice Sol Wachtler at the public clerks office. He is proudly displayed along with two other former members of the bench campaigning on the Republican line for judgeship. This poster is offensive for two principal reasons. First, it advertises politics in an institution committed to impartiality and judicial independence. Second, and more disturbing, it lauds the election of a judge who was charged with extortion, racketeering and blackmail using the same high court offices as his facilitator of these crimes. To be sure, Sol Wachtler was accused of directing staff in his chambers to investigate the background of a lawyer for purposes of impairing his licensure. That lawyer, David Sampson, was being targeted as the close friend of Joy Silverman, the New York debutant who had been stalked and harassed by Judge Wachtler.

Re: Parenting Equality and Judicial Misconduct

Chief Justice Lippman April 5, 2012 Page 2 A comparable incident on a smaller scale is at issue in the Third Department record, and like the state system at the time of Wachtlers crimes, there has been no accountability obtained through the New York Commission on Judicial Conduct. Indeed fellow justices refused to seek Judge Wachtlers resignation even after his misconduct became public through an FBI sting operation. Today s poster advertises the purported integrity of Mr. Wachtler who was given back his law license in 2007. As you know, he pled guilty to harassment of the debutant and exlover which led to a federal prison term. It was influenced by Wachtlers threats of kidnapping and anonymous mailing of condoms to a 14 year old girl. So brazen was this jurist that he even submitted false claims in similar fashion to authorities which damaged other FBI investigations. While you may not be as personally affected by this daily reminder, I am the father of two young girls who finds Wachtler and his poster highly offensive. It is being prominently displayed for no logical reason during an appeal which features parents in this state routinely subjected to false tactical accusations in needless Family Court disputes. Such concoctions are encouraged and overlooked because they produce fees and revenues for the bench and bar. Innocent children are callously exploited in the process using antiquated and barbaric processes developed by their beneficiaries. These are issues which conflict with Sol Wachtler and his political feature at the courthouse entrance. Photocopies of the poster are enclosed. Its continuing display was confirmed today. Respectfully, I ask that it be ordered removed. On a related note, you emphatically declare in the same opening report that New York always has been and must remain at the forefront of efforts to ensure that Lady Justices scales, symbolizing equality and due process, are exquisitely balanced in our great state . However, nowhere in that same report will one find a candid recognition of the gender discrimination which occurs to the male half of the parenting population. Apart from Census Bureau statistics which confirm this inequality each year, our Institute has studied the issues and concluded, as so many other experts have, that fatherless childrearing is a principal cause behind the juvenile crime and overburdened dockets which you lament upon with funding requests in your report. Thank you for your consideration. Respectfully submitted, Leon R. Koziol, J.D. cc: Hon. Thomas Mercure Associated Press New York Times Times Union USA Today