Milwaukee’s Squalid Lawyer Squad
There is a scene in the TV mini-series Sharp Objects that iconically depicts a case of psychological projection. A mother who has been poisoning children – including her own daughters – explains to the arresting police chief that the daughter who just exposed her crimes is actually the person who is mentally ill. The scene roused a wry grin; I had already been schooled on the use of a label of mental illness to distract from a crime.
Years ago I withstood a maliciously false accusation of mental illness by a Milwaukee judge (David Hansher), aided by lawyers. Just like the mother, Hansher accused me of mental illness to distract from his crime, to deflect from the crime that he, Lawyer Martin Kohler and Prosecutor Fred Matestic had just committed in a courtroom (detailed in this blog.)
Had these three men of the law acted with conscious intent? Had framing a defendant in a rigged trial worked so well in the past that it spurred them to continue committing judicial crime? Or had they – like the mother suffering from Munchhausen psychosis above – become so inured to coercion to reach plea bargains that they no longer sensed what they were doing?
(A plea bargain in the American legal system is an arrangement between the legal defence and the prosecution. A plea bargain can reduce a criminal sentence, but unethical lawyers can also use it to threaten their own client if the client insists on a courtroom trial open to the public. In the case presented here, the defence lawyer tried to coerce a plea bargain that would have concealed unethical conduct and extensive child abuse.
As practiced today, the plea bargain is often used to conceal wrongdoing. It is not uncommon for lazy, negligent, incompetent and turpid defence lawyers to use a plea bargain against their own client to avoid the very hard work of preparing for a courtroom trial, the inherent risks of a loss, or to make certain that information unfavourable to the legal community will not emerge.)
Unlike physical illness, an unfounded accusation of mental illness can lead to life-altering disparagement for a victim. You can’t accuse someone for having cancer; you can’t cause fear by declaring someone is diabetic or has a congested heart. But you can cause others to be fearful, to be deeply suspicious, to isolate someone who has been labelled mentally ill. This holds especially true if the accusation comes with official aegis, for example from a judge who misuses his credibility to conceal his own corruption.
An accusation of mental illness strips a person of credibility. This without doubt motivated Judge Hansher. A story told by someone who is “mentally ill” is discounted. Hansher wrote: “This man belongs in a mental institution” as an instruction to a probation officer; he then declared as much to the public in his courtroom. That man was me and I want everyone to know the story.
Also in the official order by Judge Hansher stated, “Convicted defendant is not to see or contact his son again until the child is 18-years old” My son was five at the time. There is not a day that goes by that I do not remember David Hansher and Martin Kohler. They continue to be my inspiration.
The probation officer was shocked when he showed me Hansher’s written order. I liked his response: “This judge is crazy; even if I wanted to I could not carry out his order.”
Where did Judge Hansher’s mental health diagnosis originate? When did my condition become apparent? In the American legal system, who decides whether a defendant is mentally ill? Not a judge. The proper route, the only route, is for a judge to call on court certified experts – psychologists or psychiatrists – for a psychological assessment. But Hansher didn’t do that before he made his widely reverberating, damaging pronouncement in public.
If there is a question about a defendant’s mental state, a professional evaluation must be carried out prior to a trial. This had not been done. The diagnosis of mental illness by Judge Hansher arose only after it became apparent that I would refuse a plea bargain following a final threat by Lawyer Kohler of five years in a hard time prison.
What explains Judge Hansher’s deliberately malicious statements from the courtroom? The submission here is that his actions resulted from desperation and panic, the same panic and desperation of the Munchhausen mom just busted by the cops, or the panic of a man who took the family savings, the home, and a trust fund meant to be out of reach, and used the money to short Apple’s stock just when the iPhone came to market.
No, it was worse than that.
Judge David Hansher not only permitted a rigged trial to be conducted in his courtroom, he encouraged it. Hansher and Lawyer Kohler had placed a big bet on forcing a plea bargain to silence the defendant, thereby eliminating responsibility, culpability and embarrassment for their colleagues and for another judge who had failed to stop chronic child abuse for two years.
Hansher gave Lawyer Kohler carte blanche to engage in unethical and illegal coercion of the defendant for 18 months, trying to squeeze out a plea bargain that stated the opposite of the truth. The two didn’t plan on failure; Lawyer Kohler boasted that he was a “plea bargain specialist” who never failed in reaching his goal. What the two did not prepare for was a trial that they thought could not happen. They did not plan on a defendant who was intent on presenting exculpatory evidence in public, evidence that Hansher and Kohler demanded be kept concealed. They had no choice in the verdict: Defence Lawyer Kohler had to make sure his own client was convicted.
Hansher and Kohler’s method of rigging the trial and accusing the defendant of mental problems, however, was not total madness. There would have been good reason to find psychological issues with a defendant after the trial that the two had served up. The impact on a father who promised to protect his son from harm only to find he could not see him again until he was 18, who saw his lawyer conceal all defense evidence, who discovered that his lawyer refused to submit a defense witness list, who gazed-on in confusion as his lawyer replaced a Black potential juror with a personal friend – a White medical doctor who could ensure the guilty verdict – and who watched the judge let his defence lawyer get away with that, then packed him off to jail with a fraudulent label of mental illness can … indeed … lead to depression or bad behaviour.
But Judge Hansher misjudged this, too.
As it emerged, three psychological assessments by court-approved psychologists were fully in the defendant’s favour. They did disappoint and anger Judge Hansher, however.
One psychological evaluation, specifically ordered by Hansher and including weeks of interviews and testing, stated that the defendant had highly likely been telling the truth all along, with no sign of an adverse mental state; no need for therapy; no need for medication.
All three original psychological assessments were either concealed or altered to state the opposite of the originals, then were submitted to the court as official documents. In other words outright fraud punishable by prison had been carried out by … someone.
The fraud remained hidden when lawyer Steve Glynn refused to present this evidence for the legal appeal, instead warning the defendant that, “it might anger the judge.”
All three psychologists who conducted the official mental health evaluations were contacted and informed:
* Dr. Itzak Matusiak: “Anyone carefully reading the falsified report will clearly see it has been falsified; it states that I prescribed medication for you. Under Wisconsin law, I am not permitted to prescribe medication. Whoever wrote this did not realise that when they falsified my evaluation. You have the proof you need without me.”
“You have the credibility; I do not; will you report this and demand an investigation from the authorities?”
Dr. Matusiak: “No.”
*
Dr. Kenneth Diamond, formerly chief psychologist for the Corrections Department in Milwaukee County:
“Dr. Diamond, your evaluation was fraudulently altered to state the opposite. I sent you a copy.”
“Yes, I saw it.”
“Did you know such fraud was taking place?”
Dr. Diamond (finally exasperated): “Yes. But I can’t stop it.”
“Why can’t you report it; ask for an investigation?”
“Because I will retire soon and I don’t want to tangle with the lawyers.”
* Third psychologist (St. George, Utah)
“Yes, I saw those changes in the official reports compared to the originals. I saw something that didn’t add up.”
“Will you report it?”
“Yes, I will.”
This psychologist did indeed report the fraud, but to no avail. The officer to whom she reported, Mr. Cordell Wilson, refused to take action and further concealed the evidence.
Dr. Tony Kuchan, at that time on the ethics committee for the Wisconsin Psychological Association, was also contacted.
Dr. Kuchan: “What you are telling me is impossible. It couldn’t happen. It is the most serious violation of law and ethics. No lawyer would dream of doing that.”
“But it happened anyway, and we have a copy of the original evaluations and the evaluations as submitted to the court. You can compare them,”
“But I just told you, it cannot happen. There is nothing more that I can do for you.”
Kuchan received the fraudulent evaluations side by side with copies of the originals. He took no action and did not reply. I contacted him again anyway, his response remained unaltered.
“There is nothing further that I can do for you.”
Two Milwaukee lawyers who knew Kohler and his corrupt coercion of clients sent letters of support. One was subsequently fired from her law firm as the result. The other, Lawyer Mark Murphy, was hauled in front of a judge by Lawyer Kohler’s hired legal assassin, Lawyer Robert Elliott. It was suggested to Murphy that he keep his mouth shut if he expected to continue a law career in Milwaukee.
If someone were accused of congestive heart failure, how might they disprove the claim? One way would be to participate in a marathon or the Iron Man competition and come in first place. But how to prove you are not mentally ill?
Aside from the three psychological evaluations, which did not penetrate a corrupt legal system in Milwaukee, I decided I could show the Judge and Lawyer Kohler to be malicious liars, liars with possibly their own mental health problems, in my own way. I decided to do so via achievement.
Having escaped the grasp of Hansher and Kohler in Milwaukee, I went to live in Switzerland, where I continued writing about Milwaukee legal system corruption (Blog: www.markinglin.com), and four books. (Beyond Outrage; Lawyers Broken Bad; Beneath the Matterhorn; In the Place of Truth.)
I taught at the University of Basel, in the Department of Chemistry. There, I also edited research papers for publication. Additionally, I organised the first University of Basel science slam presenting student research to the public. I started the Weltenreise programs at Theatre Basel, which had our faculty explain their research to the public. I began a Sciencetime audio podcast, also presenting research to the public. During that time I served as the editor/proofer of neurosurgery research papers at the Hiroksaki Graduate School of Medicine, in Hirosaki, Japan, also while working with various science professors in Switzerland.
Hansher and his henchmen got wind of what I was doing in Europe, as I had appeared on German television. My creative achievements were written up in Swiss media. This triggered panic in Milwaukee, as the medical literature has few cases of someone “belonging in a mental institution” while at the same time working highly productively at a university.
In response, and known as doubling down, the Milwaukee squalid lawyer squad fraudulently invoked the U.S. government to contact Interpol, the international policing agency, informing them that I was an “armed and dangerous” and “mentally ill” fugitive. Again, this groundless, disparaging proclamation made life difficult. The information had spread on the internet.
I contacted Interpol, described the nest of lawyer corruption in Milwaukee, and asked them to investigate. They did. They informed me in writing that he fraudulent claim meant to activate their participation in arresting me as I travelled had been removed and my file had been cleared.
Invoking Interpol to harass, detain or arrest dissidents is what U.S. sources claim China does, North Korea and the old Soviet Union.
Milwaukee lawyer corruption influenced a high level of the U. S. government to broadcast falsehoods to the world. Someone made a decision that an unknown, inconsequential author who exposed Milwaukee corruption in a minor legal case merited the use of Interpol, a rather astonishing fact if one assumes the corruption here was just a one-off. I asked myself what else the lawyer boys in Milwaukee might have been up to in history? Whatever it was, it is unlikely to be investigated given the level of influence those lawyers exhibited in this case.
If lawyer and popular legal thriller author John Grisham wrote a story such as here, he could be accused of implausible embellishment, asking a reader to swallow not only the inconceivable (as Dr. Tony Kuchan had emphasised) but the ridiculously exaggerated. If Grisham couldn’t write this story plausibly, what gives me hope?
If I continue to expose what actually happened, the truth has a chance of prevailing. I name influential lawyers. Yet they cannot defend themselves? That already speaks volumes as to the veracity of my claims. After the Interpol fiasco, perhaps these lawyers recall the metaphor, “if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”
Once safely in Europe, I phoned lawyer Kohler anonymously. I asked him why he was not challenging the accusations made against him openly. He was obviously not a courageous man to begin with. His career was founded on obtaining favourable plea bargains from drug dealers, then using such successes to polish his image and wield influence, for example with Judge Hansher in his election campaigns.
Kohler’s response on the phone said everything. In the soft, passive voice of a defeated man he proclaimed “There is nothing I can do.”
Indeed.
Blog: www.markinglin.com
Books:
Lawyers Broken Bad: (www.lawyersbrokenbad.com)
Beyond Outrage: (www.beyond-outrage.com)
Beneath the Matterhorn: (www.beneaththematterhorn.com)
In the Place of Truth: (www.intheplaceoftruth.com)
