Stink Eye: Should Judge Weaver be allowed to dictate a litigant to keep a good pokerface?

“Lucky” was playing in a poker game with me last night; a 1/2 NLH at the Hard Rock in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Lucky is a tough looking young man, about the same age as my son. He is Hispanic, wears a full beard, dark shades and muff style headphones. He has a take no prisoners style of play.

I was dealt an AQ off-suit, which I consider to be a good playable hand. If I was leading off with the betting, I’d probably raise from the minimum $2 bet to $6. But Lucky got to bet before me. With a dramatic display of calculation, picking out a few chips, then pausing and adding a few more from a different color stack, he announced his bet as $23 dollars and strew the chips across the table with aplomb.

Any bet over $20 pre-flop at this table meant a premium hand (or a bluff). He probably had an AK, KK, or AA and dominated me. So, after glaring at him, I folded.

Lucky took off his headphones and addressed me personally for the first time since I joined the game. Really he was talking about me in the third person to the whole group, but he intended to engage me. I don’t remember his exact words. It was something to the effect of look at the way she stared at me. She was harsh.

The hand played out and Lucky took down a sizable pot when the last remaining caller folded after the river. Lucky showed us his pocket jacks. JJ against AQ is actually a coin toss. There was an Ace on the turn, so if I had not folded, I would have won the hand.

I acted contrary to my own rules and told the players what I folded. We had a good laugh together and I told the men about a comment that Judge Susan Weaver made to me. It was during the hearing where she trampled all over my rights to due process and announced her intention to give my personal property and real estate held in trust to a man who put his intention to defraud me of $75,000 in writing.

Judge Weaver said to stop giving her “stink eye”. At the time she said that, I had a credible fear that the judge also intended to find me in contempt of court and incarcerate me. Her stink eye comment sounded like a set-up to find me in direct contempt.

Judges have gotten away with throwing people in jail for less. They should not. They should not be allowed to tyrannize litigants who are merely expressing disapproval of the judges’ errant denial of civil rights through a non-disruptive facial expression.

It is not as if I called Judge Weaver a bitch. Opposing counsel William White called me “bitch” loudly in court that day and Judge Weaver pretended not to hear it. Judge Weaver’s longtime colleague Court Reporter Jana Perry pretended not to hear it either, when she fabricated what was said in the fictionalized transcript she created.

My look of righteous anger, though, that Judge Weaver found worth noting for the record.

Lucky made me realize just how evil Susan Kaye Weaver was to demand that I hide my dismay with her Draconian commands. Lucky noticed the intense look I gave him, also. And we were playing poker. The whole idea behind poker is to mask your emotions, because showing your emotions conveys information that can help your opponent make educated decisions on future hands. You’re not playing a hand, you’re playing a game.

When the unethical jurist abused her power by forbidding me from defending my own property rights, I was justifiably angry. There is nothing disruptive about me looking at the judge with an angry look on my face. Had she not commented, there would be no record of my disapproval until I filed my appeal.

Judge Susan Weaver wants to bully and bluff and for me to maintain my best poker face. I complied that day in court, for fear of having my 60-year-old body thrown in jail. If I had the energy, I would have protected my Constitutional right to a fair trial from being treated as a game. (Hopefully the Court of Appeals addresses the issue when ruling on my unopposed appellate brief.)