Reporter demands summary judgment vs. TN Justice Page for false arrest
Supreme court judge illegally keeps a false imprisonment and false arrest hedge around judge conferences, to keep them secret
NASHVILLE, Tenn., Monday, April 24, 2023 — On Nov. 6, 2021, covering the Tennessee judicial conference, I was falsely imprisoned and falsely arrested by Tennessee supreme court chief justice Roger Page and four other parties, including his education manager, John Crawford. I filed suit in November 2022 under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and 1985 for conspiracy and civil rights breach, needing to prove the essential elements of a common law tort, false arrest and false imprisonment.
Messrs. Page and Crawford filed motions to dismiss, as did the others. They cite sovereign immunity from suit they allege is against the state. I filed answers to all parties. Going further, I followed up on relief portions in my complaint for equity: Namely, that the judicial conferences be forced open under the 1st amendment and state law, and that city of Franklin, whose officer William Orange handled my false arrest, be enjoined from running a general warrant arrest racket.
The claims upon Franklin are the most important part of my case. The demand for injunction will reduce arrests in Tennessee anywhere between 10 percent and 40 percent, in my guess. That is because cops routinely violate the constitution and T.C.A. § 40-7-103 and make warrantless arrests, injuring hundreds of people, thousands, over the years. They make arrests on the spot when the law requires they let the misdemeanant depart, go to a magistrate, draft and swear to a written warrant, then find the person, serve the warrant and make the arrest. It could take half a day to make an arrest, vs. 10 minutes.
For now, though, I a demanding a summary judgment. That means, I demand a finding as a matter of law that U.S. district judge Waverly Crenshaw rule I was falsely imprisoned and falsely arrested. No facts are in dispute about the arrest and imprisonment, I claim, and in the interest of judicial economy and relief of all parties avoids a trial as to the facts (juries are generally triers of fact).
If Judge Crenshaw makes summary judgment, he may also in the same action rule on my two injunction demands, each of which raises points unprecedented in Tennessee.
The following is excerpted from my brief in support of motion for summary judgment that I expect the clerk will file into the Case no. 3:22-cv-00911 record Tuesday (April 25).
Facts are settled in Tulis v. Orange
It is undisputed, as a matter of law, and as admitted, the adverse parties in this lawsuit share in the guilt of false imprisonment and false arrest of a protected plaintiff attending a state of Tennessee judicial conference at Embassy Suites Cool Springs hotel owned by Atrium Hospitality LP, with its representative agent, Lisa Hegwood, agreeing with state officials to be the aggrieved party and trespassee as against plaintiff and his protected and protectable interests and enjoyment. Defendant John Crawford is on scene, bringing Mrs. Hegwood into play under her own volition, to obtain her services to be the moving party to speak to the police against press member plaintiff enjoying his right to cover a public meeting on property secured by state of Tennessee. Crawford’s boss, Roger Page, oversees AOC and is the source of the unconstitutional policy of refusing to protect plaintiff in exercise of his constitutionally guaranteed right, interest and enjoyment, to observe the event as a member of the general public, in the public interest. City of Franklin is a tortfeasor as a matter of law. Its ordinance contradicts Tenn. const. Art. 1, sect. 7 and misrepresents T.C.A. § 40-7-103, the warrantless arrest by officer law, to alter “public offense” to “offense,” giving unwarranted and unconstitutional latitude to officers. The constitution requires a warrant for any misdemeanor not a “public offense” in the nature of a breach of the peace. Under the ordinance, the city employs William Orange as police officer who abducts plaintiff on his personal authority under color of law, pursuing plaintiff after the abduction with criminal prosecution requiring two auto trips to Franklin, an extended imprisonment against liberty. Orange puts left and right hands on plaintiff in arrest without probable cause and without having secured a warrant, as law requires for protection of officer and citizen. A Williamson County session court rules that plaintiff’s arrest under T.C.A. § 39-14-405 is without probable cause, meaning plaintiff is correct that he attends the conference by right.
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False imprisonment and false arrest claims are based on two sets of facts. (1) Plaintiff right to be present. (2) Imprisonment and arrest by defendants. Plaintiff press member attends the conference by right, an event under state contract creating a public venue, a public function of publicly paid parties serving in the public interest. He is blocked from entry, and upon entry is seized, detained without warrant or probable cause, and he is prosecuted criminally for the exercise of protected interests and protectable state and federal rights.
Page is in charge of the conference and rules his servants. Crawford is the agent and manager of the event.
The plaintiff maintains and is to enjoy a constitutionally protected right, or interest, that of press and of free speech. The object for the enjoyment of these fundamental rights is a conference, an event under state contract creating a public venue. Says the complaint, “Plaintiff attends the Nov. 6, 2021, judicial conference meeting at the Atrium Hospitality-run hotel in Franklin, and he attends by constitutional right of the press and its appurtentant public uses or purposes. The meeting of government employees, on property under contract with the state for payment, deals with topics that affect the public and taxpayer interest, the convocation among judges who ‘draft suitable legislation and submit its recommendations to the general assembly,’ Tenn. Code Ann. § 17-3-107” (doc. No. 1, ¶ 15, PageID # 5).
Absurdly, the Page-Crawford motion to dismiss says, “Plaintiff does not assert that State Defendants are committing an ongoing violation of federal law. Rather, he limits his allegations to one arrest at a judicial conference” (doc. No. 7-1, p.6, PageID # 38). This statement shows plaintiff has right to default and injunction upon defendant Page; the party does not answer demands for equity relief in the complaint and he doesn’t read it to the end (doc. No. 1, p. 12, PageID # 12).
This lawsuit exposes systemic lawlessness and corruption in Tennessee’s judiciary and constabulary. Corruption is “illegality; a vicious and fraudulent intention to evade the prohibitions of the law; something against or forbidden by law; moral turpitude or exactly opposite of honesty involving intentional disregard of law from improper motives. State v. Barnett, 60 Okl.Cir. 355, 69 P.2d 77, 87. An act done with an intent to give some advantage inconsistent with official duty and the rights of others. Johnson v. U.S. C.C.A.Alaska, 260 F. 783, 786.” Black’s Law Dictionary, rev. 4th ed.
If defendants act in official capacity, they implicate the state itself in wrongdoing on a grand scale — they declare themselves and the judicial branch above the state itself, above the frame of divided government, above the 1st amendment to the U.S. constitution, and above the Tennessee constitution’s guarantees of speech and press. Neither defendant has authority to make law as they have done under color of AOC office, or direct a revolution, a judicial insurgency, against the federal or state rights of the people in Tennessee by fraud, deceit or presumption violative of the U.S. constitution.
Sovereignty is an attribute Page and Crawford claim in their defense of sovereign immunity (doc No. 7-1, pp. 4-6, PageID ## 36-38). Claims about sovereignty motivate plaintiff to cover the Tennessee judicial conference. The educational lecture Nov. 6, 2021, is by a secret professional speaker on the topic of “sovereign citizens.”
This case shows, indeed, Tennesseans have a serious sovereign citizen problem. It festers among people on the state payroll and in high office. Defendant employees of government, these two civil servants, claim to be above the constitution’s 1st amendment, beyond reach of the Tennessee constitution and untouchable by the state open meetings act.
Argument on Page, Crawford liability
Defendant Page’s and defendant Crawford’s false imprisonment and false arrest of a lifelong Tennessee press member are in their personal capacity as men.
Their tort is against clearly established law, outside of any office, against their assigned posts, under coloration and pretense of law.
For the court to believe that they are acting in official capacity is for it to hold they act as the government of Tennessee. Tennessee law and the federal first amendment say such is not the case. In their personal actions defendants besmirch and abuse state of Tennessee or their respective offices by deceit and falsity, 1 as if their acts are comprehended in actual law, in obedience to law, in service to the state pursuant to its just interests, property, constitutional tripartite frame and its equity.
Their false imprisonment and false arrest barricade to block plaintiff and the public and arrest any “non-member” citizen who attends the conference is based on opinion, personal desire, individual understanding, custom of mind, whim or caprice. Page and Crawford are men who step outside the cover, uniform or cloak of their office, the mantle or coverture of their office in which they serve for the public good, and for the benefit of the state itself.
Defendants operate against a status quo in which judicial conferences, like the courts themselves in Tenn. const. Art. 1, sect. 17 (“all courts shall be open”), are accessible to public and press. They are outsiders looking in.
Their adverse possession against the public’s right to attend public conferences cannot withstand plaintiff’s 1st amendment claim. They have no law on their side; defendants’ possession against the public’s equity is premised on presumption. No injury or harm would have come upon plaintiff but for Page’s and Crawford’s acting personally against plaintiff, arbitrarily and capriciously, under coloration of law.2
Plaintiff has right to reach Page and Crawford regardless of their personal or official capacity.
In light of these basic dispositive facts, with no material facts of the conflict needing to be heard and decided by the jury, plaintiff demands summary judgment against defendants Page and Crawford, with a finding of law that the facts show false imprisonment and false arrest, reachable by plaintiff through “deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws” cited in 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and a conspiracy under § 1985.
Tenn. const. Art. 11, sect. 16. “The declaration of rights hereto prefixed is declared to be a part of the Constitution of the state, and shall never be violated on any pretense whatever” (emphasis added).
“The State Defendants are sued only in their official capacities,” their brief states (doc. No. 7-1, p. 1, PageID # 33). “Plaintiff has asserted no claims of individual liability, and no State Defendants have been served in an individual capacity.” Plaintiff is suing men named Roger Page and John Crawford (doc. No. 1, p. 1, PageID # 1), which point is not denied. That the attorney general defends them officially does not reasonably preclude plaintiff from reaching them as men outside lawful office, each having abandoned their office in breach of duty and oath or terms of employment. Plaintiff leaves it to defendants as to their defense strategy, and if they are not reachable as officers, they are reachable by justice and by the court as men, having made no defense thereat.