By Carlos Miller
On the surface, Ignacio Vazquez and I are polar opposites.
He is an ultra conservative. I am a raging liberal. He is rigid, structural and scrupulous. I am spontaneous, impulsive and non-conformist. He is the son of a cop. I am a thorn in the side of cops.
But on closer inspection, you might see some similarities between myself and the Miami-Dade Assistant State Attorney. We are both history buffs. We are both intense researchers. And we are both believers in truth and justice.
Only we have different ways of achieving it.
However, the most glaring similarity between us is also our most polarizing. We are both fierce fighters.
And that fight has now reached its final stage.
Today I filed my reply brief to his answer brief, which he filed in response to my original appeal brief. Now it’s up to a panel of three appellate judges to review the appeal to see if I have grounds for a reversal.
I’ve learned a lot about the law since I was arrested for photographing a group of Miami police officers against their wishes in Feb. 2007.
After spending the last several months preparing my case pro se (lawyerless), I am now considering law school. That’s what spending a multitude of hours in the University of Miami law library researching case law can do to you.
And I guess that’s what having your First Amendment rights trampled on can do to you.
Below are the briefs beginning with my appeal brief and ending with my reply brief with his answer brief in between. If you’re not familiar with legal briefs, the key is to read the “arguments” in each brief beginning with the first one.
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I am a multimedia journalist who has been fighting a lengthy legal battle after having photographed Miami police against their wishes in Feb. 2007. Please help the fight by donating to my Legal Defense Fund in the top left sidebar, which helps pay for the thousands of dollars I’ve acrued in debt since my arrest. To keep updated on the latest articles, join my networks at Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed.
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31 responses so far ↓
1 Ricky Rodriguez // Mar 30, 2009 at 8:43 PM
God Bless you for being on the front lines in this battle to defend our
civil liberties and rights which are everyday being trampled upon by totalitarians in government.
2 Scott Chamness // Mar 30, 2009 at 9:28 PM
Good luck to you Carlos. We are out here rooting for you. You’ve even managed to obtain a small following from some students at my school. You’ll win, no problem.
3 Ms Calabaza // Mar 30, 2009 at 9:39 PM
Ditto that, Carlos. We have our fingers crossed. Stay calm.
4 Carlos Miller // Mar 30, 2009 at 10:27 PM
Thanks everybody,
I am confident about this because the law (at least what is in the books) is on my side.
5 Cigar Mike // Mar 30, 2009 at 10:36 PM
Good Luck Bro.
6 Andrew DeFilippis // Mar 30, 2009 at 11:36 PM
Good luck with the case Carlos, you will need it. These charges against you are bogus and need to be dropped.
7 Enhager // Mar 31, 2009 at 12:08 AM
Impressive arguments. I do worry about technicalities. What about his argument that you didn’t provide the transcripts? They care about the letter of the law, not the intent.
What’s the time line now?
8 Carlos Miller // Mar 31, 2009 at 12:12 AM
Enhager,
I got that technicality covered. Read page 15 of the reply brief.
If anything, the judges will order me to buy the whole damn transcript.
But if I win, the State will reimburse me for all my appellate expenses.
There is no definite timeline. This could take a while.
9 ALL BE DAMNED // Mar 31, 2009 at 12:16 AM
Hey carlos good to see your arguments and HOW THE HELL they found you guilty to begain with with FAKED evidance is realy desturbing …………………….. ( by faked i mean using evidince PRODUCED by you 2MONTHES after you where arested) wonder if those jururs even listend to the court order of TAKE INTO ACCOUNT TIME LINES AND ALL EVIDANCE
ken
Dedicated reader
10 missingxtension // Mar 31, 2009 at 12:32 AM
I wish you all the luck in the world. You will need it.
Its sad that it takes 2 years to undo what took the police officers in question an hour to accomplish.
The only thing they teach in law school is how to manipulate the law. That is my opinion.
11 Enhager // Mar 31, 2009 at 12:32 AM
Nicc esquire. I feel you just slapped me across my neck with the answer. So did your opponent know this incontrovertible answer and was just throwing out the argument hoping you would not contest?
12 Carlos Miller // Mar 31, 2009 at 12:38 AM
Of course he knew. He’s not stupid. It’s in the same passage he tried to use against me.
The one thing I learned in reading case law is that you can find a contradiction for most anything, if you look hard enough.
13 John // Mar 31, 2009 at 12:49 AM
A couple of (unsolicited) thoughts:
1) I expected the first argument to be the strongest – the one that would be the KO punch. Maybe it’s just me but I got a little lost in the circuitousness of the story.
2) The second and third arguments were VERY persuasive.
I’m betting on a reversal based on the second or third argument. Who wants to lay odds?
14 Carlos Miller // Mar 31, 2009 at 12:53 AM
Are you talking about the first argument in the first brief?
I was thinking I could break that down into two arguments but I got pressed for time and I didn’t want to screw things up, so I just let it be.
By that point, I was worn out because I had worked on it for a week straight.
But the judges may break it down into two arguments because they’ve done that in other cases, according to case law I read.
15 Simon Jester // Mar 31, 2009 at 2:11 AM
Remember that these bastards, on some level, fear you. When you beat these bastards on their own battle field, you will stride across the world as a colossus.
16 Nobody // Mar 31, 2009 at 12:39 PM
The two paragraphs above the conclusion of your reply brief are a thing of beauty.
Never doubt that this was worth it.
17 LoTek // Apr 1, 2009 at 4:23 AM
Good luck to you Carlos.
If there’s any true justice left in the system you should win the appeal. Your arguments were cogent and well documented. The State pretty much fired back with ‘hey this guy’s an amateur – don’t listen to him’.
The worst you should face if your case law is solid – which it certainly appears to be – is having to provide full transcriptions before having this overturned.
Best compliment I can pay you is that I hope you follow through on getting a law degree. If I ever end up in a similar situation I’d hire you in second based on the quality of those briefs.
18 voxy // Apr 1, 2009 at 5:42 PM
How they answered ours was brief, meaningless and MUST BE ILLEGAL. Unlike you I finally gave up …. but if I were you I’d face forward and keep AT them as you are.
They said … ‘denied’
gave:
‘no reason’.
So, there was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING other than filing and filing and filing that could be done. They just shuffle the right thieves into place to end your chances.
BUT, I’m making it sound hopeless and if there’s ON THING I AM NOT it is hopeless.
I’ll pray for you.
And I rarely if ever say that.
I take many MANY pictures I have been threatened, had a cop ask to look at my camera … then I picked up a video camera and started recording him. If we don’t stand up ofr our rights NO ONE WILL.
Certainly not the judges and lawyers.
I hear that on the law school.
It’s much easier to file briefs and eat your time when a. you’re being paid for it and b. your judge is paid off.
That’s how it works in tampa. I think you may have different appellate judges.
Good luck, sir.
19 Widgets // Apr 3, 2009 at 1:02 AM
I am absolutely fascinated with your briefs, Carlos. You clearly worked very hard and I have no doubt that you would find a very important niche in the legal community should you proceed with your interest in attending law school.
I wish you the best of luck with your appeal and what I hope will become a successful legal career.
20 please // Apr 4, 2009 at 9:42 PM
please post pdf’s as well as DRM flash embeds. if you want to spread your message wide you should allow people to have it in a open, adaptable format.
21 Carlos Miller // Apr 4, 2009 at 9:49 PM
I told you, the PDFs are there for the downloading.
22 Carlos Miller // Apr 5, 2009 at 2:54 PM
It’s been almost a week since I posted these briefs and I still haven’t heard from “really” and “MillerTime”, both who seemed very eager to read my briefs.
I would love to hear your opinion, guys.
23 MillerTime // Apr 5, 2009 at 7:37 PM
Thanks Carlos!
I was very happy to see you came through and posted the briefs. Will you post the judges’ ruling also?
As a side note I was a bit surprised that the briefs didn’t center an a first amendment issue, but it was still very interesting. Good Luck!
24 Henry Gomez // Apr 25, 2009 at 3:07 AM
Carlos, just read the briefs. Maybe I’m biased but it looks like you dismantled the state’s case and unmasked judge fernandez for the cocksucker that he is. Remember I was there when that fuckhead said that shit about your mom, your aunt and I. He should be so lucky to have a cheering section of people that care about him if he ever runs afoul of Miami’s “finest”. Jackass.
Please send me an email as soon as you hear anything.
25 Voice of Reason // Apr 26, 2009 at 2:55 AM
Note to Carlos Miller: Would it be possible for you to add copies of the briefs to your own site? If they’re available in PDF form, this should be a trivial step. For technical reasons, I won’t be able to download the files in question from Scribd at this time.
26 Carlos Miller // Apr 29, 2009 at 4:03 AM
VoR,
Are you not able to see the PDF link in the Scribd?
I did it this way to make it convenient for everybody to download. What technical problems are you having?
27 Voice of Reason // Apr 29, 2009 at 5:27 AM
Note to Carlos Miller: You said, “Are you not able to see the PDF link in the Scribd? I did it this way to make it convenient for everybody to download. What technical problems are you having?”
Thanks for asking. It’s not your responsibility to address issues of this type. Therefore, you needn’t feel obligated to respond further. However, since you may be curious, I’ll answer the questions.
In theory, Scribd is convenient. In practice, Scribd may be inconvenient for some users. There’s two problems. 1. Scribd asked me to register. 2. Scribd seems to require Flash, Javascript, or both. I tend to avoid sites that require registration, Flash, or Javascript. This isn’t an absolute rule, but I’m rarely interested enough to deal with sites of this type.
That’s it, but I’d like to offer you a suggestion and some related remarks.
To begin with, let’s refer to sites that don’t require registration and that make only limited use of Flash or Javascript as “open” sites. Sites that require registration or that make heavy use of Flash or Javascript are “closed” sites. It’s my feeling that “open” sites are likely to win out over comparable “closed” sites in the long run. They have a competitive advantage.
Here’s the suggestion: If you’d like to host your documents on a “closed” site, that’s your privilege, but if you don’t want to host them locally, consider uploading them to “open” sites such as the Internet Archive, Creative Commons sites, or Wikimedia Foundation sites. The reasons to do so are as follows: 1. People will find it easier to download the documents from “open” sites. 2. Files stored at “closed” sites are likely to disappear from human memory. Files hosted at “open” sites are likely to last for decades or possibly centuries.
Here’s some related notes:
I consider Flash and Javascript to be problematic technologies. It has nothing to do with being “left behind” as the other person said a while back. I thought I’d assure you that I do have some familiarity with Flash and Javascript at the language design and implementation levels, at the application programming and debugging levels, and at the browser configuration and debugging levels.
I’m asking about the documents in question because I have some experience in this area. Somebody that I knew once overheard an attorney discussing a summary that I’d prepared. The attorney was talking to a potential defendant in a criminal case. He advised the person in question that my summary was complete enough that it might cause problems for them. BTW This wasn’t eavesdropping, they were talking in the open. Some time before that, I handled some of the paperwork involved in a civil case. Actually, I did most of the work. My impression is that I may have handled that case adequately as well.
28 Carlos Miller // Apr 30, 2009 at 3:58 PM
VoR,
If you send me your email address, I would be happy to send the documents to you.
Otherwise, it’s just too much of a pain in the ass to upload when they are already uploaded.
If people really want to download the documents because they are unable to read them on this site, then they should go through the trouble of registering for that site. It’s free, after all.
At this point, it really doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks as long as the panel of three judges side with me.
29 Voice of Reason // Apr 30, 2009 at 4:30 PM
Note to Carlos Miller: Thanks for your response. Most of the points that you’ve made are valid. There’s no need to discuss the matter further. However, I’ll offer some related remarks, in case you’re interested.
You did overlook the Flash-Javascript problem. Registration isn’t the only issue. Some people aren’t going to be able to see the links to your documents. The links simply won’t appear. It’s best to minimize your exposure to browser-specific issues. I assume that you agree. If I remember correctly, you’ve encountered browser-specific issues before. Do the words Internet Explorer 6 ring a bell?
WRT E-mail, I had a personal E-mail address on the pre-Internet in the 1970s, but I haven’t had an address of that type since then. I’ve thought about setting one up, and I may do so at some point.
If you’re in a position in the future where you need to think about the distribution of documents again, I stand by the opinions that I expressed in post 27 on this thread. For various reasons, it’s better to use “open” sites than “closed” sites. However, you’re right about the fact that it’ll make little difference in the current case.
30 Paul // May 22, 2009 at 6:45 PM
I can sympathize with you, me and 2 others were wrongfully arrested because we didn’t answer the plaintiffs discovery notice to Federal Judge Jane Boyle’s and plaintiffs attorney Ed Walton’s satisfaction. Which is not an arrestable offence but yet we were arrested, my 2 co-defendants spent over 30 days behind bars for this. Hows that for JUSTICE???
31 Frank Palmer // Jun 14, 2009 at 5:10 PM
Hey Carlos,
Whats the latest news on your case?
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