David Hogberg of IBD was in the courtroom today, and his account shows a judge with a misunderstanding of how the internet — particularly Google Alerts — works, and a defendant (Walker) who never should have represented himself.
Here is an excerpt, read the whole thing:
This was the second peace order that Kimberlin has filed against Walker, demanding that Walker cease any contact with Kimberlin. In it, Kimberlin claims that Walker has “continually harassed” him with “alarming posts, tweets, alerts that arrive in my email box, which I consider threats to me personally and to my business.” Kimberlin came to court with pages upon pages of threatening emails and tweets that he claimed had resulted from Walker’s blog posts about him. None of them, though, were sent by Walker.
While talking with Kimberlin and his associate Neal Rauhauser, a woman who was a victim’s assistant [my note — see that, Kimberlin knew how to position himself as the victim, so he gets court-paid assistance] for Kimberlin came out of the courtroom and said that Walker had been led away in handcuffs.
Here’s what seems to have happened. Although Kimberlin’s first peace order against Walker was eventually thrown out on appeal, it appears that while it was in effect Walker wrote a blog post about Kimberlin. This triggered a Google Alert that Kimberlin had set up. Kimberlin filed criminal charges based on that, apparently claiming that constituted “contact.” The court apparently agreed, and Walker was arrested.
As for why the judge ruled in favor of Kimberlin’s peace order, that’s easier to explain. First, Walker was clearly stressed and high-strung in court, and alienated Judge C.J. Vaughey. He repeatedly interrupted Vaughey, and by the end of the roughly 45-minute hearing Vaughey was clearly annoyed.
Folks, this is how agitators do it. They agitate you, and then when you react, you are in trouble. I hope Aaron gets an attorney to overturn this travesty, and to reposition the case so that the true victim gets a court assistant.
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Comments
Is there no lawyer in the DC area on the blogosphere that can’t represent Walker or at least give him good trial counsel. He desperately needs a competent trial lawyer. If I weren’t totally and permanently disabled, I would be on the phone tomorrow. Someone please help him.
I reckon it is high time we put together a network of attorneys, nation-wide, willing and ready to help with defense of our people.
I’m sort of surprised it doesn’t exist already.
Prof., maybe this is something you could help facilitate. I know you have to have a lot of contacts, and you sure have a huge tool here with your blog.
Note that any lawyer representing Walker is setting himself up for the same treatment. How many, especially the less expensive ones (Walker and his wife lost their jobs over this) are willing to be harassed within an inch of their life or worse (the SWATing)?
See the Volokh post on this. Apparently Walker/Worthington ripped Kimberlin’s Ipad from Kimberlin’s hands.
Nice.
As I’ve said before, thanks to Worthington for nothing.
“Apparently Walker/Worthington ripped Kimberlin’s Ipad from Kimberlin’s hands.”
And that’s relevant how?
Are you new to the English language?
Google “physical violence”.
That occurred before the peace order(s). So how is it relevant to whether a peace order was violated?
In self defense. He had good reason to believe that Kimberlin was about to hit him with it. He took the weapon and held it until he could surrender it to someone in authority. That is all he did. The moment a sheriff’s deputy appeared he gave him the iPad. There was no assault, as Kimberlin claimed. He did not deck him, he did not punch him, he did not cause him any injuries. He didn’t even touch him. If Kimberlin had not illegally taken his picture in the first place nothing would have happened at all.
A’Barge – Change your avatar. You are the antithesis of Andrew Breitbart.
So the judge was bamboozled by misrepresentations about the nature of the evidence presented. I know next to nothing about the law but that sounds illegal. How can that be responded to? Will there be another hearing where the truth can be brought out?
All of this is a crying shame. I also think this is an opportunity for BK and company to get over confident. Let them. At least for now. I am hopeful our side is positioning an offensive move. Granted, this is new to us. We must dig in our heels before we react. And lets face it. They are fantasy land… and too many people buy into fantasy world.
Quite honestly, that breaks my heart.
Can Walker afford an attorney? As I understand it, financial considerations are part of the problem here.
I think the bloggers fund was working on getting him a lawyer. Walker tweeted earlier that he wanted folks to contribute but couldn’t say more before talking with his attorney.
Patterico dispels some of the rumors about the events in MD today:
Read the whole thing there is quite a bit more.
Thanks for the update. That’s an important clarification. What a crying shame this is.
I suggest there should be at least one good trail attorney in the DC area that could offer counsel, if not representation, pro bono.
I think you have a great point Jim. If this were happening on the left he would have no shortage of attorneys available pro bono. I saw Michelle Malkin was making that point earlier and I think when Michelle puts her mind to it, there will be a fund and a team of lawyers. She is pretty amazing.
Here’s what I expect will happen shortly…
1. Money is being raised, and will be raised
2. Walker seems to have an attorney; he’s liable to get several more to help out
3. Dunno Maryland procedure, but habeas corpus seems applicable here, which would put him in front of a judge to review the rulings yesterday
4. Both the punk and his attorney have a fair amount of exposure here in terms of having misrepresented the evidence and the law to the judge. But I think they feel they are in the cat-bird seat, and may over-play their hand.
5. This WILL be reviewed…and pretty quickly, I bet…because of the very large issues here, and the notoriety involved. Also, it is somewhat novel, and judges like that.
6. There is an awful lot of law supporting Walker (provided he did nothing really dumb).
trail = trial sheeesh.
Just guessing, but I’m betting that Walker is not a trial attorney. Courtroom Rule #1 is The Judge is God. You do not interrupt or argue with a judge. They are petty tyrants ruling their courtrooms with an iron fist.
Another rule for lawyers is “When you are outside your specialty, you are not a lawyer.” Just because you work as a personal injury attorney doesn’t mean you are qualified represent someone in a divorce.
I think that is probably a fair assessment.
I feel bad for Aaron, but ironically this will end up working against Kimberlin. The more attention the better for us, the worse for him. Keep it professional but keep the sunlight shining on this issue.
As I said before, we’re dealing here with a Ken McElroy type.
A bully.
A very, very dangerous one.
[…] REALLY happened in that […]
Per my earlier post about Family Court… I’ll wager 20 bucks that the victims assistant was funded through the Violence Against Women Act.
I’ve been following the VAWA money train for a long while and it all goes to Democrat/progressive party hacks for this explicit purpose.
It is the oldest legal cliche in the book: a lawyer who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.
What was he thinking? Or not thinking, by the sound of it.
He was probably thinking that with NO INCOME because of Kimberlin’s terrorism, he couldn’t afford to pay someone for what was supposed to be a bullshit hearing that he could easily handle himself.
I am totally sympathetic to the guy facing commie terroristic attacks to silence him.
But he’s too emotionally involved — for obvious reasons — I pray he gets some top 1st Amendment lawyer representation asap, that is also prepared to pursue that dangerous psycho Kimberlain.
I like some comments suggesting some method for bloggers to protect themselves legally. Certainly a network of lawyers that are dialed into the laws involved could be created. Bloggers could “buy in” with some monthly fee to protect themselves from economic shocks due to lawsuits.
Sure its a sad day that pure bloggers would have to consider a step like this but sheesh. History tells us what seem like unusual lawsuits..out of the ordinary and vexatious become commonplace over time.
[…] in this instance Kimberlin-Walker court hearing — what happened one individual lost his cool AND quite possibly his Peer Review Rating, while the other […]
so kimberlin sets up an alert to mail him when an action occurs, the action occurs and he gets emailed. and thats considered someone else contacting him.
senseless.
in order for kimberlin to know (be alerted) when walker spoke of him HE would have had to set up a monitor on walker.
that violates the order first to common sense people.
[…] order … Discussion: Flap’s Blog, Simple Justice, EBL, Sister Toldjah, The Other McCain, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Popehat, The Jawa Report, Nice Deb, American Glob, Bob Owens, Michelle Malkin, The Camp Of The […]
[…] dot COM, Munsey’s Technosnarl, Simple Justice, EBL, Sister Toldjah, The Other McCain, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, Conservative Commune, Popehat, American Glob, The Jawa Report, Truth Before Dishonor, Bob Owens, […]
Several lessons here:
One — never represent yourself in court. Mr. Walker learned the hard way. Even Yale lawyers shouldn’t do this. Have an attorney and listen to what she/he says.
Two — now we know one new tactic, the ambush that Kimberlin used to get the warrant. That was a one-shot gun; now every blogger (and their attorneys) know to look out for that one. As the song says, we won’t be fooled again. If you blog about Kimberlin, be on the lookout for ginned up peace orders and warrants.
Three — never expect a judge to know the basics of the internet. Your attorney should be prepared to educate the judge (good attorneys know how to do that properly).
Four — we have a new issue to explore. Who is Kimberlin’s attorney? How paid? When retained? Who else does he/she represent? The interlocking webs are useful to review.
Five — don’t snatch an iPad from a miscreant who is about to hit you with said device. Let the miscreant wreck his device. You’ll get a lump on your head, at most, and HE gets arrested. Plus Apple won’t honor the warranty on the broken iPad.
Indeed, if Mr. Walker had any soccer experience, he could have allowed himself to be hit and then fallen to the ground clutching his shin. Kimberlin would have been both arrested AND gotten a red card.
Six — don’t be reactive, be pro-active. Walker was reacting to what Kimberlin was doing; Kimberlin was driving the whole show. Time for that nonsense to end. Put Kimberlin on the defensive.
One: Walker and his wife have already lost their jobs over this, plus a lawyer who’s willing to become the next target and/or stick it though the end in the face of that is not likely to be cheap. Plus you’re assuming this is an entirely undesired outcome for Walker.
Two: Nope, this Catch-22 gambit is still effective, at least in Maryland: your adversary gets a warrant for your arrest, arranges a hearing and tells the sheriff that you will be attending it.
Unless you realize this (unlikely) and have your lawyer show up without you (doubt that’s wise in a case this complex, or at least this novel to the “Royal Typewriter Generation”), if you show you’ll be arrested afterwords like Walker was, if you don’t, you’ll have a default judgment against you.
Three: the judge didn’t give a damn about controlling president (Brandenberg); sometimes you’re just going to lose in the beginning on matter of law, which can of course be appealed.
Five: Snatching the iPad was a split-second judgment; neither you nor I were there, I’m not going to second guess Walker. Plus while it caused him great aggravation, it also got He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (or he’ll get a Google alert) on record perjuring himself. A crime, I’ll note, he was found guilty of before graduating from high school according to reports. If the DA wasn’t entirely indifferent, on his side, or just plain scared (He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has plotted to murder those prosecuting him, according to reports of notebooks seized from him) He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named would be facing a perjury charge right now.
Six: of course a good principle, although with someone like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named that could get you dead. Three SWATings and counting, not to mention that minor bombing spree and assumed murder for hire. Plus it would be useful to suggest a method that doesn’t involve illegal self-help.
Wait, this guy has Sauron on his side? Geez, I knew it was only a matter of time before HE turned up again and working for the Democrats. Where exactly is Frodo Baggins these days?
Errr, that’s a Harry Potter Voldemort reference (made clearer in other posting when I refer to his Truth Eaters). I haven’t read that ring cycle for ages, don’t remember how Sauron was referred to (I stick to the highly recommended Harvard Lampoon Bored of the Rings nowadays or Wagner).
Re number five: you’re kidding,right? Miscreant gets one chance, it had better be good.
Comment to have been to stevewhitemd.
Caller ID spoofing about to be outlawed
Two bills making their way through the House and Senate will outlaw caller ID Spoofing
by Ken Fisher – June 27 2007
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/06/caller-id-spoofing-about-to-be-outlawed/
The Truth in Caller ID Act of 2007 was sponsored by Sen Bill Nelson [D-FL] and in another ironic twist the bill was cosponsored by none other than former Senator Ted Stevens [R-AK].
The bill made it out of committee, was placed on the Senate Legislative calendar of the Democrat controlled Senate where it died, never saw the light of day.
Going back to 2009 where a blind phone hacker received an 11-year sentence for using the 911 system to send SWAT teams to victims’ houses, Neal Rauhauser on his now deleted blog describes the same process on “how to infiltrate the right wing” … while being careful to not damage the Democrat brand.
So it seems the DNC are if not a direct participant in SWATing through paid DNC agitator Neal Rauhauser, they are indirect conspirators by way of do-nothing congress.
[…] -William Jacobson again; this time talking about what went on between convicted domestic terrorist Kimberlin and Mr. Walker yesterday: Folks, this is how agitators do it. They agitate you, and then when you react, you are in trouble. I hope Aaron gets an attorney to overturn this travesty, and to reposition the case so that the true victim gets a court assistant. […]
Like I said yesterday, not even Kafka could have come up with this twist…
Perjury is evidently no longer a crime in Maryland. That is good to know.
I don’t plan to cross the river any time soon, but that may one day work in my favor.
There are so many, many witty things I could say but I am afraid they would harm Mr. Walker so I will keep my wit to myself in this case.
I feel for you for the violence done to the First Amendment and English literature at the same time by depriving you of my wit, even for a brief time…