This case typifies the crass stupidity of the intellectually challenged presiding over American courts today. Adding my own two cents I can relate a similarly shocking account.I am an advocate currently fighting to uphold the principles of due process in a disturbing case concerning the rape, battery and near killing of a mother of one left permanently disabled with a broken neck. Barbara Bracci was a long-serving and respected New York State corrections officer who claimed she was brutally attacked by her work supervisor, Captain William E. Peek. Bracci made tape recordings she claimed were of her remorseful attacker confessing to his crimes. She alleged the NY State Dept. of Corrections (DOC) took the tapes from her then conspired with a crooked judge to illegally withhold them from a New York court. The case first appeared before the New York Division of Human Rights (SDHR) in 2007. Bracci wanted her original tapes played in open court. DOC defied court orders and refused to give the tapes back to her. Instead the state defense counsel gave them instead, to the presiding administrative law judge (ALJ) who inexplicably refused to let them be heard. In a stunning piece of injustice the ALJ then took the tapes behind closed doors and weighed them secretly (ex parte, in camera) despite Bracci’s protests. Thereupon the ALJ ruled the tapes ‘unreliable’ and the case was dismissed. A perplexed Bracci protested and the matter went before the Appellate Division, Third Department earlier this year as an Article 78 special proceeding. Inexplicably, the tapes somehow became 'lost' and a tongue-tied (In)Human Rights declined to explain their actions in the higher court. So with Bracci having proof her tapes were now destroyed and with the opposing party declining to defend themselves, she duly filed for summary judgment. However, out of left field the Appellate justices made the Article 78 special proceeding ‘disappear’ and simply upheld the lower court’s judgment dismissing Bracci’s claim on May 14, 2009. Thus a New York higher court had not only condoned the secret weighing of evidence and then its destruction, it had unlawfully removed Bracci's status as a litigant in an Article 78 special proceeding. Even a layperson looking at the court’s website under ‘Bracci-v-State Division of Human Rights’ (Case no: 506150) can see that nowhere does the term, ‘Article 78’ even appear. http://decisions.courts.state.ny.us/ad3/Decisions/2009/506150.pdf Thus this raped, abused and permanently scarred woman was outrageously cheated of her most basic rights to due process. Now Bracci is filing with the Court of Appeals. We shall soon see if the very highest court in New York dares be as corrupt. You see, I’m British and I grew up with a worldview of America as an honorable civilization. Like most people in the English-speaking world I was greatly influenced by Hollywood movies. I confess I have now learned that real 'American Justice' is quite different from what I saw in films. It appears your country has forgotten the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Law is practiced very differently today and ‘American Justice’ is a fiction told in Hollywood.

Things today are not as they should be in New York's Appellate Division. I am an advocate currently fighting to uphold the principles of due process in a most disturbing case concerning the rape, battery and near killing of a mother of one left permanently disabled with a broken neck. Barbara Bracci was a long-serving and respected New York State corrections officer who claimed she was brutally attacked by her work supervisor, Captain William E. Peek. Bracci made tape recordings she claimed were of her remorseful attacker confessing to his crimes. She alleged the NY State Dept. of Corrections (DOC) took the tapes from her then conspired with a crooked judge to illegally withhold them from a New York court. The case first appeared before the New York Division of Human Rights (SDHR) in 2007. Bracci wanted her original tapes played in open court. DOC defied court orders and refused to give the tapes back to her. Instead the state defense counsel gave them instead, to the presiding administrative law judge (ALJ) who inexplicably refused to let them be heard. In a stunning piece of injustice the ALJ then took the tapes behind closed doors and weighed them secretly (ex parte, in camera) despite Bracci’s protests. Thereupon the ALJ ruled the tapes ‘unreliable’ and the case was dismissed. A perplexed Bracci protested and the matter went before the Appellate Division, Third Department earlier this year as an Article 78 special proceeding. Inexplicably, the tapes somehow became 'lost' and a tongue-tied (In)Human Rights declined to explain their actions in the higher court. So with Bracci having proof her tapes were now destroyed and with the opposing party declining to defend themselves, she duly filed for summary judgment. However, out of left field the Appellate justices made the Article 78 special proceeding ‘disappear’ and simply upheld the lower court’s judgment dismissing Bracci’s claim on May 14, 2009. Thus a New York higher court had not only condoned the secret weighing of evidence and then its destruction, it had unlawfully removed Bracci's status as a litigant in an Article 78 special proceeding. Even a layperson looking at the court’s website under ‘Bracci-v-State Division of Human Rights’ (Case no: 506150) can see that nowhere does the term, ‘Article 78’ even appear. http://decisions.courts.state.ny.us/ad3/Decisions/2009/506150.pdf Thus this raped, abused and permanently scarred woman was outrageously cheated of her most basic rights to due process. Now Bracci is filing with the Court of Appeals. We shall soon see if the very highest court in New York dares be as corrupt. You see, I’m British and I grew up with a worldview of America as an honorable civilization. Like most people in the English-speaking world I was greatly influenced by Hollywood movies. I confess I have now learned that real 'American Justice' is quite different from what I saw in films. It appears your country has forgotten the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Law is practiced very differently today and ‘American Justice’ is a fiction told in Hollywood.