INTERROGATORY 1: Describe in detail the circumstances that led you to send the February 25, 2024, email, including what prompted you to write it and when you began drafting it.

RESPONSE:

I assume I began drafting it 2 or 3 hours before it was sent.

I moved to Indianapolis in 1994. I got a job and bought a house. I cut my grass by hand once a year and was not hassled by Health and Hospital (H H) under the Goldsmith administration. Circa 1998 my father died, triggering an inheritance under my grandfather's will or trust. The movie Dark Waters is about occupational cancer at my father's employers.

I put about 10% of that into buying four acres of vacant lots at the county surplus sale. It is a lifelong ambition of mine to do a bit of organic farming. I also wanted to make the properties available for community gardens and pocket parks.

At the sale the county transferred the properties via quit claim deed. But in what might have been bad faith or just lack of communication, the county, via its alter ego HH did not quit it claims, but imposed a regulatory burden far in excess of the fair market value of the property (as determined by the sale.) That amounted to a taking under state constitution and the 5th amendment. They wanted the properties mowed on a weekly basis. That is, their regulations prohibited any plant taller than 12 inches, whether tomatoes, marigolds, day lillies, hay, etc. Further, any time any trash or debris was illegally dumped on my land, instead of helping find the perpetrator, they would blame me. The compliance costs, if I had somehow been able to keep the land, would have been 2 million. The current market value of the land is 1 million.

They started sending threatening letters. I had some correspondence with an inspector Kennedy. But more threatening letters kept arriving. I started avoiding these letters, concerned about my mental health. The letters seemed to me an injustice, but not one I was able to fix.

When the pile was 50 letters high, I decided that I was being irresponsible and should open and read them so I did. The pressure of 50 separate threats that I would be sued for trying to grow some vegetables triggered a nervous breakdown. The letters were not the only factor, but were a major factor. For about a month I was not myself. I was diagnosed with major depression by the Marion County Health and Hospital corporation. One branch was treating me for injuries caused by another branch. During this period, I was unable to manage my finances and lost the 80,000 I had inherited when the Converse company went bankrupt. For the next 20 years I lived in poverty. Mostly I supported myself by doing medical studies.

The commission seems concerned that in my letter I was threatening violence. Let me point out that this has been going on for over 20 years, and I haven't gotten violent about it yet. Things got tense a few years ago when an inspector broke into my house without a warrant, and after that they sent and armed officer with her. This is another incident of what I consider to be unclean hands and fruit of the poisonous tree, barring the relief she sought.

I spent the next several years, 2001-2005 being dragged into court about being unable to mow my farm weekly. Weed liens were assessed, and the county took back its properties, and sold them to the next round of suckers. After being sued 50 times, I noticed a few recurring patterns. The right to a trial by jury {mention that case name about the cash) was not being observed. Of course there is is no federal jury right here, but sections 19 and 20 of the state constitution are best read as providing for a jury trial as to at least some aspects of these cases.

I suspect that is the law. I have not had the resources to take that point to the court of appeals. Personally, I would go further, I think there is an ethical duty for the state, if they are going to bring a case against somebody, to inform them of their right to invoke trial by jury, and their right to an administrative hearing. I am not claiming that as a matter of law. I filed a continuing notice that I did not waive my right to an administrative hearing. It is and has been my contention that this notice is legally sufficient and does not need to be refiled 58 times. Because of the notice, I have a sincere belief the court lacked jurisdiction, due to the failure to exhaust administrative remedies, and therefore that the current clean and lien order is unlawful, if not unlawful for other reasons as well.

Jurisdiction is not just a legal matter. I suspect that by deliberately proceeding in the case after learning the facts that establish the lack of jurisdiction, Ms. Gupta acted unethically. My letter was an attempt to deter her from doing so. 1 - 2 pm friday afternoon 2/13.

In 2001 I noticed I wasn't happy with the way the medication I was being given affected my reaction to the events of 9/11. Since then I have dealt with my tendency to experience major depressive episodes when exposed to intolerable levels of stress, by carefully adopting a low stress lifestyle. I don't set an alarm. I don't have a job, unless I happen to find one I like. I had been working two days a week washing dishes at woodstock county club because it is good physical therapy for my bad back. In 2015 I was in a car wreck and am partially disabled. Currently I spend about 20 hours a day in bed. I can do physical work for about 20 minutes a day. I experience chronic back pain, which can make me cranky. When I wrote to her suggesting she "leave me the fuck alone", I was sincere. I could see a possible mutual assured destruction where her recklessness would result in us both being harmed. It was a concise emphatic method of suggesting she refrain from a half dozen ethical errors. I was frustrated with a suspicion that she would ignore me and charge on recklessly, as she did. It is not a term I use lightly or casually.

I had a second episode of major depression in 2005. Circa 2011 I was able to buy a property at 4015 E Washington St. I paid $7500 for a vacant shack. It was zoned c-5, so it was a suitable place for my recycling company. It serves as my law office, church, and sometimes residence.

The next year I got a tax bill for $13,000. That upset me deeply. It had taken me three years to save up the 7500 to buy the house and now it seemed I would lose it. I did not have 13,000 to pay it with. The house went to auction. No one bid. I was billed about $400 for the auction expenses, which I am still owed. HH had sued the bank, the former owners, but had not named me, so I was able to get the $13,000 taken off the tax bill. That was an example of another way in which HH fails to uphold due course of law. They only notify the legal owner of record, but do not notify people with an equitable interest, such as a tenant in possession, or a bank with a mortgage.

They had not given notice to me so I did not owe the 13,000, but later they did not give notice to justin michelle dusty or dawn when they came to physically invade my property. That might or might not have been tortious or unethical. What I am trying to do here is spot the issues, rather than reach an ultimate conclusion.

A next reason that I was denied due course of law is that HH is actually the state, the government, is engaged in a quasi-criminal proceeding in which a preponderence of evidence standard has no place. I have a right to a day in court, a fair and impartial hearing. When the wrong standard is knowingly used, this makes it no longer due course of law, but a show trial, a Potempkin trial. I lost on this point at trial but preserved it for appeal and assert it now, not as a matter of law, but as an ethical issue. I contend that it is unethical for Gupta and HH to use any standard less than clear and convincing.

including what prompted you to write it

At the time of the February letter, I was concerned that HH employees would try to enter my property without a warrant, or with a defective warrant. it has happened before. From HH's perspective, they have the right to wander around snooping at my property, unless i provide a written notice to refrain from trespassing. the letter was my written notice. so when chip jefferson invaded my property to conduct an ex parte negotiation with me, he was trespassing.

While Gupta herself did not come onto my property, she my have failed to inform Jefferson and others not to do so. I am unclear what the right terminology here is perhaps joint tortfeasor, coconspirator, accessory. I did not trust my lawyer, Adam, to send a No Trespassing notice in time, and indeed he did not.

So what prompted me to write it was the need to send a no trespassing notice. Unfortunately I made the mistake of sending an early draft while in an emotional state.

I am normally pretty stoic about what I consider a lifetime of unethical abuse by HH. But in this case some of my actual feelings spilled out.

INTERROGATORY 2: Identify all persons who were aware you intended to send the email before it was transmitted.

INTERROGATORY 2: Identify all persons who were aware you intended to send the email before it was transmitted.

No one. It was sent impulsively. Several days later I sent a copy to Adam, saying something like I think I've made a mistake. He wrote "This is concerning." I wrote "I agree." We had several meetings about it, and discussed drafts of letters to Ms. Gupta. I am under the impression he did send a letter. When we arrived at court and were ambushed by bailiffs with guns, he was understandably upset and withdrew from the case shortly thereafter. Of course I have no complaint against him. This put me back in the position of being without counsel. The court denied my motion to appoint counsel.

I am constrained from being able to represent myself when my letters are misperceived as true threats. After the disciplinary complaint was filed and my counsel withdrew I took no further action to represent myself, out of caution, except when ordered to appear at trial. At trial, I won 1 of the 2 trials, but lost the other trial when some of my dispositive motions were denied on the basis of having not been submitted earlier, such as at the pretrial conference that was never held.

Explain what you intended to convey by the statement “You may choose to consider me armed and dangerous.”

The subject is "you". The verb is "choose". It is a statement about her mental state, and what her assumptions are. It is emphatically not a claim that I am armed and dangerous.

I am armed by the Indiana constitution with a right to trial by jury that I suspected she was going to try to interfere with.

I am armed by the Indiana constitution with a right to free and open elections, which is violated when the white republican counties get to elect their judges, but Marion County (and Lake and Portage) are not.

I am armed by the Indiana constitution, section 12, with a right to due course of law, which is violated when plaintiff tries to use a preponderence of the evidence standard instead of the proper clear and convincing evidence standard.

I am armed by section 11, which protects houses persons papers and effects against unwarranted entry and unreasonable seizures. I reasonably suspected she was conspiring to unreasonably seize my land, which is what indeed happened. She seized my 4 volcano ovens, with a replacement price of $120,000. She seized my forsythia bushes. My late mother and I used to enjoy the coming of spring in March with the yellow flowers of the forsythia. I spent $500 at the auction where I bought them. She calls them weeds.

She seized Dusty's mechanics tools and his jounals and notebooks, without notice to him. She seized my trailers, including the one where Michelle worked out of with electricity. She is literally a homewrecker.

I am armed with the 5th Amendment, and the state constitution, which require compensation when private property is taken by government.

I am armed with the rules of civil procedure, which allow me to file counterclaims against Health and Hospital, and crossclaims against her personally.

Previously she was a prosecutor, and enjoyed prosecutorial immunity. Now, as a wolf dressed in sheeps' clothing, she is using the civil format, and is no longer personally immune. So for example when she conspired with Jefferson in his trespass, she can be sued.

I was armed with the mysterious disappearance of the crossclaims and counterclaims I had filed. If I had said in my letter This wold comes as a wolf, would that have been taken as a true threat, or as a Scalia quote?

I was armed with Stewart v Taylor, knowing the county now had the same liability as it has when I sued them and won. At the time of the letter, I knew that if Ms. Gupta would not back down, I could outflank her by suing the county clerk to try win more money than the $10,000 in liens I have paid so far. Stewart v Taylor settled for $7,000, based on a misunderstanding of whether the county would respect the ruling and end its unconstitutional censorship. It hasn't. A similar but more recent suit, Mulholland, settled for $70,000.

The current county clerk is not a lawyer, and does not have the same set of ethical responsibilities Gupta has. But the clerk is advised by a lawyer, who is acting unethically since Stewart v Taylor clearly establishes the rights at stake.

I am armed with the concept of double jeopardy, since a different city agency had already resolved a case with overlapping issues. Marion County does not get a second bite at the apple by pretending to be a separate party.

I am armed and dangerous in that my sometimes roommate Brian is a youtuber, with a total hit rate above 2 million views. If Gupta were to persist in what I regarded as her unethical unconscionable activities, she might attract unwanted attention and scrutiny. United Breaks Guitars is a book on this topic.

The pen is mighter than the sword. When I talked in the letter about character assassination, I referred to unfavorable publicity. I was not talking about coming after her with a bazooka or drone.

I am armed with an 800 year tradition of common law protection of private property. So when Jefferson, personifying HH came onto my property without a warrant

to have an ex parte negotiation of the case, after I had written to counsel giving them notice to not trespass, this was tortious and unethical. The ex parte discussion is a separate way in which Ms. Gupta violated due course of law and the Indiana ethics rules.

My lettter which began 'a man's home is his castle' properly invoked this legacy.

I am armed with an understanding that when a witness falsely testifies under oath (here, the false claim that the trailer didn't have electricity) it would be unethical to call that same witness again in a later phase of the case.

I am armed with section 1 of the Indiana Bill of Rights, which borrows the idea from the declaration that the only legitimate function of government is to protect rights, rather than autocratically to micromanange private property decisions. It would be a danger to their scheme if they had to identify actual victims in their cases.

While the letter was little more than idle boasting, and I am not as much of a danger as I want to be, the danger is that I will upset her scheme.

I am armed with the understanding that as the prevailing party of the 12/12 hearing I can move for costs. I think it comes to $63 so far.

Here's what I think is the scheme over at HH. They go around looking for trouble, looking for easy victims. People who are poor or disabled physically or mentally or lack formal english skills. Sometimes the elderly or infirm or underage or out of town. Anything that gives them a tactical advantage - someone who is less likely to fight back. This pool of victims is then added to by an anonymous swat line, where people can call in complaints if their neighbors are the wrong color or culture, or if there is a landlord tenant dispute, or an infinite number of improper purposes.

Here, for example. the henchman of the guy who bought the house next to mine and trying to force me to sell, calls in complaints in a scheme to force me to sell out to him, which is working, but strikes me as improper. It became more improper when he, the caretaker, said he would shoot me in the head the next time something happened. See, it seems likely he instigated the whole HH fiasco, but the quality of life in this microneighborhood has gone way down as result of Gupta's war on me. We have way more vandalism, petty theft, trespassing, and so forth. I'll mention as well that he had made no effort to communicate his concerns to me, but instead uses HH to stir things up, and that HH never communicated his concerns to me, so I learned about them a year later while doing some research for the case. There is something about this arrangement I find concerning. It enables collusive bad faith lawsuits.

=

Explain what you intended to convey by the phrase “Fail to heed this suggestion at your own peril.” I used the term peril in the sense it is used in this passage from rule 22: I will maintain the confidence and preserve inviolate the secrets of my client at every peril to myself; 

So first, this is purple prose, terrible writing, embarrassing to me as a writer, but one thing it is not is a true threat. 

 I was outraged by her conduct, anxious and panicking about her threats against me. I felt she could be placing her job in peril - one countermeasure I have not yet been able to implement is a planned letter writing campaign to "fire gupta." The secretary I had hired to oversee this project, Michelle, turned out to be an embezzler and liar, so the letters never got written. But that was the plan. But more than that, I felt she was placing her reputation as a professional on the line. Suing another lawyer without talking to them first about it was uncivil and got my dander up. Planning to proceed in the absence of juridiction was unlawful. Planning to procede under a a defective inadequate standard of review was unethical.  Squashing jury rights, if that's what happened, would be serious misconduct, as was   enabling Jefferson's ex parte contact as well as his trespassing.

Conspiring with my neighbor at 4001 EW Washington to force me out of my home with threats of gunplay  is pretty seriously unethical.

As outlined above, I have been watching HH lawyers for over 20 years. Certain patterns of misconduct reoccur. The events alleged in Talevski, and the events alleged in the newspaper expose during the pandemic bout corruption at SCA, suggest that the ethical problems in the legal staff of the marion county health and hospital corporation go far beyond the issues raised in my own case. The danger is that maybe the disciplinary commission, or state authorities, or federal authorities,  will notice there are patterns of misconduct and make changes which will frustrate HH's goals of running roughshod over private property. So that's the danger and the peril; that the jig could be up. The odds of my winning a major re-alignment were small but nonzero. The balance of risk versus benefit counseled strongly in favor of leaving me alone as I had asked. 

A reasonable response would have been to dismiss without prejudice, schedule an administrative hearing, and find an inspector who would actually talk to me instead of either stalking me, committing crimes against me, and threatening me.  The second inspector, minutes before perjuring herself under oath, said to me, "You can't come after me. I'm a professional." I disagree. Exactly because Gupta is a professional, and has a professional responsibility to train and supervise her minion, I can come after her, not with artillery, but by finding a way to bring this matter to the attention of the disciplinary commission or her supervisors  and use publicity and ethics against her.  I would like to get the inspector fired for her misconduct. I would like to get Ms. Gupta censured for participating in that misconduct. I would settle for getting Gupta fired. Then the inspector can tell me again how I can't come after her. But I have to do this in a way that doesn't get me labeled as a narc or snitch, since that would be likely to get me killed. The people who rob me on a rtegular basis here have a very low opinion of informers and tend to respond violently. So the letter was an attempt to thread that needle. 

5

Describe whether you considered how the recipient might interpret the tone and content of your email before sending it.

No. The letter, the early draft of it, was sent rashly and impulsively, motivated by emotion, anxiety, fear.

INTERROGATORY 6: State whether you believe the email was consistent with professional conduct expected of a licensed attorney and explain your answer. 

Nope. It's a problematic letter. While it is not the Declaration of War you folks seems to want to read it as, it was unduly rude, and subject to being misconstrued, as it has been.

On another hand, it's not like I was an ambulance chaser seeking to intrude in someone else's affair. Ms. Gupta was on a direct collision course with me. Her bulldozers were already fired up and pointed in my direction. She was planning the rape of my law office, business, church and home. Rape here in the sense of a physical invasion of land, not canola oil. It would be reasonable to expect me to respond.

As I have stated, one main reason I have been refraining from the practice of law is that I have a serious writer's block, and have trouble meeting deadlines. My duty of competence requires me to refrain from taking on a case when I might not be up to it. But here, I did not take on the case, it was thrust upon me. Time was of the essence.

In a criminal case, defendant's counsel has extra leeway to make any arguments that might help the client; they have a duty to zealously advocate. Similarly, as the pro se defendant in this quasi-criminal matter, given the degree of provocation, I should be allowed some leeway to respond.

I am aware that the letter lacked context. When I sent it, I sent it from the perspective of someone steeped in satyagraha and ahisma. My legal mentors are Gandhi and Thurgood Marshall. I've been practicing nonviolence since 1970. Like my late father, I'm a registered conscientious objector. I attended Naropa University and worked for the family of the Dalai Lama. I'm a cripple, an old man with a bad back. I'm snarky and speak with nuance and innuendo.

None of that comes across by email. Normally I would have taken this first draft and used it as source material for a more polite second draft followed by a proofread considered third draft. I mistakenly thought I was running out of time. So I would say that this letter is not representative of my work, but is an example of how I struggle with deadlines, which is why I generally refrain from practicing law, at least as a solo, recognizing that I have challenges as to competence. So it was very important to me that I had met Mr. Dulik, and was somewhat satisfied with his competence,a nd we were planning to do a series of political speech cases together - I just needed some help resolving this environmental court case before we could get started. So when we were met with gunplay, it did not just deprive me of a lawyer in this case, but for the whole series of cases which are in my wheelhouse, where my specialized subject matter knowledge helps overcome my weaknesses as to procedure.

Currently we are in another round of elections in which 3-9-3-2.5 continues to distort the political marketplace, preventing free and equal elections in Indiana. If Ms Gupta had respected the confidentiality of the letter, it is likely 2.5 would be enjoined by now.

(check bjdee for if he posted the voter id video)

 Identify any legal authority, ethical rule, or professional standard you relied upon in deciding to send the email.

Legal Authorities: for the proposition that a man's home is his castle I cite common law and case law.

For the proposition that a case requires jurisdiction I refer you to first semester of civil procedure. world wide volkswagon, international shoe that sort of thing. the international shoe building is now the city museum, a must see if you ever get to st louis.

For the proposition that jurisdiction requires exhaustion of remedies, look it up. For the proposition that the right to an administrative hearing requires a written non-waiver, see HH's own rules. The dispute is whether the written notice of non waiver needs to be filed just at least once, or whether it needed to be filed 58 times. My source on that is just common sense and common law.

And I guess another part of that dispute is whether the lack of jurisdiction can be raised at any time, or whether I waived it by not raising it at the pretrial conference that never happened.