The following is an excerpt from my recently released Amazon #1 Best Seller, When Not If: A CEO's Guide to Overcoming Adversity, Forbes Books, 2024.
LESSON: Overcoming great adversity requires pragmatic, solutions-oriented efforts applied over and over until achieving final victory. More times than not, the paths we feel will be productive are not, and the outlier efforts in which we had little faith come through for us. Therefore, daily, exhaustive, productive actions are mandatory to even have a chance at survival. Failure is not an option.
Finally, the federal criminal justice system provided me with another path meant to remedy the effects and sometimes devastating consequences from judges taking the law into their own hands, which theme seems to be, ironically, now in the news daily.
It is identified as The Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980, 28 U.S.C. §§ 351–364. It established a process by which any person can file a complaint alleging a federal judge has engaged in “conduct prejudicial to the effective and expeditious administration of the business of the courts” or has become, by reason of a mental or physical disability, “unable to discharge all the duties” of the judicial office.
Unfortunately, similar to the laws prohibiting cameras and audio recordings in federal courtrooms (why?), The Judicial Conduct and Disability Act also includes an opaque set of confidentiality interpretations for the proceedings. Cases noting further incarceration for speaking of these rulings are available to review in the federal record. The discovery of these provisions, again, in the United States of America made no sense to me.
“Confidentiality of Proceedings: Except as provided in section 355, all papers, documents, and records of proceedings related to investigations conducted under this chapter shall be confidential and shall not be disclosed by any person in any proceeding.”
If an Order is released by the Court of Appeals sanctioning a federal judge, it does not include any identifying criteria of the judge’s name, the case number, or the defendant’s name. It is only identified by a number, and this number is publicly listed on the court of appeal’s website, because everything must be “public.”
But you could only find the Order if you knew the number. And if you knew the number, then did someone publicly disclose this proceeding so you would know the number?
Also, according to these statutes, the issue may be resolved if the chief judge of the Appeals Court “determines that the subject judge has taken appropriate voluntary corrective action that acknowledges and remedies the problems raised by the complaint” [Jud. Conduct R.11(d)(2)]. How interesting.
Certainly hypothetical. If at the time of my trial and appeal, I had filed a Judicial Complaint (or a great number of them), and if the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge, Judge Roger L. Gregory at the time, had written a Memorandum and Order with regard to apologies and corrective action, what would be a very rare occurrence at any time, then I believe I could not even now admit there had been such an Order.
Because it wouldn’t matter, anyways. Even if there had been an Order and everyone apologized for severe misconduct and devastating harm to all stakeholders, the conviction was never reversed, a new trial was never granted, and our employees, shareholders, and families never had the opportunity to rebuild and restore.
Have a great week!
Order Amazon #1 Best Seller When Not If (Hardback, Kindle, Audio: https://www.amazon.com/When-Not-If-Overcoming-Adversity/dp/B0CKWTYSFF/r
