Payoffs for Judges, Prosecutors Is Legal by Statute
By Pat Shannan

Payoffs for Judges

Anyone who has ever attended an Internal Revenue Service court case
likely noticed the biased attitude of the presiding judge in favor
of the prosecution. Perhaps, though, only those of us who have sat
in courtrooms, in every section of the country, can attest to this
unwavering pattern of unfairness. Whatever happened to the judge's
impartial role of "referee"?

Federal statutes show how and why U.S. law encourages prosecutorial
and judicial conflicts of interest, non-neutrality, non-impartiality
and corruption of justice in the federal courts. (See page 13 for
portions of 5 USC 4502 through 4504 from the United States Code.)

How can the federal judiciary be independent and impartial when
the law permits the federal government to secretly award judges up
to $25,000 in undisclosed secret "cash awards," and to privately,
secretly and "erroneously" overpay them up to $10,000, and "waive"
these erroneous overpayments?

How can any defendant be found innocent or "guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt" when such statutory "cash award" provisions on
their face create an irrefutable, behind-the-scenes incentive for
the prosecution? These questions and others must be answered by the
U.S. District Court in Portland, Oregon following a lawsuit naming
multiple defendants in the Department of Justice including Judge
Anna J. Brown, who presided over a trial of "conspiracy to impede
the IRS" last November.

Defendant Roy Bendshadler's attorney Nancy Bergeson had complained
of suspected "jury tampering" and was found strangled to death in
her Portland home the next day. Her cause of death was at first
passed off as "natural causes" until a second medical examiner
changed it to homicide. The murder is unsolved.

The 94-page action was filed by Michael Sean Mungovan, one of five
convicted in the above 2009 case. Mungovan was sentenced to four
years in prison on July 28. This was an hour after he had served
Judge Brown with a copy of the suit, which should have legally
restricted her from any sentencing action over him until it was
resolved, according to Mungovan.

None of this is new to the IRS. Its manual on pages 1,229 to 1,291
(Delegation Orders of January 17, 1983) outlines the IRS system
of monetary awards "of up to and including $5,000, for any one
individual employee or group of employees, in his/her immediate
office, including field employees, engaged in National Office
projects; and contributions of employees of other government agencies
and armed forces members. "This would include U.S. District Court
judges and U.S. attorneys.

The Mungovan suit, composed by Utah lawyer Dr. Dale Livingston,
explains, "These awards include secret cash awards. They are not
limited as to the number of awards that may be awarded to any one
person or group. There is no limitation placed upon any award. Any
person or group of persons can be awarded this money, including:
U.S. attorneys, federal judges, the president of the United States
or anyone else for that matter."

Livingston added: "The awards may be given to the same person or
group, each minute, each hour, every day, every week, every month,
every year or not at all. In other words, the U.S. government and the
alleged Internal Revenue Service . . . have a perfectly legal (not
lawful) system of bribery. The bribery works against the American
people . . . when they expect impartial justice, and there is no
proof on the record to the contrary."

The murder of attorney Bergeson, who only threatened to initiate an
investigation into what she believed to have been a stacked jury,
sends the warning that Mungovan, by forcing the issue, may have
placed a much larger target on his back.

Lack of space here prevents this writer's attempt to list all the
negative ramifications of such a surreptitious program posing as
"justice for all," but let us consider for a moment a few of the
many dubious convictions from the recent decades reported in AFP
and The Spotlight over the years.

How much money did Judge Paul Benson receive for railroading Yori
Kahl and Scott Faul in 1983? There was no evidence these young
men ever fired a shot in the melee in Medina, North Dakota, where
Yori's father, Gordon, admitted shooting U.S. Marshal Ken Muir in
self-defense. Later it was learned this was the same judge that
had sent away Leonard Peltier of Wounded Knee fame for life, with
no evidence he had killed the two FBI agents found dead after the
1973 shootout. Are judges paid more for high-profile cases?

How about Judge Walter Smith of Waco, Texas? We cannot imagine how
many bucks he may have received after sending away 11 Branch Davidian
Church members, who had been acquitted by a jury of capital crimes in
1994, not long after the Waco massacre of men, women and children by
federal agents and troops. These 11 churchgoers received a total of
240 years. These outrageous maximum sentences for merely carrying a
firearm were applied against people who had not even fired a shot in
self-defense at the onrushing U.S. marshals, U.S. military Special
Forces soldiers and other federal gunmen.

Then there were the Montana Freemen, who were labeled as "separatist
outlaws." In 1996 they were working to expose the banking fraud of
the Federal Reserve System. Many of these men are still in federal
prison, yet they never harmed anyone.

Cash incentives paid for convictions help us understand not only
what has happened in the past, but also what we can expect to see
in the future.