If you have been reading this blog you know that come Thursday I will appear before Judge Roy McGeady to demonstrate that probable cause exists in support of a criminal charge against First Executive Assistant Prosecutor for Bergen County Frank Puccio.
What you are about to learn about that Courtroom and the attorneys who have relationships with Judge McGeady is startling and disturbing.
It started on January 05, 2000 when I attended an open public council meeting in the Township of Teaneck. During the public portion of that meeting I was interrupted by a councilperson before my allotted time had concluded.
What follows here is the relevant portion of a transcript of that exchange:
William Brennan:....And that is what we call lawless, lawlessness in this country. There is a rule of law and men in this country...
Councilwoman Kieliszek: Mr. Mayor.
William Brennan: ...and women in this country.
Mayor Ostrow: He has another half a minute.
Councilwoman Kieliszek: ...No Mr.Mayor, the rules under which we operate includes Roberts Rules of Order and we don't accuse people of crimes, lawlessness, Mr. Brennan it appears you're representing the FMBA.
William Brennan: Your wrong
Councilwoman Kieliszek: ..I thought so but it appears that way.
Mayor Ostrow: ..Mrs. Kieliszek remember our instruction.
Councilwoman Kieliszek: and I want the public to know that the FMBA is not accusing this council of being lawless or unethical or any of the things that Mr. Brennan nor is the FMBA using the time table that Mr. Brennan is using. I want the public to know that Mr. Brennan is not representing the FMBA and under Robert's Rules of Order we do not allow people to come to this podium, accuse others of crime, as you pointed out Mr. Mayor there are avenues. There is an ethics board in this township, there is a prosecutor.
Mayor Ostrow:..I pointed that out.
Councilwoman Kieliszek:.If you know of a crime that's where you should be, you should not be here.
William Brennan: With all due respect Ms.Kieliszek we also have a Constitution in this country and part of a healthy democracy is the citizens coming before the governing body and airing their grievances and if I care to say that you and you and you and you....
Councilwoman Kieliszek: ...you cannot say that.
William Brennan: ...and you are engaging in lawless behavior, I have every right to do so and if you have objection to that you pursue your remedies. Don't tell me what to say in a public meeting, don't tell me how to behave at a public meeting I am conforming with Robert's Rules of Order and I have three (3)minutes...
Councilwoman Kieliszek:...(unintelligible)
William Brennan:...and I have three minutes and you've chosen to interrupt me and under Robert's Rules of Order you are out of order. This is a public portion of the meeting and you are not a member of the public. If you wish to speak during this portion of the meeting you should get up, come around here, and take the podium. Until such time you should save your speeches for the regular portion of the meeting.
Mayor Ostrow:....Mr. Brennan.
William Brennan:...now may I be able to finish or not?
Mayor Ostrow: You've had three minutes
William Brennan: I have not had three minutes.
Mayor Ostrow: Your now on tape, sit down or the police will remove you
William Brennan: You get the police in here because I am not finished.
Mayor Ostrow: Mr. Cramer do you want to respond.
William Brennan:....Now you also said that the verge.
Mayor Ostrow: I warned you twice Mr. Brennan
William Brennan: ..Let them come.
Mayor Ostrow: I warned you twice
William Brennan: Bring em on.
Mayor Ostrow:...you pushed this town for three years and we are not going to tolerate it!
William Brennan: You aren't tolerating anything and you have no choice in the matter.
Attorney Cramer: Mr. Mayor.
Councilwoman Kieliszek: Mr. Mayor may we have a recess.
William Brennan: You do what you will.
Attorney Cramer: Mr. Mayor I would like to remind everybody that what Mr. Lew said when he was here about a month ago, everybody talks about the rule of law. There is an Appellate Division case and second highest court in this state which says that the managerial prerogatives belong to the management and that is the reason why we are pushing the appeal of the PERC arbitrators decision. We feel that that decision is directly against the appellate division case which says that is cannot be done. The management is the organization that makes those decisions..
Mayor Ostrow: Mr. Brennan sit down.
Attorney Cramer: you talk about the Rule of Law that's the rule.
William Brennan: I won't, I was interrupted and now I'm going to finish. I have my three minutes and I'm going to take my three minutes.
Mayor Ostrow: You have been at the microphone for six and a half minutes now
William Brennan: yeah and how much of that time was Ms. Kieliszek speaking?
Mayor Ostrow: I asked you to sit down three times you are out of order, you are discourteous, you are being abrasive and immature and you are not right and you are being antagonistic to the entire council and entire community and you are being watched on television by people that see that you do not represent the Teaneck Fire Department. I defy any Teaneck Fire Department member to ever act the way you have ever acted.
William Brennan: Are you finished now?
Mayor Ostrow: No I will be finished when my term is up and you will be finished when yours is...
William Brennan: Well we will do everything we can to make sure that happens soon.
Mayor Ostrow: As a voter I hope you do.
Councilman Gallucci: Mr. Mayor the speaker's time has expired.
Mayor Ostrow: Mr. Brennan I want you to sit down.
William Brennan: OK Mr. Mayor, I am going to sit down now.
Councilman Galucci: Take a recess Mr. Mayor.
Councilman Henderson: Cut the tape off. Tape interrupted.
Despite having sat down without being afforded the three minutes of speech to which I was entitled, the police were summoned and I was then Ordered to leave the open public meeting. When I refused I was placed in handcuffs and taken to police headquarters where the arresting officer had no idea what he was charging me with. As I sat chained to a wall in a cell, the police waited for the meeting to end so that the municipal attorney and the mayor could direct them as to how I should be charged. Eventually the mayor, two council members and the attorney were brought into a restricted area where they were permitted to surreptitiously observe me via a closed circuit camera.
The arresting officer was then directed to charge me with
"Disrupting a public meeting, specifically by posing the threat of physical violence."
This false allegation would have been easily refuted by video tape maintained at the Teaneck public library. It was quite unusual that this tape could not be located the following day.
The police officer, municipal prosecutor and the court still had a serious problem with my arrest since no one witnessed anything that resembled a threat of physical violence. In fact all the officer could testify to was that on his arrival
"he was sitting quietly".
In order to "fix" this problem they had Mayor Ostrow sign a duplicate complaint charging me with
"Disrupting a public meeting by acting in a disruptive manner."
Because the mayor is not a law enforcement officer his charge required a probable cause hearing.
The matter was transferred to the Vicinage Court over which Judge Roy McGeady presided. At the time Judge McGeady's Vicinage Court was limited to probable cause hearings and hearings on involuntary commitment. During the probable cause hearing, Mayor Ostrow committed perjury by alleging that I threatened violence, used profanity and exceeded my time limit at the podium.
The mayor was unaware of the fact that an off duty firefighter had videotaped the council meeting from his home television when he gave this false testimony.
When I sought a copy of the taped proceedings before Judge McGeady it had inexplicably and "accidentally" been erased.
After Judge McGeady found probable cause he declared in open court that he would
"be holding onto this case"
despite the fact that his court room lacked a prosecutor or any authority to conduct trials (he was limited to probable cause and involuntary commitments).
McGeady's unlawful act of "holding onto" a case for trial in his limited court, enabled Teaneck to hire a Special Prosecutor of their own choosing.
When Teaneck realized that I had a copy of the videotape that had mysteriously disappeared from the public library, they added another charge (Defiant Trespass) and had a police sergeant sign it.
At trial, Judge McGeady found me guilty on both counts and I appealed the decision to the Superior Court. My case was assigned to Judge Conte (the first Judge to grant Doctor Ragi PTI for sexual assault). Judge Conte dismissed the disrupting a public meeting charge and upheld a charge of Defiant Trespass despite the fact that I had committed no crime while at an open public council meeting.
On September 11, 2001 I argued that conviction before the Appellate Division and they decided that my "privilege" to attend a council meeting was revoked by the police when they ordered me to leave. Today that decision is taught to officers seeking promotion to a higher rank - law abiding citizens can be arrested for trespassing at open council meetings based entirely on the say so of a police officer.
A few years later I signed a complaint against Teaneck Municipal Manager Helene Fall for criminal violation of statutes that forbade her from suspending a firefighter (me) without a hearing. The matter was transferred to Judge McGeady for a probable cause determination. The facts were not disputed and probable cause was readily apparent.
Prior to coming out on the bench Judge McGeady had an
ex parte (he met privately outside my presence) meeting with Teaneck's civil lawyers (who worked for DeCotis and Genova). At that meeting Judge McGeady was presented with a letter bearing Angelo Genova's signature that had been back dated by a month in order to justify the unlawful suspension I was serving.
Judge McGeady should not have met with Gregory Begg (the civil attorney from the DeCotis firm) and Angelo Genova in advance of a criminal matter and he should not have been discussing my employment status or reviewing a document purportedly sent from Angelo Genova to a medical doctor three weeks earlier. If that was part of Ms. Fall's defense it should have been presented at trial. Based on this inappropriate meeting Judge McGeady found no probable cause for the charge I had brought and dismissed my criminal complaint.
Discovery in my civil suit established that the letter bearing Angelo Genova's signature and a date of August 09 had not been written until September, shortly after I filed my criminal complaint against Helene Fall.
During a deposition of the doctor to whom the letter was written there was a discrepancy between the copy provided to me and the copy the doctor had on file. A subpoena of the metadata for that document revealed that it had been back dated.
In a certification from the law firm (Genova Burns) they admitted that the document was back dated and claimed that "an associate who no longer works for the firm" used Mr. Genova's signature stamp without his knowledge or approval. No action was ever taken by anyone against any of the attorneys involved in fraud upon me and more than one court.
In the years that have ensued I have publicly excoriated an absence of ethics that permeates the Bergen County Courthouse.
Recent revelations that DeCotis, Galantucci and Patuto handled $500,000 of Doctor Ragi's money before Ferriero received it and Molinelli ordered PTI twice for Dr Ragi vindicate each and every person who bemoans the sad state of affairs in Bergen County.
Judge Conte convicted me of trespassing in a council meeting long before he gave Dr. Ragi his first PTI. Judge Conte is now retired and working for Mike Mordaga's brother in law at a Hackensack law firm. Mordaga and Molinelli are codefendants in a wrongful death suit brought by the estate of a mobster who was shot in the back of his head.
Judge Carroll sits at the Appellate Division after giving PTI to Dr. Ragi for a second time. If you watch the video of Judge Carroll at the second PTI hearing (embedded in the linked story below),
http://www.northjersey.com/news/questions-linger-in-case-of-teaneck-doctor-accused-of-groping-patients-1.1295566
it is obvious that Judge Carroll knows he is doing something unlawful during this proceeding.
Judge Doyne is suddenly retiring from his position as Assignment Judge, the Presiding Judge (Silebi) for Bergen's Criminal Division has requested a transfer to Passaic County and a pall has been cast over that whole building.
A charge related to the Office of the Bergen County Prosecutor should not be heard in any court in Bergen County - Judge McGeady has not recused himself and the probable cause hearing is scheduled to commence at 09:00 on Thursday April 30, 2015 at the County Courthouse in Room 309.
I have a history with Judge McGeady that goes back more than 15 years.
During that time Judge McGeady has:
- arrogated unto himself authority to try me (at a time when his court lacked such authority),
- engaged in ex parte communication with civil attorneys while presiding over charges filed by me,
- had the official recording of proceedings erased after Mayor Ostrow committed perjury,
- accepted as true a falsified and back dated document bearing Angelo Genova's signature in order to declare that probable cause did not exist to charge Ms. Helene Fall,
- been overturned by the Superior Court after finding me guilty of Disrupting a Public meeting
- been repeatedly called out in online forums for the issues listed here.
The County's new assignment judge was once a partner of Dennis Oury and Judge McGeady reports to her. My excoriation of Dennis Oury over his crimes is known far and wide in virtually every online forum where his conviction is a topic. How the Honorable Roy McGeady can appear impartial on Thursday morning is a mystery that greater legal minds than mine will have to unravel
An appearance of impropriety requires action that eliminates that appearance - ask yourself whether propriety appears in Bergen based on these undisputed facts. If you are an attorney who believes in the Rule of Law and you practice with integrity; ask yourself when you are going to speak up and out on these issues.
The foundation of our justice system needs an overhaul at 10 Main Street in Hackensack, shuffling a marked deck will not make the next deal any more fair than the last one. This is our chance.
