2 Cents Gaming

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA

THE FLORIDA BAR,

                                    Complainant,

v.                                                                          Case Numbers SC 07 - 80 and 07- 354

JOHN B. THOMPSON, 

                                      Respondent.

SUPPLEMENT TO RESPONDENT’S MOTION FOR LEAVE TO FILE RESPONSE TO REFEREE’S FINAL REPORT

COMES NOW respondent Thompson and supplements his motion, stating: 

            Respondent has been found “guilty” by Referee Tunis of multiple violations of Bar Rule 4-8.4(d) which states that a lawyer shall not:

“(d) engage in conduct in connection with the practice of law that is prejudicial to the administration of justice, including to knowingly, or through callous indifference, disparage, humiliate, or discriminate against litigants, jurors, witnesses, court personnel, or other lawyers on any basis, including, but not limited to, on account of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, national origin, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, age, socioeconomic status, employment, or physical characteristic;”

THOMPSON WAS NOT ENGAGED IN THE “PRACTICE OF LAW”

            This Florida Supreme Court ruled in Florida Bar v. Brake, 767 So.2d 1163 (Fla. 2000) has ruled that a lawyer who is not acting on behalf of a client and who is thus not “engaged in the practice of law” cannot be disciplined under Rule 4-8.4(d).  However, Tunis has done just that, refusing even to consider the point that this court itself has made.  This court refuses Thompson the opportunity to participate as an amicus in its Bar v. Conway consideration of whether The Bar is encroaching upon the First Amendment with such venturous speech policing.

THOMPSON ATTACKED NO ONE ON THE BASIS OF

THEIR “SUSPECT CLASSIFICATION”

            The entire purpose of Rule 4-8.4(d), evident both on its face and in its interpretation and application by The Bar and this Court, except when it comes to Jack Thompson, is to punish lawyers who go after anyone in the adjudicative process, while engaged in the practice of law, for the purpose of disparaging them on the basis of their particular status as members of a classification within society, such as on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation/preference, etc.  Thompson has never done that in any setting.  The Bar has done that to Thompson, of course, on the basis of his religion, but Thompson has never responded in kind.

THOMPSON HAS NEVER

“PREJUDICED THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE”

            Even if one assumes that Thompson had a client, went after some suspect classification of person or persons in order to disparage them, The Bar must also have proved that Thompson somehow “prejudiced the administration of justice.”  The Bar, in the run up to the trial and at the trial, never even tried to prove this element of Rule 4-8.4(d).  Why?  Because it could not.  The Court will recall that when Thompson asked The Bar, months before his trial, to delineate in an interrogatory, what “harm Thompson had done with any of his communications,” The Bar objected on the basis that any answer “would call for a legal conclusion.”  Referee Tunis refused to compel an answer to that key question.

FINALLY, “SHAME IS NOT A BAD MORAL COMPASS”

            Former Secretary of State Colin Powell wrote in his autobiography, My American Journey, the following:

            “We say we are appalled by the rise of sexually transmitted disease, by the wave of teenage pregnancies, by violent crime. Yet we drench ourselves in depictions of explicit sex and crime on television, in movies, and in pop music.   A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass. I remember who easy it was for my mother to snap me back into line with a simple rebuke: “I’m ashamed of you. You embarrassed the family.” I wonder where our national sense of shame has gone.”

My American Journey, by Colin Powell, p. 594

            One of the Bar complainants who complained of Thompson’s attempts to “humiliate” him was Al Cardenas, former Chairman of the Florida Republican Party who, in that role, ballyhooed his commitment to “family values” as a platform in his Party’s political  platform.

            Mr. Cardenas stated on the stand at Thompson’s trial that Thompson had committed the equivalent of “emotional stalking” when Thompson wrote a letter to the female lawyers in Cardenas’ firm, pointing out to them that Tew Cardenas’ SLAPP Bar complaint against Thompson was formally brought on behalf of the entire firm and all the lawyers in it, including “you women.”  Thompson pointed out that the purpose of this Bar complaint, brought in violation of our Bar Rules’ own Preamble which prohibits the brining of Bar complaints against opponents, was to protecting the criminal airing of the misogynistic, pornographic Howard Stern Show, which featured, on this law firm client’s station, descriptions by female amputees of how they would place their lubricated “stumps” into the anuses of men to achieve their orgasm.  This was aired at 8 am in violation of 18 USC 1464.  Proof of Thompson’s correctness in that regard was the FCC fines Thompson had successfully secured against the radio station client of Tew Cardenas for airing Stern.

            Thompson had known Cardenas for years, as both were in the Republican Party, active in local and national politics.  Thompson wrote Governor Bush about his friend’s and his law firm’s fronting for pornographic broadcasts in an attempt, as Colin Powell describes it, to hopefully induce “a sense of shame” as to the very pornographic material that Powell and Thompson have come against, not only because it debases but because it leads to societal problems mentioned by Powell.

            Alas, Mr. Cardenas, rather than deal with what should have been his shame, decided to get even with Thompson by filing his retributive Bar complaint.  It is easier to try to remove the speck from your neighbor’s eye than remove the log from your own.

            One of the great ironies of this case, which is founded upon a monstrous hypocrisy, is the fact that Al Cardenas was very prominent during the recent Presidential primary process on behalf of his candidate of choice, Governor Mitt Romney. 

            Mr. Romney’s very first national television advertisement during the primary season referred to the depravity of our popular culture that came to light, he says, with “Columbine.”  Says Romney in the ad available for viewing at http://www.joystiq.com/2007/07/18/mitt-romney-cleaning-up-dirty-video-game-water/:

“I’d like to see us clean up the water in which our kids are swimming. I’d like to keep pornography from coming up on their computers. I’d like to keep drugs off the streets. I’d like to see less violence and sex on TV and in video games and in movies. If we get serious about this we can actually do a great deal to clean up the water in which our kids and our grandkids are swimming.”

          How could Al Cardenas front for the Howard Stern Show and at the same time serve as a National Chairman for Mitt Romney.  Answer:  He could not.  This was the hypocrisy that Thompson sought to illuminate and hopefully, if he still had a sense of honor and a sense of shame, to bring Al Cardenas to see that he “embarrassed” at least the “family” of the Republican Party, the supposed Party of “family values.”  A political point:  Is Al Cardenas so naïve that he does not know that if Romney had secured the nomination that the Democratic nominee, who appears to be Barack Obama, who has repeatedly decried the marketing and sale of violent video games to American kids, would not make something of the fact that one of Romney’s national chairs is a porn industry lawyer?

            Mark Twain wrote, “Man is the only animal that blushes, and needs to.”  The point is apparently lost on Cardenas.  It is lost by design upon The Bar.

            Cardenas admitted on the stand at Thompson’s trial that “I did not know” of his radio station client’s FCC fines for the criminal airing of indecency.  He “did not know” that the Howard Stern Show, had been the subject of multiple FCC actions relating to the airing of Stern pursuant to Thompson’s FCC filings!

            Yet this man, Al Cardenas, the great GOP advocate for “family values,” executed a sworn Florida Bar complaint asserting, under oath, that Thompson’s assertions that this radio station client was trafficking in this material were false.

            This is perjury by Cardenas, and The Bar’s knowing reliance upon this perjury to prosecute Thompson constitutes a clear violation of the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Giglio that a prosecutor’s reliance upon false evidence is prosecutorial misconduct of the highest order.

            Referee Tunis refused to consider any of this.  Any of it.

THE BAR HAS SOUGHT TO STIFLE THOMPSON’S

RELIGION-BASED ACTIVISM

            John the Baptist called out Herod for marrying his brother’s wife.  Jesus called the Bar Governors of His day “liars, hypocrites, and whited sepulchers.”  The prophets of the Old Testament identified Israel’s sin in an attempt, by God through them, to bring Israel to repentance.  Ronald Reagan, repeatedly quoted Scripture’s 2 Chronicles 7:14:

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

            Fortunately for President Reagan, he was not a lawyer, or hypocritical porn lawyers like Al Cardenas would have filed Bar complaints against him.

            If this Court dares punish Thompson for what has clearly been an expression of his Christian faith, then his already-pending lawsuit sounding in Florida’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act will greatly inconvenience this somnolent Court.

            When Thompson sought to bring all of this defense before Referee Tunis, she, from the bench, called it “propaganda” and branded Thompson a mere troublemaker in
“the culture war.”

            “He who has ears, let him hear.”

I HEREBY CERTIFY that I have provided this to The Florida Bar, 1200 Edgewater Drive, Orlando, Florida,  July 14, 2008. 

A copy is also provided to Al Cardenas so that he might finally feel a sense of shame and come to repentance.

A copy is also provided to Referee Tunis, who, by her rage in her fictional Refereee’s Report, has obviously made the journey from petty petulance to hysteria.                 

                                John B. Thompson, Attorney/Respondent

                                [Removed address, phone number, email]