Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.

Our courts are supposed to be transparent and accessible to the public. Most are not.

For instance, the Federal District Courts use an electronic filing system called PACER. Public Access to Court Electronic Records is not paid for in full by tax dollars and filing fees. Citizens are charged 10 cents per page to view and download documents.

There is a cap of $3.00 per document for most filings. (Transcripts have no cap.) And each person is forgiven their charges if they do not exceed $30 per quarter.

If you are a litigant in a case and use electronic filing, which requires a PACER account, you receive one free access to each document in your case that does not count toward your quarterly charges.

Some courts, including the Federal Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, won’t let non-attorneys who represent themselves file electronically. This seems to be a violation of the right to equal protection. A pro se litigant is required to print four copies of each document she files and drive it to the courthouse or mail it and hope it arrives and is acceptable to the clerk.

Let’s say you file 100 documents, each 25 pages. That is 10,000 pages at 10 cents each to copy, which equals an expense your represented opponent does not have equal to $1,000 for copies. Delivery to the clerk, whether by mail or in person, is approximately $30, so another $3,000.

If the judge lets your opponent designate material as “Confidential”, then you need to file another set of redacted copies.

If you want a file stamped copy for your records, in case something gets changed down the way, which has happened to me, you must include the download in your quarterly charges.

For someone like me who lives on a $639 per month pension, the costs of filing can use up her entire annual income.

The electronic filing manual and Local Rules contradict each other. The former forbids any access to electronic filing by non-attorneys. The later makes it permissible but only by filing a motion and having that motion approved. I filed such a motion and Judge Lee P. Rudofsky denied it. (See the Doc of the Day, at the bottom of this post.)

Judges like Lee P. Rudofsky and Billy Roy Wilson are deceptive or flat out lie about what a pro se litigant wrote in their filings when supporting the Corrupt Judicial Officer’s opinion. The ordinary person can’t afford to pull up all the documents that were the basis for the opinion, at 10 cents per page. So, few will see what was actually written or said in depositions and hearings.

The law libraries in Arkansas do not provide free PACER access to patrons. The libraries are not given free access and cannot absorb the cost.

In the Eastern District of Arkansas, you can pull up the documents for free at the kiosk in the clerk’s office. This means you must do your research during business hours. They do not allow you to load the documents onto a thumb drive or other electronic storage. It costs 10 cents per page to get paper printouts of the documents you might want to quote.

If you happen to have documents with a PACER file stamp, please send them by email to bohemian_books@yahoo.com. They will be featured as “Doc of the Day” for FREE download by the rest of us.

Think about signing up for PACER, which is free, and let me know if you want some ideas on how to spend your $30 worth of free downloads. Your service to our country will be appreciated.

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Pop Quiz: Who said, “let them eat cake”?

A. Judge Lee P. Rudofsky

B. Marie Antoinette

C. Both of the above.

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Docs of the Day: