I’ve been in jail for two and a half years on bogus charges of fraud, in a malicious prosecution involving the local judges in Lee County. They have stacked up 19 charges to use the Florida point system to rack up my points to increase my exposure and seek a life sentence against me. They have used the local news media to run false stories about charges that I have not actually been charged with, and also used other Florida agencies to run false reports with that same information. WINK News and Florida Office of Financial Regulation have made me look like a career criminal by alleging that I have a “history of fraud”, when I have never had any such charges in my life. The only trouble I’ve gotten into in my life is a misdemeanor traffic case over 27 years ago when I was just a teenager. Yet this reports have alleged that I am charged with forgery, which is not true, and has made up other stories that I collected rents on foreclosure homes for many years in three different Florida counties, another bold-faced lie. Of course I am not charged with any of that. Interestingly, the Lee County Investigator responsible for this witch hunt against me, used to work for the Office of Financial Regulation, and conveniently reported the lies. WINK News also shows up on Lee County Court Case dockets because they are paid to report the stories that the Court and State Attorney’s Office tell them to report. So much for innocent until proven guilty. That doesn’t exist in Lee County, Florida.

In addition to the lies that have kept me stuck in jail for all of this time, Judge Archie Hayward set an overly excessive bond against me in violation of the 8th Amendment to the US Constitution and to the Florida Constitution. My bail is $1.5 million dollars, which has kept me from getting out of jail to fight this false allegations against me. To give you an idea of how obscene this bail amount is, there was a similar case in Dixie County, Florida against a man named Terry Trussell in 2014. This is the only case in the state that is similar to mine, and they have used the jury instructions from Mr. Trussell’s trial for the trial in my case. Mr. Trussell’s bail amount was $500 per count, while my bail is $100,000 per count for the exact same charges! Mr. Trussell initially had 10 counts against him for a total bail of $5,000, while my bail is $1.5 million. Lee County even conspired with St. Lucie County to add the same charges against me, and the bail in St. Lucie, which is still overly excessive, is $10,000 per count, and still ten times less than Lee County. How is this fair at all?

Anyway, the reason for the obscene bail and fabricated charges is because the alleged victims include the Clerk of Court in Lee County, and two circuit court judges, Joseph C. Fuller, Jr. and John E. Duryea, Jr. They are using their own court to target me in their personal vendetta and have already ruined my life in the process. This has kept me from even being able to obtain a competent attorney, forcing me to represent myself. The court appointed me an attorney who was dedicated to helping the state get an easy conviction against me. The prosecutor, James D. Miller, and my previously court-appointed attorney, Sebouh Gourjian, attempted to extort me by forcing me to take a long prison sentence and threatening to add more charges and to arrest my wife on charges if I didn’t. He also stipulated that I could not file any court documents without an attorney, meaning I could not represent myself, another violation of my right to access of the court, which is protected by the United States and Florida constitutions. This was in writing and I brought it to the attention of the trial judge, Margaret O. Steinbeck, but she said Mr. Miller was just doing his job. My bad, I didn’t realize that extortion and violation of Florida Statute 836.05 was a job function of the state attorney’s office.

I even filed a complaint against Mr. Miller with the Florida Bar Association, but I have little hope that it will do anything. In his response to the bar complaint, James D. Miller justifies his extortion threats by advising the bar association that I am facing a life sentence based on his bogus and inflated charges, and that he is protecting the taxpayers from my frivolous lawsuits because I filed a federal lawsuit in New York’s Southern District of New York against a Lee County State Attorney investigator, FBI agents and New York Police officers for the unlawful search of my home when Lee County came to New York to help them arrest me back in 2016 when this case started.

The original prosecutor who put the wheels in motion in this case is Michael Brown, who is now a judge in Collier County, Florida, which is in the same 20th Judicial Circuit with Lee County. Along with the judges, the office of the state attorney has done everything everything to stack the cards against me so I don’t get a fair trial. For example, I am only now, after two and a half years of incarceration, gaining access to all of my discovery, but I am being denied the ability to access the discovery freely or even to get physical copies of all of it. I have to communicate with jail personnel to have them present while I review a DVD on a laptop computer, provided they are willing to assist me.

The corruption here is unfathomable. I am fortunate that I can type this message using the SmartJailMail kiosk computer system, and hopefully my blogs posts don’t cause them to take that away from me too. This all began with the actions of a man named Joel Soucy from Glaucester, Massachusetts, who now lives in New Hampshire. Soucy signed and filed many documents against Lee County officials for foreclosing on his Fort Myers rental homes, and after sitting in jail for over a year decided to blame me for his actions. He refers to this as his “free pass out of jail”. The documents include federal arrest warrants he apparently proposed to these officials, while referring to himself as a Private Attorney General. I’ll write more about that in another post. However, while in jail Soucy sent many handwritten letters to me admitting that he should not have filed the federal arrest warrants and that he received bad advise from a woman named, Beverly Grimes (aka “Trvth” or “Sister Trvth”). The Lee County State Attorney’s Office urged Soucy to blame me for his actions so he could get out of jail on probation and dump his charges (and a whole lot more) on me. Joel Soucy is a grown man who made his own decisions, and while he has been advised to play the role of an incompetent man who didn’t know any better, his own words in handwritten letters and emails tell a far different story. He used many people including myself, and then blamed me and ruined my life. You’ll learn more about Soucy in other post as well.

This case would have been over years ago, and I would have provded my innocense, but Judge Joseph C. Fuller, Jr., Judge John E. Duryea, Jr., Clerk of Court Linda Doggett, Judge Margaret O. Steinbeck and others have done everything in their power to keep me from being able to defense myself. I’m powerless. Judge Steinbeck denied every single motion I have filed, and granted every motion by the state, even very questionable requests that are not even supported by case law. In other words, she’s made special exceptions for the requests of the prosecutor, James D. Miller. She denied my request for a bail reduction, upholding the obnoxiously high bail set by Judge Archie Miller. My evidence is so strong, but I am not an attorney and trying to learn and understand courtroom procedure and the rules of evidence as I go along. I am concerned that Judge Steinbeck will do everything possible to block my evidence from being seen by a jury because it could help exonerate me. They are doing a good job of giving the illusion of fair treatment, but entering an order giving my access to “view” my discovery more than two years later, and not giving me direct access or allowing me to actually print the documents, is hardly fair treatment.

I have even tried to get a different court-appointed counsel, but Judge Steinbeck has insisted on forcing Sebouh Gourjian on me, when it has been brought to his attention that he threatened to use his representation of me to harm me. On two occasions while meeting with me over a recorded video visitation screen he said to me during a dipsute and in response to a bar complaint I filed, and I quote, “You want to play games, I can play games too.” I mean, this is my defense attorney! Are you kidding me? Would you want this man representing you? Then he asked me if I loved my wife or just lusted for her. What??? He also insisted that I was guilty and never even explained my charges are discussed my defense strategy. He represented me for a year and did nothing. I didn’t even see any discovery documents until I fired him and represented myself.

I even showed Judge Steinbeck that there was a conflict of interest because Sebouh Gourjian shared and office with Joel Soucy’s attorney Steven Smith, and they were affiliated, but she didn’t see it that way. Sebouh Gourjian also violated attorney-client privilege by sharing our privileged conversations with the prosecutor, James D. Miller and Lee County Investigator, Robert Nichols, as proven during the deposition of Mr. Nichols. How can you trust an attorney who doesn’t even respect attorney-client privilege? The icing on the cake for me was when I heard from multiple witnesses that Mr. Gourjian uses crack cocaine and hires prostitutes on a regular bases. I can’t disclose the witnesses to Mr. Gourjian’s criminal behavior until trial, and one of the prostitute he pays for sex is named Samantha (last name withheld until trial), and I will seek to have her subpoenaed as a witness at trial. It is alleged that he also trades his legal representation in exchange for sexual favors. The point is, I have been given no other choice except to use Sebouh Gourjian as my attorney or to represent myself.

Out of desperation I have contacted dozens of attorneys in Lee County around the state to represent me, but most of them refused due to a conflict of interest. Others refused to go up against the same judges they work with on a daily basis, and one attorney (Terry McCrary) said he could not represent me because he is a personal friend of Judge Fuller, an alleged victim. The attorneys who considered taking my case (mostly out of town) were charging outrageous fee that I couldn’t afford. Because of the bogus inflated charges, no attorney is willing to stand up for freedom. Most criminal attorney charge $5,000 per county, so with 19 counts you can do the math. Needless to say, I don’t have $100,000 for representation. This is completely intentional to keep me from having a real attorney and not a hired gun from the court to do its bidding. However, I am still confident that if I can show my evidence to the jury they will see the blatant corruption by Lee County and everyone else involved in this conspiracy against me.

I pray every day that there is an honest attorney out there who is willing to help me obtain justice against these criminals who have attacked me and ruined my life. I pray that there are honest reporters who aren’t bought and paid for by the same officials who took my life away and destroyed my marriage. I pray that God gives me the strength to go on and show the truth. The truth will set me free and that is what I am counting on.

 

KEYWORDS:

Lee County State Attorney’s Office, James D. Miller, Attorney James D. Miller, Judge Margaret O. Steinbeck, Judge Archie Hayward, Judge Joseph C. Fuller, Jr., Judge John E. Duryea, Jr., Attorney Sebouh Gourjian, Attorney Steven Smith, Excessive Bail, Unlawful Search and Seizure, 8th Amendment, 4th Amendment, Joel Soucy, Gloucester Massachusetts, Lee County Investigator Robert Nichols, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Corruption, conspiracy, Florida Corruption, extortion, Florida Statute 836.05, fake news, WINK News, Florida Office of Financial Regulation, Judge Michael Brown, Collier County Court, Lee County Court, Terry Trussell, Lee Clerk of Court, Linda Doggett, New Hampshire, malicious prosecution, Florida Bar Association, Case #16-CF-275