Thompson v. The Florida Bar

Filing 331

NOTICE by John B. Thompson re 330 Plaintiff's MOTION to Appoint Mediator (How About George Knox?) (Attachments: # 1 Exhibit Letter to George Knox Re Mediation)(Thompson, John)

Thompson v. The Florida Bar

Doc. 331 Att. 1

John B. Thompson, Attorney at Law 1172 S. Dixie Hwy., Suite 111 Coral Gables, Florida 33146 305-666-4366 [e-mail]
November 17, 2007 George F. Knox, Jr. Knox Seaton Miami, Florida Via e-mail to [e-mail] Re: Mediation of Bar v. Thompson v. Bar Dear George: I have been embroiled for the last forty months in a dispute between The Florida Bar and me that began twenty years ago when The Bar, at the behest of the broadcast pornography industry, sought to pathologize my Christian activism. The shock radio broadcasters and their attorneys asserted that "Jack Thompson is so obsessed against pornography that he is mentally incapacitated by that obsession and his disability renders him unfit to practice law." The Bar's own expert health care providers found me wonderfully sane and simply "a Christian acting out his faith." The Bar's carrier paid me damages for the privilege of being publicly humiliated in this fashion. It is a testimony to God's grace that I have remained, for 31 years, in continuous good standing with The Florida Bar, despite The Bar's efforts to the contrary. Now The Florida Bar, encouraged by the same elements within the entertainment industry and by one of the very same lawyers, seeks to permanently disbar me for telling the truth about two corrupt judges and the criminal activities of two companies. Florida Bar Governors Ben Kuehne and Steve Chaykin have, as my "impartial" designated reviewers, demanded that I submit to another round of pysch testing in yet another attempt to pathologize my faith. Proof that there is no basis for this demand is legion, but please note, in passing, that a) The Bar has violated all of its procedures in making such a demand, and b) Dr. Oren Wunderman, a forensic psychologist well known to be expert in this area by The Bar itself, has tested me and found me sane, with my faith enhancing, in his opinion, my practice of law. The Bar insists upon my pleading guilty and then submitting to a psych evaluation after I plead guilty, but it is unwilling to use the procedures in Rule 3-7.13 to get the order mandating the evaluation. The Bar knows there is absolutely no basis for the demand. This is bad faith if there ever were such a thing.

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I note that you are a long-time friend of our Florida Bar President, Frank Angones. I used to think of Frank as one of the "good guys." Yet The Bar's outside counsel, Barry Richard of Greenberg Traurig, has represented repeatedly to U.S. District Court Judge Adalberto Jordan, who referred me and then un-referred me to the Ad Hoc Committee on which you serve, that I have a right to appear before the Board of Governors to argue my constitutional defenses prior to my disciplinary trial. Frank Angones will not allow that appearance. Thus, we have Frank Angones, who is supposed to be the Bar President for all members of The Bar, denying me a right that The Bar's own counsel is telling a federal judge I have--all in order to persuade Judge Jordan to abstain from providing me any federal judicial relief. George, I got started in public life when, as the 17-year-old Student Mayor for a Day of my all white town in Ohio. I submitted that evening to the adult City Council a proposed Fair Housing ordinance I and my "student cabinet" had drafted. That was the first time my life was threatened. I had read Martin Luther King, Jr's Chaos or Community: Where Do We Go from Here? and it had given me the courage to do what I did. Now, as a Christian, I have, through God's grace, the courage to oppose, for the past twenty years, the marketing of adult entertainment to children in violation of state and federal laws. Several months ago I journeyed to Death Row in Alabama's Atmore Correctional Facility and met with Devin Moore, who shot and killed three policemen, all of whose families are my clients in a wrongful death action we have filed on their behalf. Our four experts, all of whom have testified before Congress on this copycat phenomenon, have testified that but for Moore's rehearsal of the cop killings on Grand Theft Auto: Vice City he would not have killed. Moore, with no criminal history and no history of violence, had been allowed by his mother to play Vice City for hours each day. His father had beaten him repeatedly with a strap and then would place him in a bathtub filled with bleach. "Mr. Thompson, I played the game to get out of the life I was living." That "escape," an adult game marketed and sold illegally to minors, put him on Death Row, where he is scheduled to die by lethal injection. Moore is black. One of the officers was black. Ed Bradley, because I had appeared on 60 Minutes six years earlier, called me personally and asked me to do 60 Minutes one more time about the link between violent murder simulation video games and killings when he became aware of our case. Mr. Bradley, a great man, flew to Alabama to interview me and others while dying of leukemia. He had to be rushed to Manhattan from there to be placed in ice water because of a 106-degree fever caused by the cancer. Mr. Bradley had become a "believer" in my allegedly "insane" cause, having interviewed me the week after Columbine about the video game component of Klebold and Harris' massacre. My observation has been that 60 Minutes does not routinely place on its program, not just once but twice, experts whom it suspects are mentally ill. Maybe Mr. Bradley and his

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entire team of producers missed something up-close that The Bar's Steve Chaykin has missed from a distance. The targeting of me by the Philadelphia law firm of Blank Rome, the Republican lobbyists on Capitol Hill and record counsel for the video game defendants in the Alabama case, began as soon as I appeared on 60 Minutes. Blank Rome's Ian Comisky sits on The Florida Bar's Board of Governors. I don't need to connect the dots. The Bar has connected them for me. I am not a perfect man. That is why I need a Savior. I have acted angrily in the last forty months. I suspect most people who would have their lives threatened off and on for forty months would have a bit of anger rattling around. I note that Leonard Pitts, according to news coverage, is not terribly fond of death threats. For me it has been a weekly occurrence over the past 160 weeks, thanks largely to The Florida Bar. I can only imagine what some Bar Governors would do to stop the targeting of them and their families for harm. I write and ask, respectfully, that you might consider offering to The Florida Bar, given your deserved reputation and your friendship with many within The Bar, including our current Bar President, to mediate this dispute between it and me that has gone on for twenty years now. We had one "mediation" months ago with no representative of The Bar willing to participate. The Bar's staff prosecutor, who is incompetent, to be kind, waltzed into the mediation and demanded, again, a psych evaluation. She had no authority of any kind to negotiate. The whole purpose of the faux mediation was to frustrate my good faith efforts to resolve this mess. There is one other group of Bar complainants aligned against me, with their complaint so tenuous that The Bar offered once to dismiss it with prejudice. Now it will not. These complainants are the lawyers who represented the Howard Stern Show's airing on WQAM-AM. I forced Stern off their station, and they're upset about that. The lawyer who filed The Bar complaint against me is Al Cardenas, who told my lawyer that he was upset that I had written Governor Jeb Bush and told Jeb that his "family values" GOP friend down here, Al Cardenas, was helping keep Stern on the air at the very moment that the Florida GOP was running campaign ads urging Florida voters not to vote for Democrats because "they will force the values of Hollywood on your children." I thought Jeb should be aware of the hypocrisy of Republicans who say that and then represent the porn industry. Republicans say a lot of things they don't mean, as you know. I had forced Stern off all Clear Channel stations nationally because I made very big deal about Stern's airing of the following comment: "Ever bang any famous nigger chicks? What do they smell like? Watermelons?"

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When I addressed a journalism class at Miami-Dade Community College one evening after I forced Stern off the air in South Florida for airing the above, the class's professor introduced me as the man who had done that. Every African American woman in the class stood up and applauded. If I am disbarred, that moment, for me anyway, will make it worth it. What I began as a seventeen-year-old I am trying to finish as a fifty-six-year-old sinner, convinced of my own fallibility but also sure of what I am called to do and Whom I am called to serve. If what you beheld yesterday as our mediator is an insane man, then I urge you to tell The Bar just that. The Bar should then use the procedures that are right there in its Rules to compel a mental health exam. If what you beheld was someone you think is compos mentis, then I respectfully ask you to tell The Bar that. Steve Chaykin, who has never bothered to meet me, has a view of my mental health which has prompted him to humiliate me publicly with his long distance diagnosis. This is both silly, and it is dangerous to The Bar. I conclude by asking you to offer to The Bar to serve as a mediator of our dispute. If this matter is not mediated, then I will undertake to deconstruct The Bar on Frank Angones' watch. I have the facts and I have the law to do it. I have better things to do, but I'm more than happy to do it. Warm personal regards, Jack Thompson Copy: Florida Bar Governors U.S. District Court File 07-21256, Southern District of Florida

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