After The Dread Pro-Se Kimberlin rested his case during the Kimberlin v. Walker, et al. trial, we defendants moved for a directed verdict in our favor because he had not presented evidence establishing the element of defamation or false light. Here is a small part of Judge Johnson’s extended colloquy with TDPK on whether he had shown that what we said and wrote about him was false.
THE COURT: I’m not asking you to prove anything. I’m asking you who in this courtroom yesterday or today said that those statements were false?
MR. KIMBERLIN: Your honor, in a defamation case —
THE COURT: You hate answering questions —
MR. KIMBERLIN: No, no, I’m just trying to —
THE COURT: Who said it was false?
MR. KIMBERLIN: Who said it was false? They —
THE COURT: Did you want to read this? I mean —
MR. KIMBERLIN: I know what it says —
THE COURT: I didn’t make this up. This is Maryland law.
MR. KIMBERLIN: I think that the jury has to make that call, whether it’s false. And whether —
THE COURT: But there has to be some evidence. They just can’t pull things out of the air. A jury, they just can’t go back there and decide what they want to decide. I have to give them instructions on the law. And the instructions on defamation — Maryland pattern jury instruction 12.1 “a defamatory statement is a false statement about another person that exposes that person to public scorn, hatred” — so nobody in here, in this case said that they hated you, you haven’t put any evidence up that they hated you — “contempt or ridicule” — there’s no evidence of that — “thereby discouraging others in the community from having a good opinion of or from associating or dealing with the person. Defamation may result from a statement communicated to a third person either orally or in writing.” And here you have — I’ll call them, well, bloggers, I guess they’re reporters — reporting stories and bantering back and forth regarding stories that, I think it originated, the whole thing started back in Indiana many, many, many years ago. And so what is the jury going to — how are they going to consider whether there was public scorn?
MR. KIMBERLIN: Your honor —
THE COURT: This’ll go lot faster if you try to answer my question. If you don’t have an answer, say you don’t have an answer.
MR. KIMBERLIN: Being called a pedophile is automatically public scorn, I mean —
THE COURT: Look, I’m getting — you’ve said that, I understand it. But I’m focusing on the Maryland law that I have to tell the jury. Now what I’m asking you — let’s take it one by one. The statement has to — you have get to to contempt. Any evidence of that?
MR. KIMBERLIN: Well, I put my daughter on the stand and she testified that we had suffered —
THE COURT: That she had suffered?
MR. KIMBERLIN: No, that our family had suffered. That I had suffered.
THE COURT: Look, you’re the only party in this case.
Narratives are not false just because TDPK doesn’t like them. There were very few possible witnesses that Kimberlin could have produced who could have testified of their firsthand knowledge that he had not engaged in any of the behavior that led folks to be suspicious of him. There were the women who were the girls he was allegedly involved with in Indiana (as reported by Mark Singer). There was his estranged wife who did not come to court to support him. There was the possibility of his own testimony, given that the judge seemed willing to bend the Maryland Rule on perjurers and let him testify. No one else would have been a competent witness.
I suspect that TDPK stayed off the stand because he was afraid of cross examination and being caught in perjury.
Judge Johnson ruled in our favor. TDPK is making noises about an appeal and a second federal lawsuit. It seems that he’s beginning to understand that the Kimberlin v. The Universe, et al. RICO Madness is doomed. It will be interesting to see what federal issue he might use in a second federal suit.
I’m sure Acme is working overtime.
To be fair, his wife was home packing for their creepified Duck Dynasty Hawaii vacation.
If she was smart, she would have left before he returned from court.
So he said. And Brett Kimberlin is nothing if not truthful, amirite?
At home? Perhaps. His home? I think not.
You mean his mom’s.
Brett Kimberlin’s lifelong crime spree inspired me to learn about the justice system. I’m still no expert, but I think odds of being charged for perjury are typically low. Brett Kimberlin’s single perjury conviction was an anomaly and he’s committed many other material perjuries since then without consequences.
I’m undecided whether Brett was deterred last month by concerns of more perjury. It would be good if it were true, but it would almost be a first for him.
The legal system will continue to be a tool for victimizers unless it better punishes serial, habitual liars. The penalty for Brett’s first perjury at age 18 was about right, but the justice system ought to severely escalate penalties for each later perjury. Courts could also catch more victimizers in their nets if they would start penalizing harder for lies to the court that do not equal perjury, since serial vexatious litigants like Brett Kimberlin lie to courts prolifically. The justice system has systematic blind spots and a few exceptional people are having a heyday with them.
As a short term fix, all us onlookers ought to rush to assist the victims to defray their high costs of opposing such injustices. Kimberlin’s victims requested, and deserve, all of our support. In the early 1800s, Barbary pirates were defeated only after the attitude was taken, “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.” We should likewise refuse to bargain with evil. Brett’s victims may not have the millions to spend, but all onlookers should rush to their aid to stop his barbaric piracy for good, even at high expense.
Put that man’s beer on my tab. tip jar bell rung
That sounds like one good way to handle it.
Reblogged this on That Mr. G Guy's Blog.
If he had any knowledge about the legal system, he would have known ahead of time that he actually had to introduce evidence as to the falsity of the allegations. That wouldn’t have been particularly hard, especially where the evidence is reputational. Just call someone to the stand, ask if you’re a pedophile or ever been charged with pedophilia, etc, and then you get over the DV hurdle.
But he didn’t do that. Possibly because once he introduced evidence of his reputation it would open the door to cross examination of his witness. And that would allow specific conduct of TDPK’s to be introduced (not to show that he was a pedophile, but as affecting the witness’s opinion as to TDPK’s reputation).
Although it’s more likely that TDPK just doesn’t know how to manage a case, despite all of his experience filing vexatious lawsuits.
He’s filed over a hundred, but won very few.
Are you counting default judgments as wins?
Yep.
Now that we know how he fraudulently obtains default judgments, he will not “win: another.
The key to understanding his actions is looking at it less like a legal case, and more like terrorism – or asymmetric warfare.
Rules exist only to constrain the actions of the good guys. They follow the rules, that is why they are the good guys.
Bad guys are the bad guys because they don’t follow the rules.
BK never thought he could win this case, He only intended to waste time and money for everyone involved. And that includes the court. And while it may or may not have deterred the defendants specifically, even this failed case exists as a warning for those who might be tempted to say something negative about BK. Because the message is you might win the case, but it will cost you to do so. And you might get pro bono help, but he is going to sue those attorneys, so it will be extra costly for them to do pro bono.
I wonder what people think having him declared a vexatious litigant will do. As I understand it, that means he would have to have permission from some special master or whatever in order to file cases. Given how much leeway that judges have given him to proceed in his meritless cases, why would a special master treat him any differently?
+ 100, this note-
I’ve been watching this for a while and have some questions:
1. Is it the RICO Madness suit TDPK tampered with the mail (service) receipts? Why didn’t the court hammer him on that?
2. Glen Beck and Michelle Malkin both have enough money to crush BK, if there’s any way to do so, after they win. Is he at all exposed in any way by a likely loss in RICO Madness?
3. Haven’t seen a recent picture of TDPK in a while. Is that kinda’ a vampire-in-the-mirror thing?
4. I hope WJJH and Aarron write a book out of all this. Thought about it?
5. Any indication contributions to his non-profits are drying up? That looks to be his sole means of support. How can anybody who ‘googles’ Brett get involved with him?
There were forgeries in the state case and the Federal RICO case.
BK admitted to tampering with documents that he submitted in both cases. The Maryland District court found that there is no sanction in the law of court rules for providing falsified evidence to the court. The court could have ruled from its own authority, but chose not to.
It is my opinion that the State of Maryland will rue the day that its courts decided that forging evidence is not punishable. And I don’t just mean the government. This opens the door for prosecutors to forge evidence with no consequence. I mean, the judge could not even find that forged evidence should be excluded.
If you don’t want to get harassed, stay out of Maryland. That’s good advice, really.
As to the RICO case, BK kicked it up a notch. Not content to put a checkmark where there was not a checkmark, he impersonated a federal court and forged summonses to parties who were not named in his suit. He admitted to doing this, in writing and sworn to, to the court. The court, despite having this admission for five months, has done nothing. Not. One. Thing.
Actually, that isn’t right. They haven’t done in anything in retribution, but the court has helpfully gone ahead and considered the parties served by the fraudulent sumopnses as parties to the suit. As well as provided research and assistance in serving other parties. That’s not nothing.
Oh, by the way, the attorney for one of the parties served by the forged summons pointed out to the court that BK had admitted to forgery of service in the related state case. For his trouble, BK threatened him with Rule 11 sanctions. While the court denied the Rule 11 sanctions, the judge helpfully banned Rule 11 sanctions from considerations for all parties until after this case has been decided.
These conversations lead one to ask: “then, what do we do about it?” Clearly the courts, at least in Maryland, aren’t tuned properly to prevent abuse by a small number of exceptionally dishonest and unethical litigants. I personally believe this could be mostly fixed with minor incremental tuning of procedures, but that’s not going to stop Kimberlin right now, nor undo much of what he’s done in his criminal career.
I agree there’s asymmetry that makes Brett’s cost of bad behavior bearable to him, and his critics’ costs so high that it makes more financial sense to give up. This should NOT be addressed by adopting any of Brett Kimberiln’s dishonest tactics. I have one idea, which is that we, the community, must more vigorously aid all of the victims so that their own costs are now low, if only because others are bearing them instead. This way the victims won’t give up. Note that Sandra DeLong is one such victim who tried to fight Brett for about 15 years but has probably since given up – a worthy object of aid and charity, btw. Ali stated on the stand that he considered bombersuesbloggers.com to have not done as well as he hoped. We, the community, should work harder to have the backs of all Brett Kimberlin victims, not only by donating more to that site, but also by vigorously aiding all of Brett’s past, present, and future victims. Even with the asymmetric advantage of his forgeries and perjury, he can’t defeat us all.
He argued that it was false… but for some reason, refused to testify to that effect. That’s all he would have needed to do to get to a jury. But even if he believed it false, that doesn’t mean others didn’t give good reason for thinking so; he still could never win because those who said so actually did provide their basis for saying so. He did manage to prevent fact-finders from having anything to discuss or think about on the point.
He had to argue that we knew it to be false – when you marry a sixteen yr old 9 days after her birthday, the grandmother of a 10 or 12 year old you are hanging around with is murdered, you are singing about sex with young girls – we can only rely on HIS behavior that he PUBLICALLY acknowledged and in some cases was awarded for…
But most people think its true he preys on little girls, very very young women, with very very good reason, even if they don’t call him out as a pedophile, his pattern of attraction and pattern of interaction is pretty plain and publicly documented.
Point being though, if he had testified, there would have been something for the jury to consider. And strangely he fought to be able to testify and then…decided no testimony and no evidence countering the statements truthfulness was required of him.
My thought is that he expected the judge to not allow him to testify thus opening up an avenue to appeal. Since the judge was going to let him testify his strategy was shot and there was nothing to gain but lots to lose by putting himself on the stand.