When Goodman filed his lawsuit, he attached a memorandum of law in which he argued, through the application of relevant and controlling precedents from the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals of Virginia, respectively; (1) he stated a claim; and (2) he was entitled, as a matter of law, to an injunction enjoining the operation and enforcement of the Parole Board’s crime-related (parole decision factors) rules.
The judge entered a one-sentence “letter opinion” dismissing Goodman’s lawsuit for failure to state a claim. The Judge did not acknowledge or address Goodman’s legal arguments, nor did he apply, cite or discuss any precedents from the Supreme Court of Virginia, or any other state or federal court, in his letter opinion or subsequent order for dismissal.
Similarly, the Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed the dismissal of Goodman’s lawsuit and denied his motion to vacate the void judgment, in one sentence orders. Like the Judge, the Supreme Court did not acknowledge Goodman’s legal arguments, nor did they apply, cite, or discuss any precedents from their court or any other court.
The state and federal due process of law clauses, by their very terms, mandates that courts shall decide cases according to law. In addition, several provisions in the Canons of Judicial Conduct in the Commonwealth of Virginia require Judges to: “comply with the law” (Canon 2(A)), “be faithful to the law” (Canon 3(B)(2)), and “accord to every person who has a legal interest in a proceeding, or that persons lawyer the right to be heard according to law” Canon 3(B)(7)).
It is beyond any doubt, based upon the orders and opinions of the Judge and Justices in court records, and the .pleadings and papers Goodman filed in both courts, that: (1) Goodman raised significant legal arguments, supported by precedents by the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals of Virginia, challenging the constitutionality of specific Parole Board rules; and (2) the Judge and Justices abandoned their constitutional and professional duty to decide Goodman’s case according to law, and substituted their whim and will in its place.
In his article, Judicial Independence in the United States” 40 St. Louis L. J. 989, (former) Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer discussed this issue in his very first sentence:
The question of judicial independence revolves around the theme of how to assure that judges decide according to the law, rather than according to their own whims or to the will of the political branches of government.
In his closing, Justice Breyer reiterated the importance of Judges deciding cases according to the law in more stark terms:
Justice and stability of a country is only attainable, however, if judges actually decide according to law, and are perceived by everyone around them to be deciding according to law, rather than according to their own whim or in compliance with the will of powerful political actors.
There have been many other articles written that addressed the professional duty of judges to decide according to law. In the article, “Judicial Independence: Is it Impaired or Bolstered by Judicial Accountability?, 84 St. John’s L, Rev. 1, 14-5, the author explained how a judge can be “independent and honorable” or “independent and accountable:”
To do so, a judge “shall,” among other things , respect and comply with the law, “be faithful to the law and maintain professional competence in it, ” perform judicial duties without bias or prejudice against or in favor of any person, and “accord to every person who has a legal interest in the proceeding, or that person’s lawyer, the right to be heard according to law, These standards envisage a jurist as the guardian of the public’s legal rights and presume that judges will remain tethered to legal principles when exercising decisional independence.
When this manifest abuse of judicial power is put in the proper context, it becomes clear that this is the judicial equivalent of George Floyd’s murder–the Judge and Justices snuffed out Goodman’s constitutional rights–and the orders and opinions they rendered are equivalent to the videos of George Floyd’s murder. Moreover, their motive is truly frightening: to further and cover up the mass arbitrary detention of parole-eligible prisoners, without lawful authority, by the Parole Board.
Obviously, these courts used a constitutional ‘interest balancing” test that was created by conservative Justices in the Supreme Court. They concluded that the costs to society outweighed the benefits of upholding Goodman’s constitutional rights. These “costs” would have included: declaring that the investigation, consideration, and use of Goodman’s crime, sentence, and criminal record are beyond the scope of the statutory parole review process; this would have resulted in the mass release of over 1,000 parole-eligible prisoners; and Virginia would have to pay enormous monetary damages, likely over one billion dollars, for each year parole-eligible prisoner was unlawfully denied parole going back to January 1, 1998, when the Parole Board adopted their unconstitutional rules.
