Illinois Enemies
This is Abraham Lincoln's home state, where he practiced law before he was elected President of the United States. He lead our nation in a long and bitter war to put and end to slavery. He was instrumental in making the Thirteenth Amendment law and Illinois was the first state to ratify it. It authorizes Congress to pass the Antipeonage Act. I challenge anyone to come up with the hard evidence that Abe Lincoln would support the coercion of labor and imprisonment for debt aspects of the Illinois programs listed below after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. As an attorney, he was obliged to argue the law as it existed, not as he wanted it to exist. The second part was a motivation for getting involved in politics. His hostility to the institution of slavery was the motivation for seven states to leave the Union even before he was inaugurated as President.
Outgoing Governor George Ryan commuted all current Illinois death sentences to life with a few inmates receiving full pardons. While I believe that the death penalty is appropriate where the crime is heinous, where it resulted in the death of a human being or involved the horrible violence of first degree rape, and WHERE THE CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS OF THE DEFENDANT AND THE RULES OF EVIDENCE AND JURY INSTRUCTIONS were done with the utmost in honest and competent jurisprudence. In other words, a fair trial that was indeed fair, with a properly done police investigation and a prosecution that played by the rules, and strict enforcement of the hearsay rule and of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. Governor Ryan was apparently convinced that does not happen in Illinois. If Ryan is motivated by honest disgust with the way the Illinois criminal justice system operates, he did the right thing. However, I would like to ask one simple question: What legal reforms did he advocate and get enacted that would improve the respect for the Constitutional rights of all citizens so unfortunate as to be charged with a crime? Did he select for appointment as judges attorneys known for being zealous advocates for the Constitutional rights of the citizens, or did he select from the state attorney general's office and the county prosecutor's offices as governors usually do? If he selected prosecutors and state assistant attorney generals, should he then be surprised that he cannot stomach the thought of an execution, not because he opposes the death penalty per se, (he supported it while serving in the Illinois Legislature), but because of the way the judges conduct the trials and what they let prosecutors and prosecution witnesses get away with?
In short, Mr. Governor, exactly what did you do during your entire term to improve the respect for constitutional rights of the citizens in Illinois BEFORE your last few weeks in office? For those accused of misdemeanors and non-capital felonies as well as those charged with first degree murder?
We all hear about Ryan being possibly caught up in scandal with a scheme to sell commercial driver's licenses, but then again, getting angry with Illinois politicians for corruption is like getting angry at clouds for dropping rain. If you look at a map, you can see that railroads and highways will have to route around the south end of Lake Michigan. It was no doubt inevitable that a large city will grow in such an obvious crossroads. So which city would become the beg one? Squeaky clean Gary or graft ridden Chicago? It appears that an honest bureaucracy that takes FOREVER to process a permit application will lose out to the place where a few backroom visits with "the right people" and a few well placed bribes not only gets the permit approved, but also gets the access road built, the utilities installed, the tax breaks enacted, and any other thing a good capitalist needs to set up shop. Say what you will about ward bosses, they get the chuckholes fixed, just like your Senator gets your father his Social Security check.
There are two things we need with American government that are often missing: It needs to serve the needs of the people, but it also needs to be honest enough to not abuse them and abuse the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Both. Not one or the other. All too often, we get neither.
The Department of Public Aid operates the Child Support Enforcement Programs. Other partners in these programs include the Attorney General, state's attorneys, who are equivalent to county prosecutors in other states, county sheriffs, and the state's Comptroller.
The Illinois Supreme Court and the Circuit Courts are claimed as "partners" in the enforcement of support. But if a noncustodial parent fairly pleads the Antipeonage Act and the courts fairly decide it, they will no longer be able to enforce the orders that 42 U.S.C. §1994 declares null and void. If they have been enforcing such orders, they could render themselves criminally liable for violating 18 U.S.C. §1581. Which does create the problem of how a noncustodial parent can obtain a fair hearing on any claim that his rights are being violated.
Here is a directory of some of the peonage criminals.
One of these programs involves employment services for noncustodial parents. I actually do not oppose this in principle: for any person who is unemployed or lacking in the ability to support himself let alone the ability to support a child, with or without custody of that child, then by all means assistance to enable such people to become productive members of the community is an appropriate expenditure of our tax money. But where I depart in my support of such programs is where participation is mandatory or coerced in any way, it becomes a slave labor program, contrary to the way Abraham Lincoln believed we should be operating.
Article I Section 2 of the Illinois Constitution include the state Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses.
Article I Section 14 of the Illinois Constitution prohibits imprisonment for debt unless he refuses to deliver up his estate for the benefit of his creditors or there is a strong presumption of fraud. I guess child support is a fraud.
Article I Section 22 of the Illinois Constitution declares the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear arms, subject only to the police power.
This state is the source of a decision that was used in the early 1900's to establish the alimony and child support exception to state constitutions that prohibit imprisonment for debt. Once upon a time, divorce could only be granted upon establishment of "grounds". Meaning family abandonment, felony conviction resulting in long prison term, adultery, and cruelty. Cruelty is what we today call domestic violence. If the wife was judged to be at fault for the failure of the marriage, say she committed adultery, she was not awarded any alimony and often did not get custody of the children. If the husband was found at fault, then alimony was considered a PENALTY for failure to perform the duties of marriage. It is upon this theory of alimony and child support as a PENALTY, that the Illinois Supreme Court found in Barclay v. Barclay, (1900) 184 Ill. 375, 56 N.E. 636 that alimony was not a debt for which imprisonment was prohibited.
Numerous other state supreme courts cited Barclay and its finding of the nature of alimony as a penalty, to justify creating an exception to the imprisonment for debt provisions of their state constitutions.
Problem, of course, is we have gone to no-fault divorce where there is no defense to the imposition of a child support order because it now is only dependent upon who gets custody of the child, not upon fault for failure of the marriage. Child support is no longer viewed as a penalty, just a duty, and yet we still treat it like a penalty for wrongdoing in bankruptcy law, 11 U.S.C. §523(a)(5), and in state constitutions that prohibit imprisonment for debt.
Feel free to e-mail me at [email protected] with any information that you have to share.
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