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April 5, 2005
Virginia Beach, VA
To the Editor, Virginia News Source:
In all my years dealing with constitutional law, I have always said no
to judicial impeachment even when from time to time on various issues
some conservative activists have argued for it in specific situations. I
can generally provide people more arguments against impeachment than for
it where judges are concerned. Sometimes I cannot provide arguments for
impeachment at all, because all the valid arguments from my point of
view mitigated against judicial impeachment in those situations.
The Schiavo matter is dramatically different. Not only am I convinced
that judicial impeachment applies here, I am convinced that it applies
to every federal judge in the chain from the district court judge who
first received the case under the act signed by President Bush, through
the appeals judges of the 11th Circuit, to all nine sitting members of
the U.S. Supreme Court, with the exception of the one or two judges that
bucked the system.
This is the first time in my several decades of dealing with
constitutional law that such a situation exists. I never imagined that I
would see this situation in my entire lifetime or in my professional career.
The key points are summarized here. They are based on two one-hour radio
talkshow interviews I did locally this week which laid out the matter in
some detail.
First, Article III uses the words "good behavior" as the term of art
dealing with the impeachment of federal judges. The Constitution uses
the words "high crimes and misdemeanors" as the standard of impeachment
for the executive and legislative branches. "High crimes and
misdemeanors" is a higher and more rigid standard than "good behavior"
in Article III. In the Schiavo matter, the misconduct on the part of the
federal judiciary violates both standards. It violates the "high crimes
and misdemeanors" standard because by refusing to protect the
substantive right to life of Ms. Schiavo under the 14th Amendment, and
treating the matter as strictly procedural, the various judges made
themselves accessories to murder. It violates the "good behavior"
standard for the sorts of reasons explained by William Blackstone in his
Commentaries on the Laws of England.
The federal courts obstinately refused in the Schiavo matter to employ a
jurisprudence of constitutionally protected inalienable rights mandated
by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United
States, the rights model of original American jurisprudence from the era
of the Founders, and as extended to state misconduct by the 14th Amendment.
The federal courts refused to judicially notice that we prosecuted
people for war crimes at Nuremberg for the very sorts of actions taken
and required by the Florida state courts in clear violation of the
original meaning of inalienable rights and due process of law.
Under our federal union, there has never been a power in any state to
execute anyone not convicted of a crime and who has not been indicted
and/or tried criminally. Under our federal union and under the
constitutions and bills of rights of every individual state, the right
to life is inalienable. At the state level, that right can only be lost
by an individual person through an act of wrongdoing constituting a
forfeiture and adjudicated as such through a criminal trial where due
process would apply. Executing an innocent person through a civil
process is ultra vires by definition and has been ultra vires for over
two hundred years of American experience. Having occurred in the Schiavo
matter, the question is not one of due process because there can be no
such process, period. Where such occurs, as it has here, it is an act of
state tyranny by definition, the ground upon which we fired the king of
England.
When people say Ms. Schiavo received due process that is not true
because the state is not permitted to have such a process, period. For
any state to have a process that executes a person or citizen
unconvicted of a crime is not a matter of due process because there can
be no such process. The 14th Amendment mandates that the right to life
be protected by the federal government if a state materially fails in
its duty to secure the inalienable right to life. For any federal judge
to fail in that 14th Amendment duty is "bad behavior" and criminal
negligence. When the federal courts treated the matter pro forma as a
procedural one rather than one of substantive rights, the courts
materially breached their duty to a person who is also a citizen of the
United States under the 14th Amendment with both personhood and
citizenship rights. In light of the fact that the federal
judges' malfeasance has materially redefined (by inaction) something as
fundamental to all persons and American citizens as the right to life,
and demonstrated by precedent that the federal courts criminally
disregard their duty to uphold the right to life, they have failed to
maintain the standard of good conduct required of a federal judge and
forfeited the respect and obedience of the American people.
For these and related reasons, every federal judge involved in the
execution of Terri Schiavo has violated his/her office as judge and has
committed the high crime of being an accessory to murder. Therefore
every judge so tainted MUST be impeached by Congress and removed from
the bench.
Sincerely,
Gary Amos