Superior Court Clerk Admits No Speedy Trial Reports Have Been Created During Pandemic, Trial Gets Scheduled Again

     It turns out the Freedom of Information Act somehow does not cover the judicial branch at all in New Hampshire, so you have to rely on the New Hampshire Constitution instead: 

Mary Ann Dempsey <MDempsey@courts.state.nh.us>
Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 3:34 PM to me, Mary

Mr. Bergeron,

 

I am responding to your communications to Chief Justice Nadeau requesting speedy trial reports for Belknap County from November 1, 2020 to present.  You cite RSA 91-A as the basis for your request.  Please be advised that the New Hampshire Judicial Branch is not subject to RSA 91-A, but rather responds to request for information in accordance with Part I, Article 8 of the New Hampshire Constitution.  There are no documents responsive to your request as reports have not been prepared during the period that the COVID-19 pandemic has been ongoing.

 

Mary Ann

      I had to send a certified letter to get that response, and I included a bumper sticker for this very site in the envelope.  Both asking Judge O'Neill for a trial to be scheduled and asking Judge Tina Nadeau for documentation regarding the speedy trial calendar appears to be ruffling the right feathers so far. My response to the above admission probably greased the wheels of justice more than any other factor: 

From: Rich Bergeron <rich.bergeron@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Dec 31, 2021 at 11:00 AM
Subject: Re: Right to Know Request
To: Mary Ann Dempsey <MDempsey@courts.state.nh.us>

Please remind Judge Nadeau that there is no precedent or stipulation in the policy itself for fully suspending this policy, pausing it, or refusing to honor the rights it is designed to protect. She and the State of New Hampshire are opening themselves up to serious civil legal action on a class action scale if this attitude persists and monitoring continues to be unlawfully suspended. Please read the policy itself as it pertains to monitoring:

Monitoring System for the Speedy Trial Policy

To implement the Superior Court policy on speedy trial, the Chief Justice of the Superior Court shall require the clerks to prepare and maintain a speedy trial report. In addition, the Chief Justice shall annually designate a justice to be the criminal case monitoring justice to oversee the policy in each court as of April 1 of each year. The Chief Justice as well as the criminal case monitoring justice will receive a copy of the monthly speedy trial report by the seventh day of each month. In consultation with the clerk of that court, the criminal case monitoring justice shall be responsible to see that the speedy trial policy is being adhered to and in addition to see that the criminal docket is arranged so as to avoid the 4 month and 9 month “show cause” hearings to the maximum extent possible through the case scheduling process. The monthly monitoring reports shall list in numerical sequence all active criminal cases pending for longer than 3 months, that is those not dismissed, nol prossed or in which sentences have not been imposed. The clerk of each court shall provide the senior presiding justice in that court with copies of the monthly monitoring reports.


On a quarterly basis the Chief Justice of the Superior Court shall ensure that the speedy trial reports from all ten counties are available electronically to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to assist the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in determining what changes, if any, may be necessary in the monitoring process.


Does this mean the judiciary in this state is using the Pandemic as an excuse to deny countless people awaiting trial their civil rights? The underlined portion above stipulates the monitoring process can be changed, but there is no language in the policy that allows for suspension of the policy for any reason. This policy is codified by the Supreme Court case it cites. A local court should not be able to ignore established Supreme Court precedent law for any reason, and the state is opening itself up to countless "violation of civil rights" lawsuits if this attitude persists. The moment an effective 1st Circuit Court appeal is granted on a case involving this unconstitutional blanket denial of speedy trial rights, the floodgates for civil lawsuits will open.

I look forward to publishing this information and alerting citizens of this state to the fact that Judges refuse to do their jobs and enforce the law in this state and choose to blame the pandemic for their complete failure to fix their internal problems. Judge Introcaso is just the tip of the iceberg. Judge O'Neill is a complete travesty and never should have been appointed. Now we have evidence that Judge Nadeau is abandoning her responsibilities to enforce speedy trial rights in this state. The perfect legal storm my case has become is still gaining strength. You can't deny me my day in court forever, and the civil suit will follow. 

Blame the pandemic all you want, but this is flat out dereliction of duty.  

Rich Bergeron

     It only took about a week after sending this message, but I finally have an idea of when my trial will be thanks to a January 6th Notice of Jury Trial. The final pretrial hearing will be April 19th. That happens to be after Judge O'Neill's mandatory retirement date, so my prediction from my last recusal motion came true there. Judge O'Neill will not be presiding over my trial, which is currently scheduled for the weeks of May 9th and May 16th, 2022. 

     It is often said that sunlight is the best disinfectant. I eagerly await my chance to shed some serious light on how truly screwed up my local justice system is. The Covid-19 delays have only made the glaring holes in the process more apparent. The sad part is that the evidence will show the state of New Hampshire wasted a whole lot of taxpayer dollars on this case. There's no return on investment for that. There is in fact more damaging information that will come out at trial which will make this a lose/lose situation all around for this state. 

     The weight and force of the system itself bearing down on me will betray the fact that marijuana prohibition has no future and makes no sense for our state. The botched investigation at the center of the case against me shows how easy it is to corrupt a small-town law enforcement system like ours. This case is dead on arrival, and any halfway intelligent jury will see through the prosecutor's bullshit. Then a new chapter begins where I hold the state and the main players in this mess accountable in civil court. STAY TUNED. 

"The Long Blue Walk" Author Norman A. Carter Jr. Describes Lessons He Learned Fighting Against Corruption as a Philadelphia Police Officer

By: Rich Bergeron

     I am not the only one concerned about how corruption can negatively impact even the smallest local police force or town government or prosecutor's office. Corruption is everywhere, and going through traditional channels to expose it often leads to dead ends and no changes in the status quo. More often than not, the whistleblowers face retaliation and backlash for simply wanting the rules to be enforced. 

     Norman A. Carter Jr. was a Philadelphia Police Officer for over 25 years. He was a decent, honest man who wanted to do the job to improve the community. Other officers who accepted bribes, took taxpayer money to invent fake crimes to pin on random citizens, and simply avoided real police work would often bump heads with Officer Carter. As a result, he ended up getting the worst assignments and making the most of them no matter how difficult of a circumstance his superiors tried to put him in. 

     Carter's book "The Long Blue Walk" is an inside look at a growing problem in this country. Police Misconduct plagues every state in this country, and some jurisdictions have gone to the extreme of "defunding the police." This is the perverse result of a citizenry who sees a handful of bad actors cast a bad light on entire departments and all the police personnel in an entire city, even those who have received commendations for excellent police work. Rather than deal with the few bad apples, some municipalities are voting to throw out the whole barrel. 

      Carter and I cover a lot of ground in this hour, but the greatest commonality between us is we both put our issues on the map with letters to the editor of our local newspapers. We have a great back and forth about the benefit of publicizing your struggles in fighting corruption and exposing bad behavior on a wider scale. It is the principle of sunlight being the best disinfectant. Listen for yourself right here: 

Toothless NH Judicial Conduct Committee Refuses to Investigate Report on Judge O'Neill

Despite knowing it wouldn't amount to more than a fart in the wind as far as the committee was concerned, I filed an extensive report on judicial misconduct regarding Judge James D. O'Neill recently. 

Here are the exhibit links:

EXHIBIT 1, EXHIBIT 2, EXHIBIT 3, EXHIBIT 4, EXHIBIT 5, EXHIBIT 6, EXHIBIT 7, EXHIBIT 8, EXHIBIT 9

The committee discussed the complaint and dismissed it by simply claiming they had no jurisdiction. I suspect their lack of interest is directly related to the fact that Judge O'Neill is set for a forced retirement as of March 30, 2022. He is an alternate member of the committee. They are not going to go after one of their own on his way out the door:

http://sos.nh.gov/GC2.aspx (See Page 156, Judge O'Neill entry)

https://casetext.com/statute/new-hampshire-revised-statutes/title-51-courts/chapter-493-a-retired-judges-judicial-referees/section-493-a1-c-retired-justices-over-70-years-of-age

This report was not really for the JCC, though. It was for you: my loyal, worldwide audience. If the powers that be don't want to try to change the system for the better, people like me will have to change it in our own way. If you have your own complaints about Judge James D. O'Neill III, please send any information and documentation you have to boxer_47@yahoo.com. 

Motion to Recuse Judge James D. O'Neill III Officially Filed

 

A motion to recuse Judge James O'Neill III from my case is now my last shot to try to gain equal footing with the prosecution. The motion lays out my reasoning for asking Judge O'Neill to step down. Hs bias permeates the case and makes it impossible to proceed without getting him removed from the case. 

Please reach out to me at boxer_47@yahoo.com if you've also had problems with Judge O'Neill. I am preparing a report to send to the NH Judicial Conduct Committee. It is not enough that Judge James D. O'Neill III is only prevented from ruling in my case. He should be removed from the bench for his "look the other way" mentality when it comes to prosecutorial misconduct. 

If you've been before Judge O'Neill recently (in the past year), please fill out this Survey to let his superiors know how he's really performing his duties:

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

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. 

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. 

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.

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.  

Andrew Livernois and his Deputy County Attorney Reported to NH Supreme Court Attorney Discipline Office for Misconduct...Will Justice Prevail?

Belknap County Attorney Andrew Livernois and his Deputy Keith Cormier are the subject of a detailed complaint I recently filed with the New Hampshire Supreme Court Attorney Discipline Office.

Most traditional defense "lawyers" would never take such a drastic step against their brethren, especially if they anticipate having to make future deals for their clients in criminal court with the County Attorney's Office.

I am not a lawyer. I represent myself. The legal term is Pro-Se, which in Latin means "for oneself." I come into every court with this status having to instantly overcome the "fool for a client" stigma attached to self-represented people. It's a deep hole to dig out of in most cases, because judges are very harsh and unwilling to listen to anyone who didn't pass the bar.

Criminal courts are often the most difficult environment to practice law in if you're doing so on your own behalf. You've been arrested and put on the defensive. All judges expect self represented parties to fall flat on their faces if they were never actual lawyers and don't know how things really work. You have to force criminal judges to listen. Show them the facts. Show them the lies told by the prosecutors in their haste to win your conviction. More often than not, obstinate judges will form an instant bias against you and will continuously rule against you. I know this because I've lived it. The only motion I've won so far in my current case is the only one that was unopposed.

No matter how many merits all my past civil cases had at the outset, just about every single judge I appeared before in civil court ruled against me until I put in the work to prove I was right all along. Only one judge ever broke that trend in nearly a half dozen major cases I've been involved in over the years (more about him later).

It all started with a plastic surgery patient who appeared on the HBO documentary Plastic Disasters. The victim of a botched facelift wanted me to write a book about her experience. She started a blog and wrote detailed reviews about what the surgeon did to her. The surgeon sued her to silence her writing and her criticism, using the legal logic that he'd trademarked his name so nobody could insult his practice. It is perhaps the most egregious example of using the civil courts and other means to violate a person's First Amendment rights. The judge's consistent rulings in favor of the doctor without giving any fair consideration to the victim served to ultimately promote corporate greed and minimize the public's ability to hold negligent medical professionals accountable through "name and shame" efforts when justice fails to solve the problem. Throughout the case I was named in various injunctions preventing me from writing about the proceedings or the victim's painful ordeal. A thoroughly biased judge connected to a local health care conglomerate gave the plaintiff everything his law firm asked for. Eventually, even the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals failed me when I asked for the judge to be forcefully recused from the case. Basically the panel of superior judges came back at me with lies and blind ignorance, somehow maintaining that the judge was "done with" the very active case and the bias was "too attenuated" to warrant any do over.

https://www.theindianalawyer.com/articles/25903-7th-circuit-denies-petition-to-remove-judge


The true victims of all this lazy, reckless legal work to change the system for the worse were Lucille Iacovelli and the many injured patients impacted by medical negligence she helped create a support community for. She committed suicide at the end of a long and painful road of being made out to be a crazed lunatic who was somehow imagining her intense struggle to survive. She persisted amid serious physical damage done to her by a botched facial surgery performed by Dr. Barry Eppley. She simply wanted to share her experience and allow people to see her daily suffering to warn other people of the risks of going under the knife. He just wanted everybody searching for his name to never have to stumble upon her tragic story of what she endured because she trusted him to operate on her. This is how doctors maintain perfect images in the public eye. They use their practice insurance to pay lawyers to crush their outspoken opposition. They get orders LIKE THIS ONE from extremely biased and sympathetic judges.

That one judge who ruled my way right away (No, not Judge King, he sucked) was none other than Christopher J. Muse. Judge Muse heard the case when Lucille's sister hired a lawyer to sue Luicille's estate and I in a Cape Cod, Massachusetts area court just 6 days after her suicide. He refused to OK an order to shut down a Web-site I created to protest all the injustices in that whole saga.

The Judge Muses of the world are few and far between. I researched his background and discovered that when he was a lawyer he helped get a wrongfully convicted man out of prison in a landmark legal case. The wrongfully convicted client also sued the state and won a judgment for his time behind bars. He's the kind of person you know will be fair because he's been there and done it all, and he's truly seen all sides of every issue.

The point is, there has to be an equalizer for people like me to give me any fair shot against a judge who is prematurely convinced just because he's used to believing everything the local prosecutor tells him to and nothing a self represented party attests to. Even if nothing the County Attorney claims is sworn by way of any affidavits and I've presented over a dozen affidavits at this point, Judge O'Neil believes Livernois every time. I don't have to ask why. The County Attorney told me why.

This is a passage from my lengthy grievance:


"Livernois personally sent me an email about the case in which he specifically mentioned that he knew Judge O’Neil did not believe any of my claims. His exact words were: 'I know that Judge O’Neill does not put any stock in those claims either, as he is able to observe how I run my office and prosecute cases day in and day out.  So I choose not to waste the Court’s time in responding.'"



Right there the Belknap County Attorney is telling me one of his main advantages in the proceedings: he basically has the judge eating out of his hand. (hence the above comic parody of my adversary)

Criminal court is not a pleasant place for a pro-se party to operate. Even when it appears a judge may be protecting your rights it may be more of an effort to avoid any meaningful appeal rather than a genuine attempt to listen to your story. I've faced an uphill battle all the way in this case. From here on out that landscape changes. That's because I'm embracing one of my own most powerful advantages: my chance to tell my true story to all the judges in the court of public opinion. 

July 21, 2020 will be the day Judge O'Neil sits in on the most important hearing of these proceedings. Then he will decide on a motion that will finally put the prosecutors in this case in the spotlight. Are they serving the public good or engaged in a wild goose chase at taxpayer expense? 

This commonwealth and this country face two very magnanimous crises at the same time: a rapidly spreading virus stressing the health care system to the max and a growing fomentation of protest caused by generations of piss poor police work coming home to roost. A lack of accountability from the powers that be who did not prepare us to face these problems is becoming readily apparent in both these cases. It's the root cause of both the pandemic and the protest wave. Law Enforcement and Health Care in the United States are two systems in dire need of more significant and meaningful regulation and oversight. I hope this case and the transgressions of these public officials trying to silence me hammers home the point that we need not waste another moment. The time to act to stop these dangerous trends is right now. 

It's time to bring integrity back to the legal profession and stop electing lawyers to public office who refuse to follow their own professional rules of responsibility. 

 

New Hampshire ACLU Exposes Fatal Flaws Behind Belknap County Attorney's Request For Gag Order in Amicus Brief

The Belknap County Attorney's office recently filed a request for an order to prohibit all pre-trial publicity. This is very familiar territory to me. Though I've asked so many advocacy groups to help in my previous efforts, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is the first agency to truly step in to file anything on my behalf.

The Amicus Curiae brief filed Friday by ACLU-NH is a master stroke of legalese. For those who don't appreciate the antiquated language of the law, I can put it in plain English for you. This brief proves that the County Attorneys office used junk law and bogus logic to seek their injunction, which would clearly represent a prior restraint against free speech. Even if the rules of professional conduct apply to me, which they don't, the rule cited by Deputy County Attorney Keith Cormier (3.6) wouldn't even prohibit my speech in this scenario if those rules were applicable to me. Their order would be too general in nature (overbroad) and too easily used to simply silence all my thoughts on the case rather than accomplish any clear and necessary objective on the State's behalf.

This passage says it all about the constitutional weaknesses exposed in this brief:

"Moreover, even if there were a basis to issue the requested order—which there is not—the proposed order is unconstitutionally overbroad. While the practice on commenting on open cases may feel unusual to attorneys and judges in New Hampshire, “the knowledge that every criminal trial is subject to contemporaneous review in the forum of public opinion is an effective restraint on possible abuse of judicial power. Without publicity, all other checks are insufficient: in comparison of publicity, all other checks are of small account.” Gentile v. State Bar of Nevada, 501 U.S. 1030, 1035 (1991) (opinion of Kennedy, J.) (ellipsis omitted) (quoting In re Oliver, 333 U.S. 257, 270-71 (1948)). “[T]he criminal justice system exists in a larger context of a government ultimately of the people, who wish to be informed about the happenings in the criminal justice system, and, if sufficiently informed about those happening, might wish to make changes in the system.” Id. at 1070."

In addition to the ACLU stepping in to help out, the bonehead move by these prosecutors to seek a gag order also brought some local newspapers out of the woodwork to report on my case. The Laconia Daily Sun published my initial letter to the editor as well as this follow up:

https://www.laconiadailysun.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/rich-bergeron-public-officials-cant-pick-choose-what-can-be-said-about-them/article_586fccb8-aa58-11ea-b03b-0303ddc17d50.html

Then the Union Leader stepped up to the plate with an article that included one of the best quotes from my objection to the gag order request:

“'Livernois and now his assistant, continue to misrepresent and warp the facts of this case and even the law itself to support their incessant need to silence Bergeron’s true accounting of how this case unfolded,' he wrote."

The tide is turning, and the court of public opinion is in session. The traditional courts are still shuttered. There's no word on when open, in-person hearings will be allowed again.

I fully support the decent, hard working people in local, state and national law enforcement agencies who are truly doing the best they can amid a nationwide backlash against the profession. What I can't support is abuse of power, negligent use of taxpayer funds to pursue a vendetta, and a useless prosecution like this one that is already backfiring on the County Attorney's office.

Ultimately I'm being accused of violating a set of rules I'm not even officially bound to follow by people who violated those rules repeatedly in this case. You can't make this shit up. Not only are these two prosecuting legal professionals subject to the very same rules they want to pin on me, they are considered especially liable when they break the rules. Rule 8.4 of these conduct requirements deals with "The Integrity of the Profession." The motion for a gag order itself violates the spirit of this rule. It's a deception, done out of a sense of revenge and abuse of power rather than on behalf of the community's best interests.

Cormier wrote this "pot-calling-the-kettle-black" fallacy into his bogus request for a court order:

"The purpose of Rule 3.6 is clear – it is to protect the integrity of the judicial system. Extra-judicial statements in the media strike at the heart of the fair and impartial administration of justice and threaten to undermine the integrity of the criminal justice system, and therefore cannot be allowed to occur."

Keith Cormier and Andrew Livernois are by no means examples of officers of the law standing up for integrity. They are attempting to bury the facts at every turn in this case. They are both just symptoms of a greater problem: protecting and thereby perpetuating bad police work. This kind of abuse and waste needs to end, and as the ACLU reminds us twice in this brief, Andrew Livernois is up for election this coming November. Maybe it's time for him to go back to private practice.

Andrew Livernois Doesn't Want any Publicity About His Misconduct

    Belknap County Attorney Andrew Livernois is doing his best impersonation of Forrest Gump, constantly running. He is running as hard as he can from the inconvenient truths that arose from a case against me that never should have been filed. He is so incredibly scared of the truth that he had his assistant file a motion for a court order to prohibit pre-trial publicity. 

     I think it had something to do with this Letter to the Editor I wrote in the Laconia Daily Sun. I sent it to Livernois on Wednesday morning (May 20th), and it was no surprise he had a motion before the court by Friday before 10 in the morning. 

     Let the battle begin, I say. This is First Amendment law. I've been working within those parameters for my entire career as a self-represented party. I've been subjected to injunctions in multiple jurisdictions. My published work is still in place, all over the Internet. 

     The most laughable aspect of this latest motion by the prosecution team is the thin legal argument it is based on. Attorney Livernois refused to meet with me prior to my arraignment, because he felt not being represented by counsel would complicate matters. He suggested the only way we could meet would be to wait for arraignment or get a lawyer. Now, although I have not attended law school and did not take a single legal class anywhere, suddenly I am expected to follow the rules of professional conduct for New Hampshire attorneys in regard to generating publicity for my case. 

     I am being treated as if I am a full-fledged attorney who passed the bar and swore an oath. Why did my standing change so drastically in just a few hearings? Also, when can I take on new clients?

     What's worse is the County Attorney and his young lackey Keith Cormier couldn't even come up with a single thread of applicable law to use as precedent cases. Cormier only cited two pro-se cases which had to do with those self-represented parties being required to abide by rules of procedure and motion practice. He does not have a single case in his pleading where a pro-se attorney was held to the same rules of professional conduct that a licensed attorney is bound to follow. The three First Amendment cases cited to supposedly prove a prior restraint is proper in this scenario are all relating to people who had practicing, licensed attorneys. There is no commonality, no similarly situated parties. 

    The most important question to ask here is why would a professional attorney like Andrew be all bent out of shape about a Letter to the Editor in the local newspaper? Why would he twist the law and seek to squelch the press if he had nothing to hide? Also, it is very interesting that the assistant county attorney refused to characterize my letter in negative terms.The most dismissive word he can find to use about my message is that it contained "brazen" claims. Well, excuse me for being brazen when I have 53 years of potential prison time hanging over my head. 

     The fact is, the truth is a very powerful force. I know from experience. I've ruined reputations and destroyed the credibility of financial criminals in my prior work as an investigative reporter. There are certain truths people are desperate to keep quiet. Some are just inconvenient patterns of thought or habits that people don't want their friends or relatives to know about. Other truths are deeper, more systematic, and more connected to waste, fraud and abuse. 

    The truth is coming out. Fact by fact, motion by motion, despite the delays and in spite of a biased and corrupt system of justice in this community. Stay tuned.  

MOTION TO DISMISS HEARING FULL AUDIO

Listen to the first major hearing on the case here, and please weigh in with your thoughts in the comment section:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g9v7nlrb1kyqdjl/richfirsthearingbelknap.wma

Read the full motion to dismiss documentation below:

Defendant's Motion to Dismiss Indictments Filed by Belknap County Attorney Andrew Livernois from Rich Bergeron

OPERATION STICKER SHOCK

If you want your tax dollars to stop being wasted on useless investigations and prosecutions like mine, please spend $10 to buy a bumper sticker to support our cause. It will be very expensive to put on an adequate legal defense under the circumstances where I am forced to take this case to trial. Place your bumper sticker where bumper stickers typically go, or do us a favor and place it somewhere prominent where a ton of people can clearly read it and register that they need to follow up and check out the website. If the judicial system of the state of New Hampshire will not come to their senses, the court of public opinion has to be the equalizer. Please help and buy a sticker today by clicking on the image below:

Where are Your Taxes Going? The Cost of Arresting the Wrong Guy

Imagine you are stranded on the side of a busy road, just far enough off the shoulder to not be in the way of any traffic. First, a police officer stops and talks to you. You have help coming but he keeps insisting you get a wrecker. You tell him you can't afford that. The next people who stop say they'd love to help but they don't have any chains. They have a nice truck though, and they claim to be loggers after you tell them that's what you do. They look the part, beards and flannel jackets, so it makes sense.

So, this all happened to me last winter. I gave these two fellow "loggers" business cards and tell them if they ever need firewood customers in their area (outside my range) I would refer the outliers to them.

Finally the third time is the charm. One selfless hero in a lifted old POS truck comes along and parks right in the middle of the road after the police officer left me to deal with another incident. Only one impatient A-hole decides to lay on the horn but eventually drives around. The random stranger throws one end of a chain to me and it's around an anchor point on my vehicle in 2 minutes. He connects the other end to his truck and I drive right out of that ditch with ease. I give him a business card and get a random text a couple weeks later from a guy I think is him. It's not, and it turns out to be one of the guys who didn't have chains.

Next thing you know, despite having not a single criminal conviction on my record, I wind up being set up for 6 Special Felonies for allegedly selling less than a half pound of marijuana over 6 different occasions. Then I find out it's all been designed to infiltrate the operation of someone they think I will give up on a silver platter. I don't cooperate once they arrest me a month after the last transaction. Then I find out the real target has two leaks in law enforcement. One is in the Sheriff's Office and the other is right in the Drug Task Force itself. So, now I'm the target, framed as being a drug dealer who should spend over 20 years in prison for a set of crimes the government manufactured against me without doing any investigation into my background.

Your tax dollars paid for a massive investigation that produced zero results. You employed multiple law enforcement agents to waste their time on an investigation that was always doomed from the start due to pervasive leaks within their own ranks. You paid for these officers to purchase these "drugs," have them shipped to a lab and tested by paid professional experts, and put into evidence in the form of written statements confirming that it was pure Cannabis, a plant that is changing the face of medicine and legal in half the country as a recreational product.

Before this "investigation" even started, Officer Jared Beaulieu lied about my record in a sworn affidavit. You would think he would be up on perjury charges or at least be subject to my cross examination and be asked to explain how this lie made it onto the court's official paperwork presented at arraignment. Beaulieu insisted the record showed I had two convictions on my record, one in the state of New Hampshire that was ACTUALLY an acquittal for an assault that occurred because a former business partner stole my wood splitter.

The judge in the assault case ruled that I had the right to use "reasonable force" to retrieve stolen property. There are zero convictions on my criminal record. I have never spent more than an overnight stint in jail for youthful indiscretions that had NOTHING TO DO WITH DRUGS. It is entrapment all the way, and YOU will be paying for the trial in August if you let the madness continue. The reputations of the leakers and the officers who turned a blind eye to them will be raked across the coals. The system will be crucified, as it should be for building and sustaining and then capitalizing on a ridiculous amount of tainted, wasted evidence to prosecute meaningless crimes and ruin an honorable man who contributes positively to his community. Meanwhile people die every day of overdoses from much harder, much more dangerous drugs.

NH taxpayers need to stop paying for this madness and to tell the county attorney to stop wasting so many of his resources on prosecuting people that never should have been set up in the first place. Call Belknap County Attorney Andrew Livernois at 603-527-5440 or email him at: alivernois@belknapcounty.org and tell him to stop wasting your tax dollars on good people like me and start cleaning up the Opioid crisis.

DON'T LET THIS CROOKED NH DRUG TASK FORCE AGENT FOOL YOU INTO THINKING HE IS YOUR FRIEND

The officer you see above (bearded during undercover operations)  has no problem turning honest, hard working people into felons based on false information. He misrepresented my criminal record in my case to get his arrest warrant and never bothered to do any preliminary investigation to see if I was pre-disposed to sell marijuana. The judge on the case thought it was sufficient that Belknap County Attorney Andrew Livernois simply mentioned the fact that I really had no convictions whatsoever on my record at the arraignment. This was despite the fact that multiple agents of the NH Attorney General's office signed off on a warrant and an entire investigation that was based on statements containing false information that any one of them could have checked and verified for themselves. 

Everyone in the chain of command just took Beaulieu's word that I had multiple convictions instead of bare charges that were not in any way related to drugs of any kind. Beaulieu didn't even know how to use the computer system and check a criminal record, did no real preliminary investigation or surveillance to determine if I was any kind of drug dealer, and admitted to "cold" texting me to see if I would sell him marijuana. My final text to Beaulieu was "YOU ARE A FUCKING LIAR!" He offered no response or defense. 

This man's lies ruined my life after he pretended to befriend me and then his "real" friends in the NH DTF tried to turn me against someone capable of killing me if he was facing a lifetime in prison. I also discovered leaks in my case, and I was never the real target. Law enforcement officials from two different agencies were feeding the real target information. 

I did my best to highlight the major issues in my case, but the judge refused to acknowledge the real facts after my extremely detailed motion to dismiss sat on the docket after the hearing "under advisement" for over a month. The judge waited for the case to wind up being an indictment, even though I filed my motion days after my arraignment. My name has been relentlessly dragged through the mud based on lies that Officer Jared Beaulieu told to initiate this investigation. 

The judge also made not one mention in his order of my fear for my life and the fact that the County Attorney said he could meet with a lawyer right away if I had one but not with me if I was self represented. I could not meet with him, he said, until I made an appearance in the court. My concerns for meeting with him had nothing to do with wanting consideration on my case, it was an urgent request related to my safety, and Andrew Livernois did nothing but stonewall my efforts to report the leaks to other law enforcement agencies. He insisted he could meet with me after the arraignment, but that was too late. He'd already betrayed my trust ten times over by that time. 

I tried to seek the earliest possible relief through the best possible method to dispatch the case on the merits of my argument. It was actually a method the judge suggested to me in open court only to shoot it down later when he had the facts to support a full dismissal. The bottom line is I never should have been arraigned. The case is that flawed, and it all started with this irresponsible and reckless officer making the decision to set me up for six special felonies when he found me on the side of the road stuck in a snowbank and pretended to try to help. 

How about you help out with real crime, Jared? How about you help apprehend real criminals you actually investigate before you randomly find them down on their luck and coerce them into breaking the law to support a lost cause? How about you target the drugs that are killing people, not the ones getting approved in one state after another for recreational use?   

New Hampshire needs to stop devoting so much time, energy and money to cases like mine that are doomed from the start because some young, gung-ho cop makes a rookie mistake that ruins an honest man's life. Nothing is gained either here, not one iota of progress toward any stated mission of the NH Atorney General's Task Force. It's a waste, a fraud on the court, and a ridiculous game being played at the expense of my future. They want to put me in jail for up to 20+ years for allegedly selling less than a half pound of weed. This wouldn't be happening without me refusing to cooperate with the same law enforcement agency that decided it was a good idea to set me up and then immediately tried to fry me because I didn't cooperate. 

Somehow the State of New Hampshire's backward legal system cannot see the forest through the trees. They can't see how it is just outright wrong and fundamentally a violation of due process to put someone with no criminal record into this entrapment scheme when the whole investigation is compromised from the start by leaks supporting the target. Then when he does not want to cooperate with a compromised investigation, the book is thrown right at him. It defies logic, but the judge on this case seems to think this is the normal mode of operation for law enforcement and there is nothing that rises to the level of misconduct here. 

New Hampshire's judicial system will keep protecting liars like Jared Beaulieu and their illegitimate investigations until someone finally recognizes that putting innocent people through ordeals like mine simply cannot be tolerated in a free society based on fairness and justice. The effort to educate the masses starts here. Please like and share this post, and please leave comments, even if just to say, "keep fighting!"