Judge O'Neill Strikes Down Sanctions Again, Looks the Other Way on Prosecutor Misconduct and Clings to Technicalities

     Judge James D. O'Neill III has no time for holding prosecutors accountable for rules of attorney conduct. His latest ruling on my most recent sanctions motion is simply a case study in cronyism. This is how you toe the political line as a state-loving judge. This is how you prove you're unfit for the bench. Rulings like this make you wonder how Judge O'Neill even got a hold of a gavel in the first place. It's a good thing there are archives out there with gems like this story about how very lucky Judge James was to get his robe in the first place: 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1988/12/24/a-pussycat-with-claws-sununu-leaving-mark-in-home-state/695616c3-8296-4029-867e-a841eb4be72c/

The most compelling paragraph of that piece is this one:

"The bar went ahead with its evaluation and, in a letter to Sununu, Tober wrote that many lawyers had described O'Neill as "demeaning" and "intimidating," and that the association's board of governors "could find no evidence of the requisite fairness and respect . . . that are the hallmarks of our courts.""

It only took a little bit of digging around and asking the right people questions to also secure this confirmatory report: 

https://www.slideshare.net/fightnewsunlimited/judge-james-d-oneill-and-the-truth-about-how-he-earned-his-place-on-the-bench 

Politics trumped logic and experience when it came to this judge's appointment. Politics are still influencing Judge O'Neill's decisions to this day. He won't do anything about attorneys who lie and misrepresent the law, because he's actively misrepresenting himself as a competent, unbiased judge. He didn't respect the rules of the game to get where he is, so why would he hold prosecutors to any code of conduct? 

I suppose I need to cater to this judge's appetite for technicalities. I'm sure I can think of a few technicalities that could lead to a dismissal. At the very least, more people should be aware of his history in this county. They don't call him "No Deal" O'Neill for nothing. 

If you've appeared before Judge O'Neill recently, take some time to fill out this survey: 

JAMES D. O'NEILL, III, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE: JUDICIAL PERFORMANCE EVALUATION-2021* Survey (surveymonkey.com)

Second Motion For Sanctions Hearing Audio

     

Friday, March 5th, 2021 was a day I planned meticulously for, and how my new sanctions motion ultimately shakes out now depends on a Superior Court Judge. The prosecution, led by Deputy Grafton County Attorney Tara Heater, decided to cling to technicalities, as lawyers often do when trying to bury the truth. Saying anything more on this subject will only mean backing herself further into a corner she shouldn't even be in. Belknap County's finest, Andrew Livernois and Keith Cormier, are the real people to blame for Attorney Heater's predicament, but she can't even say it out loud without totally embarrassing her county and the state. The coverup really is worse than the crime. 

A surprising little scandal seems to be emerging in these two counties now that we have Attorney Heater on the record here saying that her supervisor has nothing to do with this litigation. This argument's also been tried to explain away Attorney Cormier's sloppy gag order request. What is the definition of supervisor in these counties? It sounds to me like nobody's doing any real supervising at all. If Attorney Hornick is not involved in the litigation but is also supervising it at the same time, that sounds very contradictory. 

Listen to "Bergeron Sanctions Motion Against Keith Cormier, Andrew Livernois, Tara Heater and Martha Ann Hornick" on Spreaker.

          My patience for this whole ridiculous process is wearing thin. It is bad enough being a pro-se party in a civil case, but in the criminal courts I'm lumped in with some of the worst practitioners of the pro-se moniker in all of human history. I'm considered a lost cause, even if I have real talent as a litigator and even if the truth is on my side. Nothing I can say can penetrate through the thick walls of bias surrounding me. I fully expect to lose this motion on some bogus technicality or legal loophole, which will not slow me down one single bit. I have planned for each and every possible outcome. I've grown used to not being able to trust the system to be honest. Most often you cannot effectively represent yourself, even if you have a solid case, if you have no way to make absolutely sure the system MUST be honest. 

     I have a strategy in this case to make sure there is no possible way for me to truly lose this motion. It is the judge himself and the system itself that will lose if Judge James D. O'Neill III decides to do absolutely nothing to punish these prosecutors. "Attorney Bergeron" will not be discouraged in the event of a denial. I will only be emboldened. The path to acquittal is much easier in the face of a denial of this motion than it will be if this motion is granted. I'll be thrilled no matter which way it goes. I can work effectively and efficiently with either development. 

    The sad part about the road to victory if there is a denial of this motion is that reputational damage is not by any means reversible. Secrets will be revealed and truths will be told that may actually change careers, and not for the better. Legacies will be destroyed. The true character of public officials will be exposed, and there will be emotional wreckage that might never be repaired. Yet, that will be a level I must go to at that point. It will be my reaction to a system that backed me into a corner. And it will be a beautiful but tragic tale of self-destruction for this judge and these prosecutors. 

     Stay tuned to our site here and follow the case as it inches slowly toward trial. The moral of this story will be: the truth matters. Attorney Andrew Livernois at least pretends to subscribe to that sentiment, but his actions prove otherwise. I recently discovered his GoodReads profile, where he insists this is his favorite book quote: 

“Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.”
― Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina

     This prosecution is coincidentally held together by lies, some of which Andrew perpetrated shamelessly. Karma is coming, and justice in the court of public opinion will be much more swift than any justice provided by the local courts. 

Second Sanctions Motion Filed Against Four NH County Prosecutors: Martha Ann Hornick, Tara Heater, Keith Cormier and Andrew Livernois

"Lawyers occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."

- Winston Churchill

Q. How does a lawyer sleep at night?

A. First he lies on one side, and then he lies on the other side.

Q. How can you tell a lawyer is lying?

A. His/Her lips are moving. 

     

     We've all heard the jokes about lawyers and their reputation for lying religiously. Lawyers often lie to their clients. Some more bold attorneys lie in court, and some even lie to the media. So, it may shock you to know that in most states in this country the rules of conduct for practicing attorneys include stipulations that make dishonesty and deception a punishable offense. 

    So how do so many lawyers still get away with being filthy liars? The simple answer is attorneys rarely get called out for misconduct. When they do find themselves accused of violating rules of conduct or procedure, attorneys hardly ever get punished with any meaningful sanctions. 

    The power wielded by prosecutors makes their transgressions even tougher to crack down on. Yet there are specific bar association standards that would have you believe most prosecutors are held to even higher ethical standards than regular attorneys. The truth is more disturbing than you might imagine. 

     My second sanctions motion against the prosecutors in my case proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that "the coverup is worse than the crime." I lay out what amounts to a pattern of lies and misrepresentation covering two of this state's counties (Grafton and Belknap) and perpetrated by four of their top attorneys (Andrew Livernois, Keith Cormier, Martha Ann Hornick and Tara Heater). My affidavit supporting the new motion connects all the dots with concrete evidence. 

     The whole saga started with a sloppy request for an order to prohibit pre-trial publicity. Deputy Belknap County Attorney Keith Cormier filed the motion after I sent an email to his boss. The email, sent only to County Attorney Andrew Livernois, included a link to a letter to the editor I authored about this case and Livernois' misconduct. the Laconia Daily Sun printed my letter after refusing to run an advertisement for www.andrewlivernois.com. They encouraged me to write a letter to the editor instead, implying if I did so, they would publish it. 

     Two days before I baited the county attorney into a revenge move with that published letter, he offered this plea agreement in another email sent to me on May 18, 2020: 

"On a plea to one felony count I would offer 12 months in the HOC, fully suspended on three years’ good behavior, with two years of probation, and a LADAC evaluation and follow up treatment as recommended. "

     I immediately refused the offer and told Livernois to get his ducks in a row for trial. We have had multiple schedules for trial that did not pan out for various reasons. Most of those delays were driven by the prosecution. My arrest happened on February 28, 2019. I've been waiting over two full years for my opportunity to prove my case at trial. 

     I also heard from my standby counsel at the time of that offer that nobody else was getting offers like mine, even with the Covid-19 situation shutting down the courts. 

    Andrew Livernois was so angry about being called out in the media that he obviously ordered his deputy to craft what they called a "Motion for Court Order Prohibiting Pre-Trial Publicity." Cormier wrote and filed that motion as hastily as he could, within a mere 48 hours from the sending of my email to his boss. This was exactly the reaction I was hoping for, especially since the motion that Cormier filed was so fundamentally weak. Rather than ask to prohibit only the kind of pre-trial publicity that would make seating an impartial jury impossible, Cormier asked to block "all pre-trial publicity." His other big mistake was insisting in the motion that the order was needed since I somehow broke a rule of attorney conduct that I'm not even bound to follow. 

     I imagine Attorney Livernois thought that it would at the very least appear to be personally motivated if he was the one who actually wrote the request to prohibit pre-trial publicity. Yet, that did not stop him from advocating for the motion personally in the media. You see, the very request from the Belknap County Attorney's office to prohibit pre-trial publicity actually expanded the publicity aimed at Livernois and Cormier. It was a fabulous episode of firing a big cannon at the opposition only to realize that the weapon is not fit to fire and instead explodes in your face. Livernois himself eventually made ill-advised comments to the Laconia Daily Sun about the request, and that move made the filing of a grievance with the Attorney Discipline Committee the logical next step. 

     Even the Union Leader newspaper featured a report about Belknap County's lame attempt to silence me. Despite the fact that I knew Livernois would react out of spite and anger to my emailing him the letter to the editor, I never imagined two newspapers would be following the saga so closely.  The Laconia Daily Sun also published a piece about the ACLU's intervention in the case with their Amicus Curiae Brief. I ended up writing a few more letters to the editor as well. All of them were published. 

     I noticed from that point on, Livernois clammed right up. Suddenly he would offer no comment to the press about anything related to the case. The whole situation obviously caught him off guard. I'm sure he's never had an opponent in court quite like me. Finally realizing he was stuck in a catch 22 and not wanting the gag order request to get to a hearing, Livernois removed himself from the case. He asked for a young deputy county attorney from Grafton County to take it over. The attorney general granted his wish. 

     Deputy Grafton County Attorney Tara Heater withdrew the gag order motion almost immediately upon being appointed to the case officially. She also asked if we could possibly meet and suggested she might have a more agreeable plea deal for me. I refused the meeting and the plea deal, which would have knocked down 6 felonies to a single misdemeanor. I want a trial, I told her. The only deal I will accept is I will sign an agreement giving up any right to sue the state in civil court if they drop all the charges before trial. So we wait for trial, because the State seems to think a civil suit will never get off the ground. I look forward to proving them wrong when I am acquitted. 

     Attorney Heater was extremely nice and receptive, but I couldn't help feeling like she was withdrawing the motion for the gag order to help Livernois. I didn't get the letter Livernois wrote when he quit the case until after the hearing on my first sanctions motion. I compiled the first sanctions motion specifically against Cormier and Livernois, but it was also a trap. I wanted Attorney Heater to defend the motion she just threw out and contradict herself in the process. I had no idea that she was actually supposed to be working under direct supervision from County Attorney Martha Ann Hornick until after I received Livernois' request to transfer the case in discovery. Accordingly, there was not much for me to include in the original sanctions motion about the misconduct of Attorney Heater. 

     Judge O'Neill struck the first motion down and gave me a roadmap on how to rewrite it, so I set about fixing the problems he pointed out in his denial order. I knew there was a missing piece to the puzzle, and I found it in the letter Livernois wrote about the transfer to Grafton County. It laid out the whole scheme of deception. Livernois tried to separate himself from the case while also making sure the gag order request didn't embarrass him and his office. Rather than write the request himself, he assigned it to his deputy. When the ACLU got involved and the whole thing looked like a big mistake, he re-assigned the case instead of filing his own withdrawal. It seems impossible to fathom that there was no discussion between Livernois and Heater about withdrawing the motion immediately upon her takeover. That was supposed to make everything appear like Livernois was never actually steering the ship when he most certainly was.

     I don't know whether she did it because Livernois asked her to or out of some sense of loyalty to a fellow prosecutor, but Heater insisted that the gag order request was a good faith attempt to change the laws and rules regarding pro-se attorneys and pre-trial publicity. It was her only avenue of escape, and I knew it. The strategy worked perfectly, as she was forced to defend a motion she just asked to be thrown out. She also defended Livernois and Cormier without one shred of affidavit evidence illustrating any personal discussions with either of them. She made no sense in her objection to the first motion and absolutely phoned it in with her objection to the latest motion. 

     There's still not a singe affidavit to prove that Livernois and Cormier wanted to change the law. That's because  the truth is they just wanted me to be kept silent. They thought the judge would give them whatever they wanted. They never stopped to analyze the consequences of being wrong. Their excuses ring hollow now that they've been caught in the act of deception. My reply brief resulted in the second sanctions motion getting scheduled for a March 5, 2021 hearing date. 

     I have been working incredibly hard to seek every avenue available to me to bring these prosecutors down to Earth. I've tried to work with the Attorney Discipline Committee. They said they would be more likely to act if the judge in the case found the behavior to be improper. Yet, the judge seems afraid to really weigh in on whether this conduct is right or wrong. Typically if what you're doing is right, fair and justified, you don't go to such great lengths to keep it hidden from the press and the public. Unfortunately for all these bumbling prosecutors, the longer they insist this whole charade was true and just, the more they expose themselves to ridicule. 

     As it stands, this is by no means an honest prosecution. These attorneys lied and misrepresented the law. It is becoming easier and easier to justify filing a massive civil case against all parties involved here when the dust settles. From the dipshit detectives who couldn't read a criminal record properly to the prosecutors who dropped the ball time and time again, everyone who screwed up in this case should have to pay the same way I've had to pay. They should have to go through a long ordeal where they have to wait for years to know their ultimate fate. I can't be the only one suffering from these fatal flaws in our local justice system, and someone needs to take a stand against this rampant misconduct from our public servants. 

Judge James D. O'Neill III Refuses to Sanction Prosecutors And Paves the Way For Another Sanctions Request

 

Judge James D. O'Neill III ruled against my motion for sanctions in his latest order in my case. 

He also laid out a roadmap for what would be needed to secure a better ruling on such a motion. He cited minimal points of law and fact, and the ruling itself did not reflect any research or careful consideration, unfortunately. 

Even though Judge O'Neill had over a month to review all the material after the September 9th hearing, this ruling seems rushed and slapped together quickly. 

It's as if someone had to remind him he'd forgotten about this particular motion. Coincidentally (or maybe not), I emailed Deputy Grafton County Attorney Tara Heater the day before his ruling came down. I told her I thought Judge O'Neill knew he had to do something in this scenario and that was what was taking him so long. I also asked for a key piece of discovery. I wanted any and all communications regarding Belknap County Attorney Andrew Livernois removing himself from my case. I got this: 

https://www.slideshare.net/fightnewsunlimited/andrew-livernois-quits-my-case-and-blames-me-for-his-misconduct 

This particular document says it all. Andrew Livernois panicked after the ACLU agreed to write an Amicus Brief on my behalf. He and his deputy were under fire in the press, and he couldn't stop it. Instead, he figured he'd just change the target, and I would leave him alone. Livernois obviously had conversations with Heater and her boss Martha Ann Hornick. Then he dumped the case on them without any sense of this being a random assignment. This document shows it was all approved by the State of New Hampshire's Attorney General: Gordon MacDonald. 

What was the first thing Deputy Grafton County Attorney Tara Heater did after Livernois talked to her and her boss? Her first act as a prosecutor on this case was to withdraw the gag order request. Livernois and Cormier knew they were going to lose if it went to a hearing. Rather than tuck tail and retreat on their own, they forced another prosecutor to be brought in to engage in the coverup. That prosecutor then immediately drops the whole gag order request with the lame explanation that it was only a matter of "strategy" and not a matter of the motion having no merits. 

Lo and behold, when I filed my motion for sanctions, Attorney Heater also made the argument that Livernois and Cormier were trying to make new law with their gag order request. The whole basis for that request was based upon my breaking a RULE, not a law. The request was unconstitutional. It was overbroad, and it was not narrowly restricted at all. The more they try to cover up this mess, the more they all implicate themselves in even MORE misconduct. The paper trail doesn't lie. 

These are not the actions that state employees should be engaging in if their interest is really in promoting any semblance of true "justice." 

From here my "strategy" is simple. I will file an amended motion for sanctions. I will make sure it is ironclad, addressing all of Judge O'Neill's superficial concerns. It will be concise and comprehensive, naming exactly what sanctions should apply, what authorities there are to back up such sanctions, and why it simply does not matter that the gag order was withdrawn by a new attorney at the 11th hour. The argument that pulling back from that hearing did not compromise my case in any way is also about to be thoroughly debunked. The motion that results will be one that Judge O'Neill will either feel obligated to act on out of his unbiased dedication to being fair and impartial, or he will simply bury it out of loyalty to the state and the current governor's anti-marijuana stance. He'll use no law or research to do so and will issue an even more opinionated and weak order than the last one. 

Judge O'Neill has been ruling against me religiously, constantly trying to remind the court of my pro-se status, and continually ignoring affidavit evidence in order to favor the prosecution. I even have it in writing that Attorney Livernois knew Judge O'Neill trusted him more because of all the times he's appeared before the judge. It's a rigged system as it is, but as soon as I threatened a civil suit upon the event of an acquittal (in open court), the whole landscape changed. The real coverup and the most coordinated effort to railroad me began at that very moment. It was me against the state from the jump, but after that threat it really became me against THE STATE. 

I'm not intimidated. If Judge O'Neill continues to ignore the law and precedent cases and legal statutes and affidavit evidence, I will have no choice but to ask for his recusal. If he will not police his own courtroom adequately and penalize these officers of the law for abusing their authority and misrepresenting the law and the facts, he will force my hand. 

If the circumstances don't change, I will file a judicial complaint against him and contribute to the next congressional bill to force him out of office. Recusal is not my only avenue of relief if he will not do the job he was sworn to do with fairness and impartiality. I will keep the whole system honest.