Now Judge Robert Lynn under fire: Granted joint custody/unsupervised visitation of 5-year-old to convicted rapist/kidnapper dad (New Hampshire)

People are increasingly fed up with corrupt and incompetent judges, and more and more they are willing to fight back. Judge Robert Lemkau of San Bernadino County, California is a prominent example. As regular Dastardly readers know, Lemkau dismissed the protective mother's pleas and granted the violent father, STEPHEN GARCIA, unsupervised access to his 9-month-old son. The baby was subsequently murdered by the father during his court-ordered visitation. Now the community is organizing protests to force Judge Lemkau's resignation.

Back in New Hampshire, Superior Court Chief Justice Robert Lynn is coming under similar fire. This jackass granted dad BENJAMIN ZUKATIS, a registered sex offender and convicted kidnapper and rapist, joint custody of his now 5-year-old son, along with unsupervised visitation. Like Lemkau, Lynn has been notably arrogant and dismissive of the mother's legitimate concerns. Indeed, he held the mother in contempt in 2008 for not allowing a visit with the father. In addition, Lynn is smearing the mother as a liar for bringing up sexual abuse concerns, and is blindly insisting she is only doing so to gain the upper hand in the custody battle. (This is straight out of the fathers rights handbook. Ignore the father's documented history and any evidence, and just tar the mother as a vindictive liar.)
Not surprisingly, the state Judicial Conduct Committee has found no "bias or discrimination." These folks always protect their own, so I would have been astonished if they had. However, they did have some issues with Judge Lynn's "tone." Whatever the hell that means. Basically nothing, I'm afraid.

This issue needs to move out of the committee hearing rooms and onto the streets. To all the good people of New Hampshire: Is Judge Lynn the kind of bozo you want on the bench when you need the support of the legal system? Would you want YOUR CHILD forced into unsupervised time with a convicted kidnapper/rapist and registered sex offender? Would you want this guy at your children's school or in your neighborhood? Then why would this mother want her son spending time with him in his home, completely vulnerable to abuse? Do we have to wait till this child is dead or severely injured before action is taken?

Let's give a responsible, loving mother the right to protect her children as she sees fit. It's no more than any mama bear in nature would do, or any competent mother of any species, including humans. This hardly seems like a radical demand to me. But as fathers rights ideology infiltrates the mainstream, it apparently is.

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/661870-196/judge-criticized-in-case-of-local-mom.html

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Judge criticized in case of local mom
By NANCY WEST
New Hampshire Sunday News

The committee that disciplines the state’s judges has criticized Superior Court Chief Justice Robert Lynn for his courtroom demeanor in a child-custody case, though it dismissed the underlying grievances filed by the mother and her attorney.

Erica Tapply, of Merrimack, and her attorney claimed Lynn was biased against her when she was seeking to maintain limits on visitation with her young son by his father, a convicted rapist.

The Judicial Conduct Committee voted to dismiss the grievances alleging bias and discrimination filed by Tapply and her attorney, Katherine Stearns, of New London, but cautioned Lynn about his tone on the bench. Lynn disagreed with the committee regarding his courtroom temperament.

In letters sent to Lynn and obtained by the New Hampshire Sunday News, the Judicial Conduct Committee said of Lynn’s conduct in the Sept. 29 hearing: “The Committee expressed its concern with the rather strident tone taken by the Court in questioning Ms. Tapply and in issuing its final conclusions, as well as entering into a debate with Attorney Stearns after the conclusion of the hearing.

“The Committee therefore cautions you to bear in mind that although a judge may feel frustration during testimony, a temperate response is more in keeping with expected judicial demeanor in the courtroom.”

Lynn declined comment because the custody battle concerning the 5-year-old son of Tapply, a graphic artist, and her former boyfriend, Benjamin Zukatis, a registered sex offender, is still open.

Tapply has again asked Lynn to disqualify himself from the case and vacate his orders in the case since January 2008, and also has asked for reconsideration of his last order.

But in a Feb. 10 letter responding to the Judicial Conduct Committee, Lynn said he listened to a recording of the hearing the JCC referred to and doesn’t believe he was particularly strident or aggressive in questioning Tapply.

“Although I did speak in a stern tone in making my findings and rulings on the record at the conclusion of the hearing, I did so with good reason,” Lynn wrote. “Specifically, I felt it necessary to admonish Ms. Tapply for what I found to be clearly unreasonable behavior on her part.”

That behavior, according to Lynn, included Tapply’s refusal to allow Zukatis to give a toy truck to his son for Christmas as ordered by the court in 2006. A 2008 incident in which Tapply refused to let their son visit his father led Lynn to hold Tapply in contempt and award Zukatis attorney fees.

Lynn also pointed to Tapply’s insistence that Zukatis sexually abused the boy.

Lynn said there is no credible evidence to back up the abuse claims. He said Zukatis has proved he has worked though past problems to parent his son, although Tapply insisted throughout the proceedings that her claims were based on the boy’s disclosures and marks on his body.

Arguing parental fitness

While Lynn’s ruling makes it clear he believes Tapply accused Zukatis of sexual abuse to gain advantage in the custody proceedings, Tapply is adamant that she fears for her son’s well-being, especially after Lynn granted Zukatis joint custody and expanded visitation to include unsupervised overnight visits on weekends and one afternoon a week at his residence in Lowell, Mass.

Tapply, who lives with her son at her parents’ home, said her parents had to mortgage their home to pay $130,000 in attorney fees for the custody case. Stearns continues to represent her, but now works for free, the women said.

In rejecting Tapply’s allegations, Lynn wrote in a Jan. 26 order: “To the contrary, the court is satisfied (Zukatis) has at all times conducted himself properly and appropriately during his parenting time with (his son) and that the time father and son have spent together has been beneficial to both individuals and should be increased.”

Lynn credited a counselor’s testimony that over the previous six months, Zukatis exhibited no signs of anger, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder “or other conditions that would raise concerns about his fitness to parent.”

Tapply and Zukatis, 33, never married, but had an on-again, off-again relationship in 2004 and 2005, according to court records.

Zukatis had pleaded guilty in 2000 to kidnapping and raping a former girlfriend the previous year. He originally served eight months in jail and received a five- to 10-year deferred prison sentence and was placed on probation for five years, according to Lynn’s rulings.

Zukatis, who is unemployed, declined to comment, according to his attorney, Timothy Bush, of Nashua, who added, “Given that this is still pending, I must decline comment.”

Challenging the judge

Stearns and Tapply were disappointed with the conduct committee’s decision to dismiss their grievances.

Tapply said after she filed an appeal with the Supreme Court, which was rejected, things went sour with Lynn.

“It’s because I’m challenging him and I’m a female,” she said.

“In my opinion, this has become very personal for him. Every time I do what he thinks isn’t OK, he uses my son as a weapon.”

Stearns responded to the JCC decision in a letter summing up the committee’s finding: “It is acceptable for (a) New Hampshire justice to violate the Canons of Judicial Conduct, but please be nice to the litigants and attorneys when you do it.”

But in his letter to the JCC, Lynn said the hearing tape shows Stearns’ allegations are unfounded “that I ‘yelled and screamed’ and engaged in a ‘judicial tirade.’ ”

Lynn also took issue with Stearns’ suggestion that there must be some kind of “collusion” between him and Bush, and denied that the Supreme Court declined to accept Tapply’s appeal “due to political pressures among the judiciary.”

“There are absolutely no facts to support either of these reckless allegations,” Lynn wrote, “and I respectfully ask the Committee to consider whether the fact that an attorney of some 17 years experience would make them suggests that attorney Stearns has lost objectivity regarding this case.”

Stearns said she thought long before filing a judicial conduct complaint against the chief justice of the Superior Court system.

Lynn supervises and evaluates all of the state’s 21 Superior Court judges and makes all judicial assignments.

“I hit my limit at the hearing September 29,” Stearns said. “My client brought her child to the hospital. All we were asking was to give time for the Division for Children Youth and Families to investigate (the abuse allegations), but the judge had made up his mind ahead of time.”

Judicial emotion

Lynn told the JCC he acted appropriately. Lynn said because he evaluates judges, he pays close attention to judicial demeanor.

“But I do not believe the code requires – or that it is realistic to expect – a judge to remain completely impassive and devoid of all emotion when he or she is faced with a pattern of clearly unreasonable behavior by a litigator; or that, in admonishing the litigant for such behavior the judge is precluded from speaking in a manner that is appropriately stern and direct,” Lynn wrote.

“That is what I did at the Sept. 29 hearing, and I believe that, in so doing, I handled the proceeding in the same manner as would other members of the judiciary faced with a similar situation.”

Wilfred Sanders, vice chairman of the Judicial Conduct Committee, said Lynn was treated as any other judge, not singled out because he is chief justice.

Sanders declined to say which members voted on the decision to dismiss the grievances and caution Lynn.

“The decision speaks for itself,” Sanders said.

A grievance is the first step in a judicial conduct complaint. If the JCC decides a grievance should be filed as a formal complaint, which it didn’t in Lynn’s case, it next conducts an investigation and makes recommendations to the Supreme Court, which has sole authority to issue discipline.

In addition to Sanders, members of the Judicial Conduct Committee are:

Dr. Robert O. Wilson, chairman; Judge Gary R. Cassavechia; Judge Tina Nadeau; William R. Hall Jr.; Susan Herney; Judge John A. Korbey; Peter Franklin; Thomas Moses; Lawrence W. O’Connell; and Dana Zucker.