Glenn Campbell

                                                                                      PO Box 30303

                                                                                      Las Vegas, NV 89173

 

                                                                                      November 13, 2005

 

Ronald Cordes

Deputy District Attorney

Office of the District Attorney, Juvenile Division

601 N. Pecos Rd., Bldg. B, Room 470

Las Vegas, NV 89101-2408

 

 

Re:   The Matter of PATRICIA BRYANT-KELLY,  Case #J217804

         Exclusion of Observer from Hearing on Nov. 3

 

Dear Mr. Cordes:

 

I appreciate your phone call on Thursday (Nov. 10) regarding my exclusion from the Nov. 3 semi-annual hearing in this child’s case.  It is good to hear your side of the story.  In this letter, I would like to summarize the facts of the incident as I now understand them, taking into account what you told me over the phone.  I want you to have the opportunity to correct any errors or misperceptions I may have. I also want to ask you several simple questions that should be easy to answer and that will go a long way toward resolving this matter.

All parties seem to agree now that I was improperly excluded from this hearing.  As a remedy, Judge Hardcastle has offered to let me view the videotape of the hearing, which I understand was quite brief.  Before I view it, however, I want to make sure I have all the facts straight about how this incident occurred.  If you see anything wrong in the summary below, please inform me.

 

WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED

You told me on the phone on Nov. 10 that it was your intention, before the Nov. 3 hearing, to submit a verbal motion to have it closed to the public. From my  limited understanding of NRS 432B.430 and Court procedure, this is how I assume the sequence of events SHOULD HAVE happened:

1) The Bailiff would have announced the hearing as usual, both inside the courtroom and in the waiting room outside.

2) I and any other interested observers would have entered the courtroom.

3) The hearing would have been called to order.

4) You would have announced your motion to the Court.

5) You would have presented your facts and arguments.

6) The Court would have made a ruling about whether the hearing should be open or closed.

7) If the Court determined that the hearing should be closed, it would have made a statement of fact for the record, per NRS 432B.430(1)(b)(1).  Following this, I and any other observers would have then been asked to leave, per NRS 432B.430(1)(b)(2).

8) The hearing would have proceeded through its normal course.

 

Question #1:  In the above, have I correctly described the proper sequence of events for such a verbal motion, as you understand the statute?

 

 

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED

From my own observations and those of my ex-wife (who was also excluded from the hearing) and from what you told me over the phone on Nov. 10, this is what I now understand ACTUALLY happened:

1) Prior to the start of the hearing, you spoke with the child’s caseworker, HELENE PIERCE, and the child’s court-appointed attorney, KEVIN LEIK, about your intention to have the hearing closed.

2) HELENE PIERCE talked to my ex-wife, S— S—, saying that she expected both my ex-wife and myself to be excluded from the hearing.  My ex-wife then relayed this information to me.

3) Mr. LEIK then spoke with you again sometime later, and he gave you information indicating that I would be barred from the courtroom by the Bailiff, without the necessity of a motion.  (It is still not clear to me exactly what Mr. LEIK told you.)

4) When the time came for the hearing, the Bailiff did NOT announce it in the waiting room, contrary to the usual practice.

5) Suspecting that the hearing was taking place, but not sure, I approached the Bailiff, TED CASSIDY, and asked him if I could be admitted to the courtroom. Mr. CASSIDY told me that I was not allowed in “his” courtroom anymore.  He said: “I already told you this last time.”  (An incorrect assertion, as I will describe later.) I understood from this exchange that I was now permanently banned from Courtroom 14, not only for the current hearing but from any future hearing where Mr. CASSIDY was the Bailiff.  Mr. CASSIDY would give me no further information about why I was excluded from the courtroom.

6) Since Mr. CASSIDY controlled all access to the courtroom, and there was no one available to whom I could appeal his decision, I left the court building.

7) My ex-wife, S— S—, remained in the waiting area for the duration of the hearing.  She heard no announcement of the hearing and was given no opportunity to enter the courtroom. (However, she did not approach the Bailiff to request admittance.)  She remained in the waiting area until Ms. PIERCE left the courtroom and confirmed that the hearing was over.

8) Inside the courtroom, the hearing was called to order.

9) Based on the information from Mr. LEIK that I would be barred from the courtroom, you made NO motion before the Court to have the hearing closed.  Thus, the Court had no opportunity to rule on whether it should be closed or open, and it remained open by default.

10) The hearing proceeded in its normal course.

 

Question #2:  For the events above that you were a party to or were otherwise aware of, have I made any errors?  If so, please point them out to me.

YOUR ASSERTIONS

In our telephone conversation on Nov. 10, I recall you making the following assertions:

1) You did not collude with the Bailiff in any way to exclude me from the hearing.

2) You did not communicate with the Bailiff in any manner, directly or through another party, instructing or encouraging him to exclude me from the hearing.

3) You did not ask or in any way encourage Mr. LEIK to talk to the Bailiff.

4) You felt that you had solid and persuasive legal grounds to have the hearing closed, and you felt that the Court would have ruled to close the hearing had you presented a motion.

5) Although it was your original intention to make a motion to have the hearing closed, you later changed your mind and decided not to make one.

6) Your decision not to submit a motion was based primarily on information you received from Mr. LEIK.

7) You understood at the time Mr. LEIK talked to you, that he had talked to the Bailiff and had received certain information from him.

8) You have no objection now to my viewing the videotape of the hearing.

 

Question #3:  Are all of these assertions correct?

 

 

MY PRIOR CONTACT WITH THE BAILIFF

At the time Mr. CASSIDY barred me from the Nov. 3 hearing, he said that he had “already told you this last time,” apparently asserting that I had been barred from the courtroom on a prior occasion.  This is simply not true.  Since this false claim appears to be the nominal grounds for excluding me from the Nov. 3 hearing, I would like to recount exactly what happened between myself and the Bailiff on the only other day we had contact with each other: October 4.

I have been inside a courtroom with Mr. CASSIDY on only a SINGLE occasion for a SINGLE hearing.  This hearing took place in Courtroom 14 before JUDGE JOHN SARB (pro tem) on Oct. 4, 2005 and concerned the M—-B— CHILDREN: Angel, Tayshawn, and Parisha. (I do not have the case number and I am not certain of the spelling of the last names. These are the same children whose case I reported in a document on my website entitled, “Wednesday’s Child: Terrorist Edition.”)

During the hearing, the Bailiff objected to certain gestures that I made and warned me that if such gestures were repeated, he would eject me from the courtroom.  However, after the reprimand, he allowed me to return to my seat inside the courtroom, and the Bailiff and I had no further contact until the Nov. 3 hearing.

Mr. Cassidy objected to the following two actions that I fully acknowledge and admit to:

1) After the hearing had been announced but before it was called to order, the parties entered the courtroom. The subject children came to the front table, while their foster father remained in the back of the courtroom. My gesture, a beckoning motion  made with my right hand, was a signal to the foster father to step forward to the front table where the children were.  I do not recall I uttering anything at the time, but if it did, it was something to the effect of “Step forward.”  (When he reprimanded me later, the Bailiff referred only to the hand gesture, not any verbalization.)

2) My second action that the Bailiff objected to was a single word that I acknowledge uttering: “Wait!”  JUDGE SARB had asked the subject children to leave the courtroom, which was his usual policy before any discussion of a case took place.  The foster father then started to leave the courtroom with the children, so that they would not be unattended outside.  I said the word, “Wait!” and started moving toward the door to encourage the foster father to stay in the courtroom. I had talked to him before the hearing and knew that he had wanted to request that an attorney be appointed for the children, but if he left the courtroom, he would not have that opportunity.  (A few days later, I wrote a letter to JUDGE SARB suggesting that, as a matter of policy, he should not send children out of the courtroom because it also deprived their attendents of access to the Court.)

Following my “Wait!” the Bailiff called me to his podium and severely reprimanded me for my two actions.  He said, “You can write in your notebook all you want,” but if I made any further gestures, I would be ejected from “his” courtroom.  The Bailiff then let me return to my seat, and the video record will show that there were no other incidents or contacts between us.

The foster father remained in the courtroom. However, perhaps intimidated by my conflict with the Bailiff, he never asked for an attorney for the children.

My only other contact with Mr. CASSIDY took place over the two hours preceding that hearing.  I repeatedly asked him to let me enter the courtroom, but he said he was too busy to consider my request. I tried to give him my business card to give to the judge, but the Bailiff refused to take it. “Your piece of paper is worthless to me,” he said.  He repeatedly referred to the courtroom as “my courtroom,” and seemed to indicate that the opinion of the judge was irrelevent to my access. “You’ll get into my courtroom when I say you can,” he said.  When he finally let me into the courtroom for the MOORE-BERRY hearing, he appeared to do so without consulting the judge.

 

REMAINING QUESTIONS

It is apparent that the Bailiff and I do not get along, and it is conceivable that he barred me from the Nov. 3 hearing solely at his own initiative, without suggestion from anyone else.  However, the fact that he had admitted me to the Oct. 4 hearing and had not ejected me even after a reprimand suggests that he would not have barred me from the Nov. 3 hearing without a suggestion from someone else that this was the thing to do.

The THEORY I am currently attempting to prove or disprove is that you talked to Ms. PIERCE and Mr. LEIK about the possibility of closing the hearing, then Mr. LEIK spoke to the Bailiff and suggested in some way—whether verbal or nonverbal—that I should be excluded from the hearing. The Bailiff may have then reported my bad behavior at the previous hearing, and now he, Mr. LEIK and you felt you had the justification you needed to exclude me from the hearing extrajudicially, thus avoiding an awkward and potentially unsuccessful motion to close it.

In order to prove or disprove this theory, I would like you to answer several factual questions....

Question #4:  As best you can recall, what did Mr. LEIK say to you that convinced you to abandon your motion to close the hearing? What were his words?

Question #5: If you had made a motion to close the hearing, what would your grounds have been? (Since I was deprived of the opportunity to hear these arguments in court, it would be reasonable to hear them now.)

Question #6: Were those arguments targeted solely at me, or were you also attempting to keep out other potential observers?

Question #7:  To your knowledge, was the Bailiff also expected to exclude my ex-wife from the hearing if she tried to enter, or was he only expected to exclude me?

Question #8:  Since NRS 432B.430 was changed in 2003, on approximately how many occasions have you formally motioned that a hearing be closed under the provisions of this statute? (A general ballpark figure would be fine, just from your memory.)

 

Your answers will go a long way toward determining what happened and finding a resolution to this matter.

 

SINCERELY,

 

 

 

GLENN CAMPBELL

 

CC: Judge Gibson