How To Exit the Court System

For anyone reading this and immediately thinking why the heck (excuse my French) would anyone need a how-to to exit the courts when private citizens’ engagement with the courts is supposed to be voluntary or by free will for those under democratic governance (in case you did not know), except if indicted, then I encourage you to read on to perhaps add more to your arsenal of knowledge. For those who already know or are well acquainted with the situation on the ground and are looking to force release the court’s relentless or illicit grip on their own or someone’s private life, perhaps this how-to may help, offering tips and areas to consider to enable an effective exit. There is no point exiting only to be forced back as any re-attempted exit becomes that much harder to do. Exiting the courts is quite like getting out of a bad or toxic relationship that you never wanted in the first place with the other party – here the courts – refusing to let go. The underlying reasons tend to be very similar to what pervades unfortunate personal relationships that just won’t end. It is about power and control.

Power relinquishes nothing without a fight. So, the first essential tip is, if you want to exit, you must be prepared to fight and it matters how you fight. Before I proffer more, allow me to set the stage with an illustrative example.

Around the 4^th year of my reluctant tenure in the courts, I had a sit-down with my workplace manager who told me, in worried tones, that I spent more time in court than I did at work. Said manager and I had a really great rapport; in fact, he had gone to bat for me before for past absences and kept me around because he loved my throughput. Unfortunately, those throughputs tended to come in the wee hours of the night when most slept as it was the only time I could try to make-up for the lost portion of the 40-hour-per-week commitment I had made to him, but could not keep. Like an illicit affair, that time drain during the day was going to the US Court, in court sessions that I was required to be present for by “order of the court” in essence by a judge representing that court. Simply put, I had two masters – my manager and the judge; while the former paid me for my time, the latter stole more than just my time without hope of reimbursement whiles progressively crippling my finances and grounding my career to a halt. Understandably, the legitimate owner of my time no longer wanted to vie for my paid-for attention and energies in a relationship that could only accommodate two parties; the courts had to go. Before I could let the courts go though, my fed-up manager let me go believing, from what he had observed, that the courts were never going to let me go. Some triangles do not work even with risk mitigation strategies.

Everyone has their tolerance levels but, a clear sign it is time to run for the exit is when alarm bells start blaring in several areas of your life often via those who are not in the courts who see the red flags you may have become anesthetized to because it has become your (dysfunctional) normal.

The trigger to exit the courts came fast and hard – I lost my job – the how-to exit did not. In truth, I had been trying for that exit well before it cost me an extension of my work contract and my transition into a long unemployment with all the corollary damages it comes with in a life where very little comes “free”. 

Exiting the court system is not like opening a car door to step out. Even with a car, it is important not to step out into moving traffic given the probability of a (fatal) hit; one must either wait until the car is safely parked or stops to venture out. The problem with the courts is there are few to no safe parking spots or the car is never allowed to stop (my case) which means the only way out is forcefully – throwing yourself out of the moving car headed nowhere or to an elusive destination and pray not to roll under moving tires or when hit, as inevitable, it is not fatal with bruises or wounds that hopefully heal with time.

Two or so weeks after I lost my manager to his belief that the illicit affair with the courts will never end, I wrote the breakup letter: to tell the courts that I was out and I was tired of being screwed over. I was representing myself at the time, as unable to pay nor willing to pay an attorney with money I had to “borrow” from my retirement fund for the same lack of outcomes or relief whiles jeopardizing my future. Additionally, as a private citizen who is not an officer of the court, I do not need the court’s permission to exit a civil case; no indictment existed nor did any law require that I stay in an inherently abusive setup without end. I was thus pulling the plug on my participation in the draining nonsense for the sake of my well-being and I thought I should respectfully give them notice. By then, many of my pleadings languished unaddressed, some as long as I had been in the courts, which no amount of begging – mine – worked to move forward. So, my heartfelt letter was addressed to the gavel-wielding thief sadistically enjoying my futile run on the hamster wheel in his courtroom and “the crook” appointed by the same court meriting fiscally from the endless dysfunction and the opposing counsel – the court’s pimp – always dressed for the part with garish makeup and tottering heels she could not walk in. To be thorough, I filed my letter on the case’s public docket so none could pretend, as with my pleadings, that they missed the memo. I was succinct on the torturous path I had been led, for years, and why I had to exit before it cost me all, including what I held most dear – my children – who needed me and were harmed by the indirect association. They too were caught in the triangle with the court through no fault of theirs, like family and friends who cared and showed up for one fruitless court session to the next with no end in sight.

After 4 years of criminal lethargy in the courts, the reality of losing control over me and mine triggered an explosive response from the court: to strip me of what I said I held most dear to force me right back to try and wrestle for it – my children. Like a narcissist in need of supply, the US Court feeds on controversy even if it has to manufacture it. The court’s pimp did the honors with a flurry of fraudulent filings suggesting I absconded with my children overseas, to a place outside the jurisdiction of the US, yet requested an “order” from the gavel-wielding thief to serve on police in my US city of residence to arrest me and also take my children attending the neighborhood school. My children were unceremoniously railroaded like criminals out of their beloved school of 5 years with their cries for mercy ignored. An “order” from a US Court has become a law-less, abusive tool of gavel-wielding thieves to steal from private citizens what is theirs, to retaliate or force control over citizens who want nothing more to do with them. The US Court was used to steal my time and my money for years, and then used to steal my children. Since I could not afford to lose my children, I cleared out my retirement savings (there was no “borrowing” what I could no longer repay) during my unemployed state, and I gave it all to an attorney, who turned out to be “the mole” of the gavel-wielding thief, to abet a longer stay in the courts, not the exit craved. Thus started my multi-year fight to get back what I could not afford to lose to the courts, my kidnapped children and my freedom. My forced exit out of a car headed to nowhere led to my swift enclosure in another car also headed nowhere with much tighter reins to prevent a future escape.

I was back in the court system I sought to exit and all it took was the US court to exploit my Achilles heel.

The issue, per my illustrative example, is not a lack of genuine desire to exit the courts like some who may say they want to exit but psychologically are not ready to leap. Nor was there a lack of effort to make that exit happen. My error can be summed up in two takeaways: (a) Never expose or leave vulnerable what you cannot afford to lose on exiting, and (b) If you cannot stop or outrun the predator, maim it.

The US Constitution likely did not intend for the “One Court” to willfully withhold resolution to controversies brought to it by citizens and thereby indefinitely imprison or hold them hostage without relief to control their lives whiles those who exercise their free will to leave, get entrapped anew to nullify future bids to leave. Citizens get to choose whether or not to respond to a summons of the court – that is, whether or not to enter the court – yet once in, they cannot voluntarily leave? Sounds like a trap. And in dealing with any predator with or without an overt trap, survival is paramount and diplomacy rarely serves to stave off its ploys. It is okay to be impolite and not cast one’s pearls before swine.

My consequential error is how I chose to exit the court the first time: I wrote a diplomatic letter, dripping with politeness, to give public notice of my intent to exit, calling on the better angels of a predator that had none and would use the notice to sabotage and undo the announced (bid to) leave. It is like a prisoner going to a prison guard to share their intent to escape; the outcome is rarely an encouragement of the announced intent. The problem was I also did not know, as a private citizen, that I had been rendered a prisoner in a barless prison (aka the US Court) nor that my open, guileless bid to exit will be used to criminalize me to justify why I had to stay. No justification on God’s earth was going to keep me bound.

A few years back, an attorney introduced me to the Stanford Prison Experiment. By definition, it was an experiment – a simulation – in a condensed period of time to unearth some salient truths about human nature, how easily a saint becomes a monster, how precarious the balance of obedience/subservience and custodianship/abuse in that nature. It is a good movie and a disturbing one. It showcased human subjects who lived in a bar-less prison with appointed guards that enjoyed stripping them of their dignity, identity and right-to-choose because said guards felt custodianship of the subjects gave them authority, defined by self-will, to abuse and mistreat them deeming such subjects have no rights and surprisingly, some wordlessly took the abuse highlighting our innate tendency to capitulate even to harmful authority.

The US Court is epitomized in the Stanford Prison Experiment; it is becoming less and less a keeper of the law – to uphold it and the rights it confers to all – and becoming more and more a prison of “free” citizens held hostage against their will by guards – officers of the courts –taken to enjoying the stripping of an unsuspecting populace of their dignity, identity and rights with the corollary effect of making some believe they have to stay in it, obediently take it or face painful consequences, no matter how far removed the conduct may be from the law. For anyone subjected to any form of abuse, and survived it, obedience rarely loosens the reins, it tightens it. And the Stanford Prison Experiment showcased the same truth.

The first consequential how-to exit the court system is for a mind shift and like building Rome, it may not come in a day. No one in the Stanford Prison Experiment broke the yoke until they understood (lawful) authority does not validate abuse. There are those who genuinely believe they have to take whatever comes out of the courts, because of its authority, and for such there can be no exit. There are some who cannot see or refuse to see the courts have become or are progressively becoming abusive, laws have become discretionary, and standards and rules largely eschewed at will by several judges who prefer to follow their whims, in deviation from the tenets of the US Constitution; for such there can be no exit. It takes the will to act and the mind is a significant part of what allows us to act (or to self-sabotage) so there needs to be a proper mental tilt to “see” to exit just as it was for those who threw off the illicit constraints in the Stanford Prison Experiment. For me to exit, I had to “see” the US Court for what it has become, not what I firmly held on to or believed it was before I entered it. I believed “corruption” and “injustice” and “lawlessness” could not go hand in hand with any “court” so when the association was right before my eyes, I refused to see it. There are several people whom I have spoken to, over the years, whose primary struggle was how to let die or allowing to die what they once believed the court stood for in the face of a contradictory reality; the mental struggle, of reconciling what they thought to the reality, is not trivial and requires empathy as for some it can lead to a mental breakdown. It cuts at core beliefs on “justice” and “good” versus “evil” not taught in any school as innate and deeply entrenched.

The second consequential how-to exit the court system is to reconcile yourself with what you are willing to lose to exit. Make no mistake, the courts will not let you go without taking a pound of flesh; it is a predator’s modus operandi to take something so you will lose something to get out. For some, the struggle to exit is not that they do not want to exit but that they cannot afford to or cannot reconcile to what they have lost or was taken/stolen from them which exiting suggests is permanently forfeited. They stay in hope it can be recouped or reversed. I know a waitress who makes about the average hourly wage and has spent upwards of $1 million dollars in the courts in a civil case, meaning she is not indicted of any crime. She is destitute, as is her family and friends who have poured enough money into her case to probably buy several restaurants for her to waitress. She is caught up in a fight in the US Court with specific appointed guards – officers of the court – rigged to always win, none of whom have ever willingly admitted their part in crimes, including against her, nor ever been held to account in any court nor will deign to return, in part of whole, what they stole. Instead of focusing her efforts on getting rid of the appointed guards (if she must stay) she chose to comply to their every ask afraid any suspicion or evidence of insurgency on her part would be catastrophic for her. Her subservience to the abuse has allowed for more fiscal fleecing, more loss of time while no closer to regaining what she lost and wants to recoup. Unless a miracle occurs, she will keep on losing every day she stays; she paid one attorney (out of several) $700,000 who abetted the criminal inertia then left when he had enough to pay for a mansion out-of-pocket. She isolated more funds, from God knows where, to replace him and round and around it goes. She feeds the very beast that has entrapped her and believes doing so will enable her escape and win. It will not. Madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

The third consequential how-to exit the court system is to maim the beast or deprive it; feeding or coddling it is a colossal error. I am not referring to any illegal acts though I am sure some can think of ways to give any beast a taste of its own nasty medicine. I am a product of a mentor (a deceased attorney) who believed in the law (not the willful constructs by syndics misrepresented as the law) and that it can be leveraged for self-correction; the jury is still out on whether I believe that to be true or feasible at all but, for now, I am a product of that mentorship and remain on that bandwagon. So, how I went about maiming those who stood in the way of my exit (gleefully carving several pounds of my flesh) was to maim, by gaining knowledge of them and the law and using that knowledge to their shame. My coerced return to the courts, after the short-lived first exit, led to indigence, homelessness, suffocation of my career, death of my heartbroken father, loss of more friends and family members who could not take the bloody carnage or feared getting caught in the cross hairs. It also led to my long hours in a law library equipping myself to pry those prison bars open and flee. Like most predators, a reclaimed prey who once attempted escape is held with tighter reins and made to suffer even more; it is both to punish and to teach the lesson never to try to escape or exit again. I wanted to teach my own lesson – that no one can hem in or stop who or what God has declared is free.

My second bid to exit the court system was more nuanced and strategic and fortified with prayers. There were no polite letters or any notice to officers of the court; I embraced the advantages of surprise. I had reconciled myself, in my mind, to who and what I was dealing with and buried long-held beliefs of the US Court’s affinity to justice and fairness, as non-existent.  By then, I had also reconciled myself to the fact that I may never be able to reclaim all that I had lost so the main thing to do was save myself from the multi-year trap and place myself out-of-reach for the certain retaliation to come or similar explosive response to regain control, as on my first exit. Then, I hit – strategically maimed – using the law’s less advertised but potent provisions in a public complaint; I exposed them to the bone and did not mince my words. No case is the same so how you maim your predators may vary but what I did, amongst other things, was to strategically sue some of the predators – part of the sordid gang – who worked and continued to work together in a conspiracy for my harm and of others. I exposed the whitewashing by officers in higher courts who chose not to hold them accountable upon notice of their alleged criminal acts. I exposed some, not all, of the sordid deeds as I needed to hold some close to chest to not compromise the advantage of knowledge that I had over those who thought several of their stealth, illicit actions were undiscoverable. I exposed enough to get several heated under the collar, inspire months of sleepless nights as they wondered what else I had on each of them whiles I waited for some, under the pressure and fear of public exposure, to do something really stupid and incriminating, such as tamper with public case records and other records that corroborated several of my public allegations and claims. The act of tampering, which did happen, damned them all; if the allegations in my public complaint were contrived or hocus-pocus, there would be no need for anyone to put in the willful effort of tamper with, alter and delete implicated records. By so doing, it corroborated my allegations hit true north leading to the reactive criminal bid to obstruct justice and clumsy efforts to piss all over my First Amendment right.

Unfortunately, self-correction is not automatic nor quick, if feasible, in the US Court. A higher court, responsible for holding sued officers in the lower court accountable, chose judicial grace – by pointing to licenses they carry rather than the alleged criminal acts that defiled and made a mockery of their association to the law. The complicit judge who exercised this questionable ruling is the appointed counselor to the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. The stench wafts up; it begs the question the caliber of counsel being provided and perhaps the answer lies in the current state of affairs where said court has become the side pony of the executive branch by issuing emergency orders without any push back for cases to work their way through lower courts, the push back applied to citizens who seek or need its direct intervention via similar petitions, “denied” with no reason. Perhaps the answer lies in a government shutdown with no clear end but one clear casualty – regular citizens – some of whom are rotting in immigration facilities like lab rats with not a hint of protest from the highest court whiles states and cities sue the government and vice-versa, to showcase the US in its finest hour. The merits of a belief that the US court can self-correct and uphold its role as an impartial keeper of the law is gleaned from the sickening status quo. How many times has the highest court taken cases on Voting Rights just to chip at it until its essence is completely gutted? How many crooks will the FBI take off the streets before it targets those in the courts imprisoning “free” citizens then retroactively slapping a manufactured crime to justify what is indefensible? Needless to say, I am not a fan of the US Court but then again it has shown little worthy of commendation in recent years and, I doubt history will be kind to its current drivers.

Last but not least, in order to maim a predator, it is important to know or find out its weaknesses. The ubiquitous weakness in the US Court, I found, is the fear of public exposure by officials who can openly malign and deprive citizens but seem to suffer heart palpitations at the possibility of their unethical skeletons being exposed, preferring them hidden as exposure undercuts their authority and may expose any duplicity to their shame. Sometimes those “skeletons” are actually in full view, for those with a discerning eye, which helped inform my second exit. I make no secret of my faith in God and said faith has been my main refuge alongside actions backed with knowledge of predators whom, I can humbly say, I seem to know better than they seem to know themselves. The saying – knowledge is power- is very true.

The answer to the question whether I have recouped all I lost whiles reluctantly held in the US Court is still “not yet.” I successfully exited so I can diligently work on my recovery and recouping (some of) what I lost in a toxic environment in which proactive actions were often impossible as I got caught up reacting to one poisonous dart to the next, trying to survive the mayhem of being enmeshed in pointless, endless fights that led to more losses I tried to recoup in the same courts – a vicious loop. Exiting the court is not an automatic forfeiture of what was lost; it allows bandwidth to recoup (some) via other avenues. Those who exit the courts may have learned the nuanced difference between their wants and their needs, to focus on the latter or what really matters including any long quest to prevail over players who can be toppled by their Achilles heel, with enough patience and resolve. All empires have an expiration date.

To conclude, allow me a brief reference to the movie, “Molly’s Game.” I confess any movie with Jessica Chastain is a must-see as I am a huge fan of her talent, and she is featured in this movie. The specific scene (spoiler alert) is when a good poker player, Harlan, who strictly adhered to playing poker by the rules, went “full tilt” when his modest gains (just a little over $100,000) went out the window via loss to a bad poker player. Harlan got lost in his emotions and the bitter taste of a relatively minuscule loss and, in his seething lust to reclaim (i.e., went full tilt), lost $2 million dollars and his wife filed for divorce, amongst other significant losses. The US Court is no better than a poker game with the hand that deals the cards – the courts – defining and enforcing the only winner it will allow – the courts – with the players (officers of the court) who brazenly bargain with private citizens’ lives and assets. Consequently, such players have a vested interest to hold citizens hostage for as long as possible with all illicit wins assured, including by counselor to the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court choosing not to apply any rules and standards of the law to allow for a rigged outcome against a US citizen, at his whim.  For those who think they are winning or won in the courts, a careful and honest scrutiny of how the “win” came may unearth it is invariably tainted with some significant losses or the “win” came after significant costs (aka losses).

In short, it does not pay to be Harlan in the court. Best not to play at all but, if you must, exit quickly without fuss and even with a loss, as the longer you play, the more the beast is fed, the more you lose. Maim the predator that cannot be stopped or outrun as once maimed, most are weakened and, without its prey, become increasingly toothless as weaned off what drives it, like drugs to a drug addict or a narcissistic supply to a narcissist. The goal is to get out alive, even if with wounds and bruises. All the best.