Sunday, September 20, 2020

NH Attorney Discipline Committee Refuses to Docket Grievance Against Belknap County Attorney Andrew Livernois and Deputy County Attorney Keith Cormier

When an accused criminal has more integrity than the people prosecuting him, the local justice system is clearly broken. Worse than the fact that Andrew Livernois and Keith Cormier lied and abused their positions to silence me with a bogus gag order request is that they made others in the system stoop to their low level. 

It is truly amazing and astounding what this group of poster children for patronism were willing to go to bat for and assume blindly to be a good faith effort. The filing that triggered all this would have received a failing grade from even the most lenient law professor. Yet people lined up to say it was all on the level, impugning their own character in the process. 

Even the "replacement killer" from another county defended the indefensible, hastily written motion to prohibit pretrial publicity that came out of the Belknap County Attorney's Office. Oh, I forgot to mention the turmoil surrounding this motion led to Livernois and Cormier removing themselves from my case and the Attorney General assigning the prosecution to another county. Deputy Grafton County Attorney Tara Heater took over and acted immediately to save Livernois and Cormier. She on one hand withdrew the motion (citing strategic reasons) before a hearing could be held, but on the other hand she defended the merits of the motion when I filed for sanctions. The problem she knew she had going into her defense of that motion was that I warned her it would subject her to sanctions herself for misrepresenting the facts and trying to make a trash pile of junk law smell like a bed of roses. 

It's not so much the collective corruption executed by the original prosecutors that disturbs me. It's the fact that these other attorneys saw this fiasco and jumped into the raging rapids of unethical behavior without a life jacket to save a couple guys they watched jump in with cement blocks tied to their feet. Colleagues were all too willing to look the other way or even back up the behavior that resulted in my recent motion for sanctions. They abandoned their principles to pursue and promote a farce. The sad fact is the pubic pays these people to be the front line on maintaining the integrity of the justice system in this state. Yet, they are nothing but glorified janitors sweeping all the corruption under the rug. It's pathetic.

I made an earnest attempt to report Livernois and Cormier for violating the very set of rules they accused me of breaking (despite the fact that I am not bound by those rules at all as a pro-se party). Brian Moushegian, the spineless general counsel of the New Hampshire Attorney Discipline Committee, covered for his colleague and did a good job of wiping the state's ass on this shit show.

Attorney Moushegian made all the excuses in the world to absolve Attorneys Cormier and Livernois without making any discernible effort to actually investigate the allegations or make any meaningful inquiry at all into the matter. There was not one single word filed in response to my complaint by either accused attorney. Moushegian's rambling responses pretty much confirmed what I already knew: this committee is toothless and will never act against any prosecutor even if a clear report of rule violations comes before them. 

I had one avenue to ask for an appeal of sorts, and I took that road, too. My letter asking for reconsideration made no difference. The whole committee backed the blind loyalty shown by their general counsel. The lies and the lazy motion practice that started this mess just gets compounded when nobody is held accountable for their abuses of the public trust. I jumped through every hoop and followed all the right procedures, even reporting myself to the committee to determine their rules of professional conduct could never apply to me. 


  
The judge in my case might still set everyone straight on this subject by ruling in my favor on my motion for sanctions. I'm hopeful on that front, but there's a real chance he could  actually endorse this kind of egregious behavior out of his own sense of blind loyalty to the institution. I'm prepared for both outcomes. 

Either way this crazy chain of events works out, I'm not about to let this grievance become dust in the wind. The taxpayers of this community ought to know about what happened here and how so many attorneys came together to cover up this unethical mess. If I can't convince the busted justice system around here that something's wrong with this picture, I'll just have to convince the people paying for it.

Friday, September 11, 2020

Motion For Sanctions Against Belknap County Attprney Andrew Livernois and Deputy County Attorney Keith Cormier (FULL HEARING AUDIO)

Listen to "Bergeron Motion For Sanctions Against Belknap County Attorney Andrew Livernois and Deputy County Attorney Keith Cormier" on Spreaker.


I have been preparing for this hearing for months. The Deputy County Attorney opposing me has only been assigned to this case for a few months. The audio says it all, but there is some necessary background. 

First, the Belknap County Attorney's Office sought a gag order against me for publishing a letter to the editor in The Laconia Daily Sun. I opposed it and also managed to get the ACLU involved in the case. They filed an Amicus Brief on my behalf. The Belknap County Attorney took himself and his whole office off the case suddenly, and Grafton County took on the case. Deputy Grafton County Attorney Tara Heater is now in charge of the prosecution. She immediately withdrew the deficient and deceptive motion for a gag order filed by the state, trying to play it as a matter of having a different strategy. 

The original gag order request contended that I was responsible for following the rules of professional conduct for NH attorneys even though I'm not even a member of the bar. To clear up any confusion on this front, I actually reported myself to the Attorney Discipline Committee. They insisted they had no jurisdiction over me and those rules did not apply to me. 

I specifically told Attorney Heater that I would file for sanctions and force her to defend the indefensible. She fell for the trap even though I warned her ahead of time not to. She went all in on the original debunked motion, insisting Attorney Keith Cormier wanted to make new law even though it was actually a new rule that would be needed for their motion to have any valid basis. Now it's a waiting game to see if the judge will take action or let these dishonest prosecutors continue to lie and misrepresent the facts and the law.  

Stay tuned for a full accounting of the NH Attorney Discipline Committee's meaningless process of pretending to look at a grievance against these local prosecutors. The whole fiasco involved a ton of dirt, a big rug, and a giant broom wielded by the committee's general counsel. There's now a big lump under the rug, but no dirt in sight.  

Wednesday, September 2, 2020

Cannabis and Hemp Expert Witness/Author/Activist Chris Conrad Interview

 

Chris Conrad is a human encyclopedia when it comes to the history of hemp and cannabis. Rich delves into Conrad's illustrious background as an expert in cultivation who became a champion for reform. This wide ranging discussion covers every angle of why federal legalization is long overdue in the United States:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8xomaxvrx8ywk0m/chrisconradinterview.mp3?dl=0 

Learn more about Chris at:

http://chrisconrad.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Conrad_(author)

https://oaksterdamuniversity.com/chris-conrad/