RICHARD FINE – IN PRISON

7/31/09 Page 1 of 4
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FINE: Okay. The status of -- the status of my motion is that it is still pending. I filed
the motion on July 9th for -- as an emergency motion to be immediately let out of jail and
to have the writ granted. As of the present time, there has been no opposition to the
motion. In the District Court, there was not any opposition to my Petition for Writ of
Habeas Corpus. The Sheriff did not even respond to the Petition for Writ of Habeas
Corpus, and the Superior Court and Judge Yaffe did not oppose anything in the Writ for
Habeas Corpus. And in addition to that, neither of them certified why I was in jail. There
is something that is very, very seriously wrong in this case.

DUTTON: The Sheriff filed, in his Motion to Dismiss. What was the outcome of that?

FINE: His Motion to Dismiss was denied on June 30th by Judge Walter, and Judge
Walter denied it as being moot.

DUTTON: So the Sheriff didn't certify why you were being held, having made a motion
to dismiss, and Federal District Court Judge Walters said it was moot?

FINE: He said -- Yes, he -- he denied it as being moot after he ended up denying my

writ. So basically we had the situation that the Sheriff did not answer -- the Sheriff did
not answer the Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus. And did not certify why I was here.

DUTTON: Now, for our viewers' sake, a Writ of Habeas Corpus is basically -- it's
presumed that it will be granted unless the respondent can demonstrate otherwise, that
you should remain in custody.

FINE: Well, that's correct. The law says -- and the law is 28 United States Code
Section 2243 says that when the writ is filed, the judge either has to do one of two things:
He either has to grant it immediately or he has to enter what is called an Order to Show
Cause ordering the respondents -- which in this case was the Sheriff -- to show cause why
the writ should not be granted, unless for some reason the writ itself is just totally fails.
In my case, the writ didn't fail and the judge ordered the Sheriff to show cause why the
writ should not be granted. Instead, what the Sheriff did is, the Sheriff moved to have
himself be dismissed as the respondent, or in the alternative, have the District Attorney --
have the Superior Court answer. And what happened is that Judge Walter ended up
denying that motion, and the Sheriff never answered or certified why I was being held.
The Superior Court came in and they never certified why I was being held, and they never
ended up showing cause why I should -- why the writ should not be granted.

DUTTON: And were they -- was the Superior Court and Judge Yaffe a party to this
Writ of Habeas Corpus?
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FINE: No. Actually, they were not. The only party to the Writ of Habeas Corpus was
the Sheriff. The -- so they were not a party, but they could be called what is called Real
Parties in Interest, but they were never named as that by the Sheriff, and when they came
into the case, they never applied to be named to intervene in the case or to be named as a
party. So they actually were strangers to the case.

DUTTON: Now, from a legal standpoint, does that make their arguments of any
consequence, if they don't have standing?

FINE: Well, it makes their argument of no consequence, but had they intervened, they
could have achieved some type of a standing. But even if they had achieved the standing,
then they would have had to respond with reasons why the writ should not be granted,
and they never did that. And also, they would have had to have ended up certifying as to
why I should -- why I was being held, which they also didn't do, and also they would have
had to have produced the entire record of the contempt case, which they also did not do.

DUTTON: Now, there have been reports of judicial abuse of the contempt of court
cases, instances where some people have been held in jail for decades. Do you see this
breakdown of the court not following the United States Code as an abuse?

FINE: Oh, there's absolutely no question. In my particular case, there's no question that
it's an abuse because the Code has specific rules as to what is supposed to happen, and in
my case, they broke every one of the rules. You could go -- go right down the Code -- I
won't enumerate them all here -- but you can go right down the Code as to each rule that
was supposed to take place and they broke them rule by rule by rule.

DUTTON: What is the recourse now? What is your recourse?

FINE: My recourse is to be in the Ninth Circuit, and that's where I have gone, and in a
normal situation, when you make a motion -- in the normal situation, when you make a
motion in the Ninth Circuit and there's no opposition, your motion is granted
immediately. And so that's the next problem that we have here is that I have the motion
in the Ninth Circuit; there's been no opposition, and we're sitting -- I've been sitting
around waiting for almost a month now.

DUTTON: Is it con- --

FINE: This is a very, very strange part.

DUTTON: Is it conceivable that there is, like, a code of silence here among the judges
to just keep you imprisoned without allowing the case to go forward as prescribed by
law?
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FINE: Well, I think it's more than conceivable. Actually, in my papers, I called it a
code of protection. Because what we have in this particular case is that with respect to
the Superior Court, you have criminal activity that has occurred, and that's not my
viewpoint. That's actually the viewpoint of the legislature of the governor because they
passed Senate Bill SBX2 11, which gave the Superior Court immunity from criminal
prosecution. So the governor and the legislature has said that the payments that Judge
Yaffe got and that what every other judge got from the County are criminal. So you have
criminal activity that has taken place. And now you have the District Court going in and
protecting these judges from being prosecuted for this criminal activity, because my Writ
of Habeas Corpus goes in and says that these judges took -- engaged in criminal activity
by having taken these illegal payments, and therefore they can't sit on either the
underlying case or the contempt case. And so what the District Court did is, the District
Court then broke federal law by denying my writ. And now we're up in the Ninth Circuit
and the Ninth Circuit is sitting on my motions and delaying, which basically means that
they're going along with what the District Court has done, which is effectively not
prosecuted the Superior Court judges for having taken the illegal payments. That's what
it really comes down to.

DUTTON: Okay. Well, we're going to release this update on the internet very shortly,
and we will have it transcribed so people can download it from our website, and we are
trying to reach the legal counsel for the Sheriff -- that's Mr. Aaron Fontana -- and then
we're going to reach Kevin McCormick from Ventura, California, who represented the
Court and Judge Yaffe, and ask them why they refused to certify the reasons that you
were being held in jail. And we're going to try to get a statement, if we can, from the
District Court, because of Judge Walter's denying the writ and denying the Sheriff's
Motion to Dismiss as Moot. So is there any last comment you'd like to make before we
move on with this report?
A
FINE: Yeah, I think my last comment is that recently, the United States Supreme Court,
in the case of Caperton versus Massey Coal Company, came down and said that when a
judge gets a large payment into his campaign committee, and the person who gave the
payment is coming up in front of him with a case, that the judge has to recuse himself. So
in our case -- or in my case -- what you have is, you have a judge having gotten an illegal
payment and refused to recuse himself, so my case is even worse than what the Supreme
Court has just decided as being the duties of the judge. So we know that what is
happening here is really horrific, and it is affecting over 1600 Superior Court judges
across California, a number of Appellate Court judges, and a minimum of four of the
seven California Supreme Court justices, and another two Supreme Court Justices that
wrote the legislation that gave them the retroactive immunity. So this is a major, major
problem in the California Judicial System, which has basically overturned and wrecked
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the entire California Judicial System and which has denied 38 million people access to
the courts and has denied them a fair judicial system.

DUTTON: Okay. Well, thank you very much. Just one last question: Are you
prepared to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get your release from jail?

FINE: Absolutely. I've already gone to the Supreme Court with respect to the
disbarment, which is dealing with exactly the same issue that we're dealing with here. So
I'm prepared to go all the way up and do what is ever -- what is ever necessary to cure
these problems in our dysfunction judicial system.

DUTTON: Now, we know that you are in solitary confinement and that we are -- at
least can talk to you from this phone in your jail cell. What access do you have to the
legal documents and to the records? How are you --

FINE: What access? The -- the so-called law library at the jail does not have really any
access to Federal Reporters or anything else. They have some access to, you know, to
some cases and things, but all of those things are on the disks, are on disks, and there isn't
really any way to go in and trace them in the normal way that one does legal research. So
basically everything that I have -- that I do really has to come off of memory or off of
documents that come in to me from the people that work with me.

DUTTON: Okay. Well, thank you very much for this explanation and update. We're
going to get this out as soon as possible. Thank you.