This chilling story at NRO shows how close corruption can come to home.
On April 23, 2010, the Supreme Court of the United States denied the petition for “stay of execution” (of coercive confinement for civil contempt of court) by attorney Richard I. Fine in the case of Richard Fine v. Leroy Baca, Sheriff of Los Angeles County (09-1250). In doing so, the highest court of the land has refused to rectify a clear-cut case of judicial corruption in the state of California…. this distinguished 70-year-old attorney in poor health has been sitting in solitary confinement in “coercive incarceration” in the notorious Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail without being charged, tried, or convicted of anything since March 4, 2009. In effect, he was thrown in jail for an indefinite period with no bail or hearing set for blowing the whistle on judicial corruption in California.
The chain of events that led to his incarceration was set in motion in 2000, when Richard Fine became aware that L.A. superior court judges were receiving illegal “judicial benefits” payments from Los Angeles County, despite the fact that lawsuits against that county were often adjudicated by these same judges, thus creating clear conflict of interest problems. By 2007 these payments amounted to $46,436 per year on top of their state salary of $172,000, making L.A. superior court judges among the highest paid in the country. Not only was this a blatant conflict of interest but also unconstitutional, insofar as the California constitution states clearly (in Article VI, Section 19) that “the legislature shall prescribe compensation for judges of courts of record.”
In Richard Fine’s opinion, these payments were illegal if not criminal, and in 2000 he began challenging them in various appellate briefs and lawsuits against several judges, thus making himself extremely unpopular with the superior court bench and also with the county supervisors who had authorized the payments.