The Rights Case

“The Rights Case” is a case pending before the United States Supreme Court, “In Re David Sieverding et ux., Petitioners No. 07-884”, that could close a loophole in the legal system that allows the imprisonment, extradition, fining, issuance of arrest warrants and issuance of injunctions against any citizen, at any time, without any basis in fact or law or any assertion of national security interests. A motion has also been filed in the Supreme Court to report this to the Justice Department Criminal Division. The original action was District of Colorado Federal Court Case 02-1950.

Under current decisions by the 10^th Circuit, there doesn’t even need to be an accusation that a law has been broken before someone can be fined and/or jailed and/or subject to injunction, it can be done just on a court order, issued without any trial, hearing or evidentiary process, that, itself, cites no basis in fact or law.

The loophole exists because the Constitution and the Rules of Criminal Procedure make it the government prosecutor’s job to secure the Constitutional rights and other legal rights of the defendant in a criminal proceeding. Therefore, by acting without a government prosecutor, the court can institute a criminal proceeding against anyone at any time and, in that proceeding, dispense with any or all of that person's rights. The court can also issue injunctions against, fine, incarcerate and exradite anyone, at any time, with no procedeeding whatsoever and without stating any basis in fact or law.

When this loophole is invoked, anyone can be made a defendant in a criminal proceeding without notice, without evidence, without charges and without even being present, and they can lose all of their rights including all of the rights normally secured by Amendments 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 14, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the US Code, state constitutions, state rules of criminal procedure, state code and state and federal case law. Citizens are completely powerless.

In Young v. United States ex rel Vuitton, 107 S. Ct. 2124, 481 U.S, the United States Supreme Court made this loophole illegal, but they did not establish penalties for further use of the loophole.

In Re David Sieverding et ux., Petitioners No. 07-884 asks the United States Supreme Court to establish severe penalties against civil attorneys representing private financial interests who fail to comply with Young v. United States ex rel Vuitton, 107 S. Ct. 2124, 481 U.S.

The Denver Federal Court incarcerated Kay Sieverding without charges for a total of five months, extradited her across state lines, fined her over $100,000, issued an injunction against her and issued two warrants for her arrest all without the statutorily required procedural due process, all without even accusing her of breaking a law.

In several rulings, the Tenth and DC circuits affirmed these actions, thus establishing precedent for doing all of these things to anyone without the statutorily required procedural due process and without even accusing that person of breaking a law.

This has the effect of creating an apartheid legal system in which people prosecuted by a government prosecutor have all of the applicable rights secured by the state and federal constitutions, laws, rules and case law and people prosecuted by civil attorneys representing private financial interests have substantially no rights whatsoever.

Kay Sieverding was incarcerated without the:

1. (Young v. United States ex rel Vuitton, 107 S. Ct. 2124, 481 U.S) right to an impartial or government prosecutor
2. 4^th and 6^th Amendment right to a warrant stating what law one is accused of breaking and probable cause
3. 6^th Amendment right to cross examine witnesses
4. 6^th Amendment right to subpoena favorable witnesses
5. 6^th Amendment right to counsel
6. 6^th Amendment right to put on a defense
7. 8^th Amendment right to bail
8. 9^th Amendment right to the rights secured by the U.S. Code, state constitutions, state law, case law, the Magna Charta and common law
9. For the purpose of interfering with her 1^st Amendment right to petition government

Sieverding was extradited across state lines without the:

1. (Young v. United States ex rel Vuitton, 107 S. Ct. 2124, 481 U.S) right to an impartial or government prosecutor at the hearing where the warrant was requested and issued
2. 4^th Amendment right to have a warrant presented at time that Kay Sieverding’s person was seized and to have a copy of the executed warrant made available to her (technically, this was a seizure of a person, not an arrest, since an arrest involves execution of a valid arrest warrant)
3. 4^th and 6^th Amendment right to statement of probable cause
4. 4^th and 6^th Amendment right to the citation of statute
5. Following seizure of Kay Sieverding’s person, right to have judgment arrested and to be immediately released after a government prosecutor stated in open court that there was no state interest in the case
6. Following seizure of Kay Sieverding’s person, right to have judgment arrested and to be immediately released when the government prosecutor did not challenge Sieverding’s assertion that the warrant that she had previously viewed on the Internet, but was not presented at the time of her arrest, did not have a statement of probable cause and citation of statute
7. Right to arraignment
8. 5^th and 14^th Amendment right to due process
9. 8^th Amendment right to bail
10. Procedural due process rights secured by Title 18, Part II, Chapter 209, Section 3182 not to be extradited unless the conditions specified herein are met.
11. For the purpose of interfering with her 1^st Amendment right to petition government

Sieverdings were fined over $100,000 without:

1. A finding by the judge that they did anything wrong or what the fine was based on.

An injunction was issued against Sieverding without:

1. Formal procedure required by Federal Rules of Procedure Rule 65 starting with the law that it is based on, continuing to require a bond placed by the defendants, formal notice, a hearing, and continuing with the formal requirements of form described in Rule 65(d)

Comment

 The wholesale loss of rights that led to the incarceration of Kay Sieverding without even accusing her of breaking a law came about because there is no penalty for violating the rights secured by the United States Supreme Court case Young v. United States ex rel Vuitton, 107 S. Ct. 2124, 481 U.S. Unless there is a severe punishment, and high likelihood of suffering this punishment, there is no reason why lawyers would follow any law when violating the law would be in their client’s financial interest.

In the Young v. United States ex rel Vuitton, 107 S. Ct. 2124, 481 U.S., the United States Supreme Court ruled that the court could not appoint financially interested private attorneys as prosecutors. The District of Colorado Federal Court, nonetheless, did so, then these attorneys apparently dispensed with Kay Sieverding’s procedural due process rights to bring about her incarceration without even citing a statute.

Lawyers do not appear to be willing to follow the rules, uphold the law and uphold the Constitution voluntarily. Thus, the only way for citizens to enjoy their constitutional rights is for the Supreme Court to issue severe and likely financial sanctions to force them to uphold the rules, laws and the Constitution. The non-existence of severe and likely punishment has ended rule of law in the United States. The only way to restore rule of law is to impose severe punishment on the lawyers and their clients who violate those rights.

In pending the Supreme Court case “In Re David Sieverding et ux., Petitioners No. 07-884”, Sieverding is asking that the United States Supreme Court create severe financial sanctions to deter further violations of the rights secured by Young v. United States ex rel Vuitton, 107 S. Ct. 2124, 481 U.S. Sieverding believes that this is the only way to deter financially interested private attorneys from violating these rights.

Now that officers of the court and government officials have discovered that they can get away with violating Young v. United States ex rel Vuitton, 107 S. Ct. 2124, 481 U.S. to make an end run around the United States Constitution, it should open up a floodgate of abuse from all directions.

The lack of punishment for violations of Young v. United States ex rel Vuitton, 107 S. Ct. 2124, 481 U.S. creates an asymmetrical situation. Corporations can prosecute citizens and have them thrown in jail to further their financial interests. But, citizens cannot have corporations thrown in jail because it is impossible to do so.

In this case, Kay Sieverding was put in jail for the financial benefit of the prosecuting attorneys’ clients. But, the basic approach of using interested private attorneys to prosecute cases as a means of jailing citizens without due process can be used for any imaginable purpose. It is a generalized way to make an end run around the Constitution and the law.

Usually, prosecutors are full-time government employees within the executive branch government. Occasionally the government can hire and pay private attorneys to act as prosecutors. In either case, there is an employer-employee relationship between the government and the prosecutor. This relationship gives the government control over and responsibility for the prosecutor’s conduct. This, in turn, gives the government the power to ask its prosecutors to use their prosecutorial powers to exclusively enforce applicable statutes and to secure the procedural due process rights of the persons that they prosecute. The statutes that are being enforced by the prosecutors must be written by the legislative branch of government and signed by executive branch of government. Thus, all three branches of government are usually represented.

When a civil attorney representing private financial interests acts as prosecutor, there is no employer-employee relationship between the executive branch of government and the prosecutor, thus the executive branch of government has no control over whether the prosecutor secures the procedural due process rights of the persons that they prosecute or not. Furthermore, the executive branch of government has no control over whether the prosecutor uses their prosecutorial powers to exclusively enforce applicable statutes or not. The executive branch of government might not even be aware that a prosecution is taking place.

Thus, Young v. United States ex rel Vuitton, 107 S. Ct. 2124, 481 U.S. violations have the potential to eliminate the roles of the executive and legislative branches of government from a court proceeding and to allow officers of the court to usurp the power of the executive and legislative branches of government, perhaps to serve a client’s financial interests. When financially interested parties usurp the power of the executive and legislative branches of government it creates a plutocracy, or government by the rich.

Furthermore, it took seven years of perseverance, and a going to jail repeatedly (without conviction) for Kay Sieverding to get to the point of being before the Supreme Court. It is unlikely that anyone else will be willing and able to go through the suffering and the effort that Kay Sieverding has gone through. If Rosa Parks had not been willing to go to jail to end the law that made black people sit at the back of the bus, black people could still be sitting at the back of the bus.

Today, we are in a situation where all flesh and blood persons sit at the back of the bus and corporations and their lawyers sit at the front of the bus. This has come about because the court and the legal industry claim to be self-regulating, so the executive branch doesn’t punish lawyers for violating the Constitutional rights of its citizens. This leaves the Supreme Court as the only possible remedy.

All the Supreme Court has to do is punish one legal team for violating the Constitutional rights of United States citizens. This would establish a precedent that any citizen could use in any state or federal appeals court in the United States. This would restore the rule of law and the Constitutional rights of all United States citizens, but without this ruling, the ability for lawyers to ignore the Supreme Court, the laws, the rules without any punishment and the Constitution creates a situation where these might as well not even exist.  

The need for this sort of ruling reflects changing attitudes. Many of today’s lawyers and their corporate clients see themselves as being bound only by what the can get away with, not by the law or the spirit of the law. Thus, many lawyers see their power, and the power of their corporate clients, as exceeding the power of the President of the United States and his or her Attorney General.

contact: kay@rightscase.com