Maryland Kangaroo Court: Introduction

The Maryland Kangaroo Court System

by Carl Stoll

 Introduction[1]

First of all, let me say that I am not the kind of person who always believes he is in the right. On the contrary, it is an integral part of my character carefully to consider any criticism or reproach directed  at me and if I find it warranted, to alter my behavior or attitude accordingly. I have a profound faith  in the importance of objectivity, of not jumping to conclusions, of giving people the benefit of the doubt, and of being fair, even to my enemies.

I find it necessary to make this note to deflect the suspicion that I may be some kind of querulous crackpot, that may be suggested by my claim to victimhood and by my vigorous style when writing.

The following is a narrative of injustice of which I was the victim. Fortunately it did no serious damage to me, and I was soon able to recover from it. As a matter of fact, in retrospect I find it was an enriching experience and do not regret it. But it gave me a chilling insight into the devious workings  of the Maryland kangaroo court system.   

In sum, I was falsely accused of a petty offense by a stranger, a person whose behavior left me in no doubt that she was suffering from a severe paranoid disorder. In the police report I am accused of “filming women from behind without their knowledge”[2]. As far as I know this is not a criminal offense in the state of Maryland, but who cares? Her false charges led to my being hounded through the streets by a mob, arrested by the police, held for 13 days in prison (mostly waiting for a mental examination[3]) and later subjected twice to trial, for which I incurred substantial lawyer’s fees.  

Throughout the 9 months of this vexing episode, I kept trying to persuade the prosecutors and my own lawyer to view the tape that was in my camcorder that day and was seized by the police, and which would presumably decide whether I would be found guilty or innocent. They all doggedly refused to consider my request. So after I had spent $2,500 on a lawyer to defend me (because the judge ordered me to and because my attempt to act pro se was thwarted by the Byzantine procedures of the court), and nine months after the events, the day of my trial arrived.

Before the trial was to begin, for the first time my lawyer and the prosecutor viewed the incriminating videotape. The upshot:  the trial was immediately suspended for three years (technically known as the “putting it on the stet docket”). In other words they wanted to sweep it under the rug and forget about it. I wanted to be tried and acquitted, but my lawyer evidently didn't want to embarrass the prosecution, and he talked me into waiving trial.

This grotesque episode seems to indicate that the criminal justice system in Maryland is a cruel joke, a kind of sausage-making  machine that automatically processes the defendant regardless of the evidence, merely on the say-so of a random passer-by, backed up in my case by the prejudices of a vindictive Feminazi cop.

None of the participants seemed to have any interest in justice as such. On the contrary, they behaved like robots executing a well-rehearsed routine. To deviate from the script merely because the defendant asked them to review the evidence would have been unthinkable.

When my lawyer negotiated with the  prosecutor, he had not viewed the evidence. Nor had she. This creature, one Margaret Schweitzer, appears to be an imitator of the infamous Andrei Vishinsky, who savagely prosecuted the defendants at the Moscow show trials of the 1930s on trumped-up charges, merely because Stalin, fearing them as political rivals, wanted them liquidated. Through my lawyer, she offered to go easy on me if I pled guilty to some minor charge. My resulting guffaws could be heard all over the courthouse.  

Since the prosecution wasn't ready for trial (because their star witness, the cop and Feminazi thug Shannon Murphy, was goofing off that day), the charges were dismissed [check].

However the aspiring Vishinsky, the Schweitzer female, wanted me nailed at all costs, so she actually added a new charge, called “wiretapping”, which in Maryland means secretly recording other people’s conversations. The only justification for such a charge was that the microphone on my camcorder happened to be switched on.  No specific conversations were ever alleged to have been recorded. And none had been.

The new charge led to a new trial, this one before a different court called the  circuit court, which has more oomph than the mere district court where I had been importuned thitherto.  My attorney’s fees were correspondingly higher.

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[1] carlstoll@gmail.com.    

Case numbers: Montgomery County, MD; Dist. Ct. case Crim 5D 196341;  Circuit Court case 10885-C

[2] If it had been “without their panties”, it might have made some kind of sense.

[3] By the way, I was found competent to stand trial.