Maryland Judicial Equality Committee

It is contended that there is a systematic and pervasive process implemented over time in the Maryland Judicial System and specifically in the Family Law System that virtually guarantees a certain outcome at the end of the legal process in favor of one group in a disproportionate manner. At this time, we are faced with a system that practices discriminatory conduct in a systematic and pervasive manner. Systematic in that each step of the legal process is apparently geared to insure a single predictable outcome and pervasive due to the discriminatory conduct happening at every level of the legal process. At each level of the legal process, a set of legal euphemisms are being employed to virtually guarantee that only one gender will receive the benefit of that process.

• The disproportionate number of awards of contested divorce, child custody and domestic violence cases are found in favor of women. (Exhibit A)
• Court Investigators of the Circuit Court consistently and disproportionately find in favor of women for child custody.
• Guardian Ad Litem, consistently and disproportionately support women as the only viable single parent and oppose shared physical custody.
• The APP (Abused Persons Program) counselors consistently testify in court cases only in favor of women. The counseling program used by the APP is a discriminatory method of treatment called the Duluth Model.
• The State of Maryland has directed its educational resources and services in domestic violence and legal referrals primarily to one group, i.e. women, at the exclusion of men.
• State of Maryland has passed laws under the Domestic Violence Act indemnifying Judges and others against civil suits where wrongful conduct on their part is alleged, leaving no legal redress to protect it’s citizens.
• The State's Attorney for Montgomery County and the Montgomery County Bar Assoc. have acted in concert to deny due process to men by refusing prosecute perjury on the basis of gender.
• Montgomery County State's Attorneys routinely drop assault charges against women where a man has filed the charge in domestic cases.
• State’s Attorney Doug Gansler participated in intimidation and coercive tactics against Montgomery County Circuit Judge Durke Thompson.
• State’s Attorney’s office was directly involved with the District Court to create a specialized court to deal only with domestic violence matters. The proceedings of which are not open to public scrutiny. In effect, the court is engaged in secret trials. Previous to the creation of this specialized court, the courtroom was emptied or the domestic violence case was held to the end of the session to empty the courtroom of the public. This was done under the guise of protecting women from the spectacle of the public eye.
• Misuse of the bail system in such a manner as to incarcerate men to coerce confessions and deny legal representation.
• Governor Glendening recently placed a moratorium on the implementation of the death penalty due to the disproportionate number of African Americans sentenced to death. The prosecutors through their discretionary power were unable or unwilling to pursue penalties consistently and judges were unable or unwilling to be gatekeepers of the State Judicial System to ensure equal treatment under the law.
• State Police and other law enforcement officers have used racial profiling to determine when to make traffic stops to conduct narcotics searches on the basis of gender and race.

The State of Maryland, by its behavior, has shown a consistent predisposition to discriminate. Judges in Family Law cases routinely award custody of children to women in the majority of cases (61.3%) as opposed to men (10.15%) as demonstrated in a statistical study in Exhibit A. Not only is this discrimination by gender it is also by race. Where the male is African American, the courts award women in a greater majority of the cases (79.91%) as opposed to men (5.64%), virtually half that of whites. Judges typically excuse their decisions based on recommendations of the Court Investigators, Guardian Ad Litem and APP (Abused Persons Program) counselors. The word excused is used since judges clearly know the law and therefore have used the recommendations as a means to cover their predisposition to discriminate. After making numerous custody decisions, it is inconceivable that any judge looking back on the number of awards to women over that of men could not be concerned by the disproportionate number favoring one gender. Reed v. Reed is recognized as having clearly said that gender is not permissible as a deciding factor in any case and is settled law. Maryland case law of Griffin v. Crane stated it is impermissible to use gender as a basis of a custody decision.

Based on the profile used by the court system now, men are considered the primary perpetrators of domestic violence. Domestic violence protective orders and findings have fallen into the same misguided track as with racial profiling in traffic stops. Judges have used fallacious presumptions to justify discriminatory conduct in civil cases to enforce the Family and Domestic Violence laws in Maryland. Studies (Exhibit B) show half of all domestic violence is perpetrated by women and higher percentage (65%) by women (Exhibit C) when considering child abuse, however, in Maryland one would not know this by the number of protective orders and domestic violence findings issued against men.

The reason for this remarkable disparity occurs primarily for two reasons: 1. In granting protective orders and finding for domestic violence, most judges in Maryland base their decision on two presumptions, one the accuser is truthfully making a request and therefore the accused is probably guilty, i.e. the presumption of guilt by accusation. Two, is the ability of the accused to commit the act, where a man is accused, he automatically is presumed to be guilty on the basis of his physical characteristic and stereotype of having the physical strength to carry out the abuse. Based on these two presumptions, no corroborating evidence or witnesses are needed in the current Family Law system. This is completely contrary to established legal practices, in which the presumption of innocence is based on the understanding of the ease with which one can make an accusation, and the recognition of the near impossibility of proving a negative (innocence), we presume the accused innocent of every charge unless and until the government convinces a jury of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

First, the motive of the accuser must be taken into consideration, if the accuser has the opportunity to financially gain from a successful use of the legal system, the element of corruption must be considered. In addition, according to studies, the motives of false accusations are hate and revenge (Exhibit D). Therefore the presumption of a truthful accuser is false.

The APP bases its group counseling program on the "Duluth Model". This model assumes that domestic violence is always the fault of the man and sees the woman as the perennial victim. It assumes that men, by nature, oppress women! It also claims that the origins of domestic violence are the fault of men. This blatantly gender biased approach to domestic violence is condoned by the Family Court system, the State of Maryland and the Counties of Maryland in total disregard of the facts. Because of this bias, APP counselors who testify in hearings, never testify on behalf of men. Furthermore, men are routinely denied access to domestic violence services when they are battered. (Exhibit E)

In addition, 94% of domestic violence cases result in a finding in Baltimore County, 63% in Prince George’s County and 56.85% in Montgomery County (Exhibit F), which is extremely high as compared to criminal rates of conviction where the full resources of the police and prosecutor are available. According Bureau of Justice Statistics, State Court Sentencing of Convicted Felons, 1994, in similar crimes such as aggravated assault, the national average conviction rate is 14% (Exhibit G, page 3). The overall Domestic Violence finding rate for the State of Maryland is 53.94% (Exhibit F). One would expect to see similar rates of conviction between the similar offenses of aggravated assault and domestic violence, however this is not the case. The difference being that the criminal rules of evidence are lacking in civil cases. This huge disparity between the criminal and civil rates of conviction can only be accounted for by the personal prejudices of judges. Also, judges acknowledge their actions do not cause a decrease in domestic violence, but actually increase the incidence of it upon issuance of a protective order or finding. Due to this effect, it is therefore clear that the law has been mis-applied against men to the point of extreme prejudice.

Furthermore, the time allotted to prepare an adequate defense against a domestic violence charge is totally insufficient. Typically, upon Ex Parte’ of an individual for Domestic Violence, the accused has only seven days in which to find a lawyer, obtain money for the necessary retainer, gather witnesses and testimony, prepare a defense, all the while the person is homeless. After the almost certain Finding of Domestic Violence as indicated by the statistics above, the accused is allowed only 30 days in which to file an appeal of the Finding! Under such a system, the conditions for investigation are virtually impossible. Would the government subject the police to such a timeline in investigating a criminal complaint? (Exhibit H)

Women and divorce lawyers knowing the existence of this loophole in the Family Law system use the Domestic Violence Act in a cynical manner to obtain Use & Possession of the residence and custody of the children. The loophole is so uni-directional in nature, that is the Act is primarily directed at men as to insure a virtual bulletproof position in civil litigation. False accusations by women are literally never prosecuted and therefore have become the vehicle of choice to gain an upper hand in contested divorce and custody cases. (Exhibit I). In fact, the legal profession in Maryland has come to the point of excusing all perjury by women in particular by saying they expect everyone to lie in a civil case and therefore since everyone lies, women are to be given the benefit of the doubt over that of men. If everyone lies, then following the principle of equal treatment under the law, no one should be given the benefit of the doubt.

Another evolving practice is the mis-use of the bail bond system to deprive men of the ability to retain a lawyer and remove men from their homes after hours. The Maryland guidelines for bond issuance is consistently disregarded by Court Commissioners in some cases forcing men to plead guilty in order to obtain freedom from incarceration. The Court Commissioners will set disproportionately high bail and force the accused to obtain a non-refundable 10% bond from a bondsman. Bail in some cases have been set up to $250,000. In some cases, men have been forced to stay awake for 30 hours before being released on bond. Particularly troublesome is the practice of charging men under the criminal statute, forcing them to post bond, i.e. 10% non-refundable bond, dropping the criminal charge and then charging them under the Domestic Violence Act where the likelihood of obtaining a conviction is higher. "Under Maryland's pretrial release rules, the overwhelming majority of these detainees should have been offered less onerous alternatives and been released without bondsmen." (Exhibit J)

The manner in which prosecutors decide who will be charged or not charged with a criminal offense and then what kind punishment to press for is in question. Recent revelations of the seemingly selective manner in which the Baltimore prosecutor pursued the death penalty high lights a common problem in Maryland with regards to lack of consistency resulting in discrimination against African Americans. So much so, the governor of Maryland was compelled to issue a moratorium on the implementation of the death penalty. This is despite claims to the contrary of the prosecutor's office. An old adage comes to mind when dealing with the problem of consistent poor choices: "Once is an incident, twice is a coincidence and three times is a pattern." When dealing with the legal profession, it is clear that excuses "to do" or "not to do" anything are cleverly devised to absolve of themselves of personal responsibility for their actions and hide their agendas. However, sadly, the race issue in determining punishment is just one of the many sorry examples of the failure of the Maryland Judicial system to treat its citizens equally without bias.

The refusal to prosecute on the basis of physical characteristic is just as much a civil rights violation, not to mention an ethics violation as charging only people of a certain gender or race with a crime or issuing a protective order for that matter. There is a documented agreement between State's Attorney and Judge McAuliffe in the Montgomery Bar Association Civility Committee (Exhibit I) not to prosecute perjury in civil cases unless a judge refers such a matter to the State's Attorney. The euphemistic reason for this action is to not create a "chilling effect" for people to testify in civil cases. The net result of this subtle agreement is that when a man is falsely accused by a woman for domestic violence or rape and they (male) bring evidence to the State's Attorney showing acts of perjury by the woman, the State's Attorney will not act. The judges will not refer since they don't want a "chilling effect" on women. The net effect is that the State's Attorney and the Judges of Montgomery County have entered into a defacto agreement not to prosecute certain individuals on the basis of their gender. This Willful Blindness on the part of Judges and Prosecutors is called gender discrimination and happens on a routine basis in Montgomery County. By their own admission, neither the State's Attorney or a sitting Montgomery County Judge has not prosecuted one case of perjury in regards to women bringing false accusations against men. It is obvious that it takes a judge to preside over such a trial and refer such a charge. Montgomery County States Attorney's office has consistently refused to prosecute perjury and assault where women are the accused in a domestic violence case. Which begs the question? What are the statistics of gender in those cases the State’s Attorney’s office turned down in their determination? What were the excuses used? Retaliatory filing, a confusion over dates and times, civil litigation? How many cases has the State’s Attorney’s office prosecuted when a man brings a charge against a woman in a domestic matter? The precise number of perjury and assault complaints is unknown and must be documented.

Men due to gender, are not permitted to bring suit for redress against women or corrupt officials. The right to due process is found in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The essential elements of due process are notice and the opportunity to be heard, those rights have been denied by the State of Maryland and the Court System. Men have disproportionately borne the financial impact of these biased decisions, resulting in increased bankruptcy, failure to pay child support and suicide.

Everyone must be held to the same standard of expectation concerning the law. Just as ordinary citizens can not claim ignorance of the law as an excuse, neither can judges, prosecutors and other court appointed personnel claim ignorance of the facts. The studies of conviction rates, false allegations, child abuse and rates of domestic violence perpetrated by gender have been out for a period of twenty years. Any claim of ignorance of these studies by the court system is negligence since they were responsible to be

When the vast majority of contested divorce cases, child custody cases, and domestic violence cases are decided in the favor of women, it's an indication that something is terribly wrong. The seizure of property and assets have been decided on the basis of gender through divorce and domestic violence actions. When a man brings evidence of perjury to the State's Attorney, engages in Willful Blindness and they won't prosecute a crime on the basis of gender, there is something wrong. When Ex Parte' requests and findings of Domestic Violence are decided on the probably of guilt based on gender, there is something wrong. When the APP can conduct a blatantly gender biased program using public funds and forcing men to pay for their services, something is terribly wrong. When Court Commissioners routinely disregard the state guidelines for bail bonds and there is no action by State of Maryland to correct the abuse, clearly something is wrong. As with racial discrimination, gender discrimination is covered by the clever legal language of the courts using euphemisms as excuses to discriminate in order to set aside due process (justice). When looking at the entire Maryland legal system’s treatment of men, it is clear that discrimination is occurring, whether it is by grand design or collective prejudice the result is the same. The legal system of Maryland as currently in practice simply does not know where to draw the line between presumption and bigotry and must be brought to that point by the U.S. Government as it did with Brown v Board of Education, Topeka.

The Governor should call upon the Attorney General for the State of Maryland to assign a prosecutor to initiate an investigation into the alleged civil rights abuses committed by the conduct of the Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office, the Judges of Baltimore, Montgomery, Prince George’s Counties and those persons appointed by them. Request immediate injunctive relief to end the double standards of conduct and presumption applied on the basis of race and gender. Require reasonable standards of evidence or witness(es) to file protective orders and findings, otherwise declare the Domestic Violence Act unconstitutional. Require potential determination of motive in filing of charges by the accuser especially where the accuser will receive benefit of property and assets upon making such an accusation. Require immediate suspension of the APP until the program is reworked for a gender neutral approach to domestic violence. Require consistent application of the Maryland Pretrial Release system. Require judicial review of all District Court and Circuit Court current and future civil and criminal cases where a male versus a female are involved. Require outcome-based statistics by gender and race to monitor the progress of a non-discriminatory practice of the law. Institute mandatory diversity training in regards to race and gender of all court personnel, including judges, court investigators, lawyers, court commissioners and APP counselors. Request the Federal District Court to "issue declaratory and injunctive relief" and to command the Family Courts "to adopt measures to prevent discrimination against men in the Family court system." (Exhibit K)

What can I do? You can email your State Senator and Delegate of Maryland and suggest legislation to correct the problems. I'm just one person, my voice doesn't count. You are right, one voice doesn't count, however, like voting, many voices together do count, get your friends to write emails too. When you do, let us know. Also, get involved make your voice count by joining with others trying to change the system. Check out our organizations page, pick a group that focuses on your particular interest.

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http://www.geocities.com/dscott8186/mddivorcerace.htm

Women Committing Domestic Violence

Child Maltreatments 1996: Reports From the States to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System

Personality Characteristics Of Falsely Accusing Parents In Custody Disputes

Exhibit E – EuroWRC

Duluth Model , Examination of the Duluth Model , www.duluth-model.org

http://www.courts.state.md.us/annualstats.pdf

Exhibit G - State Court Sentencing of Convicted Felons, 1994, Page 3
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/scscf94.pdf

Exhibit H – Filing Petition for Writ of Certiorari

http://www.courts.state.md.us/coappeals/

Montgomery County Bar Association Civility Commission

Exhibit J - The Pretrial Release Project: A Study Of Maryland's Pretrial Release And Bail System, Cover Page, Page i to vii

http://www.abell.org/PRETRIAL112001.PDF

http://www.law.fsu.edu/journals/lawreview/issues/254/mcneely.html