Re: Judge James E. Turk
I hereby request that impeachment proceedings be instituted against Judge James E. Turk of the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia.
Federal judges are appointed for life and are immune from any sort of sanctions or proceedings. The only action that can be taken against an errant federal judge is the extreme remedy of impeachment and this only in cases where a judge is guilty of "high crimes and misdemeanors".
I would prefer it if some lesser remedy were available, but unfortunately there is none. I petitioned the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to remove Judge Turk from my cases, but my petition was denied.
Judge James E. Turk is guilty of "high crimes and misdemeanors" because of his involvement in the kidnapping of my daughter, Shamema Honzagool Sloan, by conspiring with state and federal officials in getting my daughter kidnapped and then in covering up and preventing me from filing a federal lawsuit for redress of grievances pertaining to the kidnapping of my daughter.
In particular, although the kidnapping of my daughter was a federal crime, especially since my daughter was carried across international boundaries and brought to the United States on October 9, 1990, and although the federal courts have jurisdiction over international kidnapping cases under 42 U.S.C. 11603 (a), Judge Turk has prevented me from filing a case, has summarily dismissed without any hearing any case I have filed and has directed the clerk to see to it that every case I file pertaining to the kidnapping of my daughter is assigned to him, so that he will be able to continue to cover-up the criminal activities in which he has been engaged in the kidnapping of my daughter.
My daughter, Shamema Honzagool Sloan, then aged 8, was kidnapped from the front yard of my house on Fujairah, United Arab Emirates on October 7, 1990, while I was taking a nap, by agents of Charles and Shelby Roberts of Madison Heights Virginia. Charles and Shelby Roberts are religious fanatics and are followers of Jerry Falwell and had been trying for four years from 1986 to 1990 to kidnap my daughter for religious purposes.
I immediately reported this kidnapping to John P. Butler, an FBI agent in Roanoke, Virginia. I was not aware at the time that John P. Butler was in on and involved in the kidnapping, as was Morgan Scott, a US Attorney in Roanoke.
It is possible that Morgan Scott and John P. Butler believed at the time that Charles and Shelby Roberts had adopted my daughter, or had legal custody of my daughter or were related to my daughter in some way, but none of this was true. The Roberts had not adopted my daughter. The Roberts did not have custody of my daughter. The Roberts had no connection with the mother of my daughter and were not related to my daughter in any way. The Roberts were merely crazy people who believed that they had been Ordered by God to kidnap my daughter. Shelby Roberts had previously been employed by me as a baby-sitter, which is how she became aware of the existence of my daughter.
The Roberts should have been arrested on the spot. It was manifestly obvious that they were guilty. How else could have they obtained possession of my daughter, if not by kidnapping her? By analogy, if a prisoner in jail is found outside the walls of the jail, that is proof that he escaped. One does not need to prove which wall he climbed over or how he got out. The Roberts had purchased the airplane tickets and had brought my daughter to America without the knowledge or permission of either of her parents. That is proof enough that they kidnapped her.
The reason that Charles and Shelby Roberts were not arrested and put in jail on the spot is because of the criminal activities among others of Judge James E. Turk, which is why I am demanding that Judge Turk be impeached. I would also like to see Judge Turk arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced to a long term in prison.
On June 30, 1988, I had been arrested by the FBI in Guam. I was released after less than two hours. Later the same day, I was arrested by the FBI in Honolulu, Hawaii. This time, I was released after about five hours. Both of my arrests had been ordered by the court of Judge James E. Turk, acting at the behest of William G. Petty, the Lynchburg Commonwealth Attorney, who was acting as the agent of the Falwell Group which was trying to kidnap my daughter. I have been trying ever since to find the complaint or the case file for the case in which I was arrested, to see what the allegations were. I know that the name of the case was United States of America vs. Samuel H. Sloan. However, the case file has disappeared. While searching for it is the clerk's office of the Western District of Virginia, I found a note indicating that somebody had been searching for the file before me and perhaps had taken it.
William G. Petty, the Lynchburg Commonwealth Attorney, later explained that he had dropped the case because I had not had my daughter with me at the time of my arrest. This demonstrates that the reason Bill Petty had me arrested was to grab my daughter, and for no other reason. It is important to note that Charles and Shelby Roberts do not live in Lynchburg. They live in Amherst County, but the Amherst County Commonwealth Attorney, Ed Meeks, had made it clear that he wanted no part in the schemes by the Roberts to kidnap my daughter. For that reason, the Roberts went to the Lynchburg Commonwealth Attorney, who was willing to help them kidnap my daughter because the Falwell headquarters is in Lynchburg.
On October 7, 1990, two years after these June 1988 arrests, Charles and Shelby Roberts finally succeeded in having my daughter kidnapped. For more than four years they, plus my brother who was in on the kidnapping, had been pursuing me, my daughter and my mother like dogs. They finally caught us. The Roberts brought my daughter to their house after a trip half way around the world on October 9, 1990. I was never notified as to the whereabouts of my daughter. I was not served with any court papers. However, I was able to surmise that the Roberts had my daughter because I knew that they had been trying for four years to kidnap her.
Because the kidnapping of my daughter was international in score and in fact the kidnapers had stopped or changed planes in Bahrain and England on the way to America with my daughter, I filed a federal case against the Roberts and their co-conspirators in December, 1990. Prior to filing this lawsuit I spent two weeks in the Columbia University Law Library and in the Law Library of the Bar Association of the City of New York researching the law to make sure that I had a sound case and that my complaint was properly drafted.
I was therefore astounded when, only two days after I filed my complaint, Judge Turk dismissed it, even before service of process had gone out and the defendants had appeared and answered. In dismissing my complaint, Judge Turk cited a case which I happened to have studied and which had no relation whatever with the facts and issues of my case. It was obvious that Judge Turk had never bothered to read my complaint (which was more than 40 pages long) and was just making an asinine decision to save himself the trouble of finding out what my case was all about.
When Judge Turk dismissed my complaint, he said that if I did not like it, I should take it up with Judge Wilkinson. I did not know anything about Judge Wilkinson at that time, but I have since learned that Judge Harvie Wilkinson III has been notoriously involved in sending large numbers of innocent men to their deaths in the electric chair.
Emboldened by the protection from criminal prosecution they were receiving from Judge Turk along with John P. Butler, Morgan Scott, Bill Petty and Jerry Falwell, the Roberts succeeded in having me arrested by the FBI on a charge of trying to get my daughter back. I was arrested in an Francisco on August 18, 1992 on an arrest warrant issued by the court of Judge James E. Turk.
In January, 1993, I filed a habeas corpus petition in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia. Attached as exhibits to my habeas corpus petition were more than 400 pages of documents proving that I had legal custody of my daughter in New York State where she had been born and that my daughter had been kidnapped and brought to Virginia by non-relatives and therefore under the Uniform Child Custody Act, under the Hague Convention and under various other laws and treaties of the United States, Virginia has no jurisdiction over the custody of my daughter and therefore could not charge me with trying to get my daughter back.
Once again, only two days after I had filed my petition with 400 pages of documents attached,. Judge Turk dismissed it, again without the defendants being served or notified of the case.
On December 3, 1993 I filed another case. By now, I knew that Judge Turk was biased and prejudiced against me and that worse yet he was in on and involved in the kidnapping. Therefore, I tried to stop Judge Turk from getting this case by filing it in the Eastern District of Virginia in Richmond, whereas Judge Turk sits in the Western District of Virginia.
What I accomplished by doing this was that it took a little longer for Judge Turk to dismiss it, but the result was almost the same. Judge Turk found out about the case and got it transferred from the Eastern District to the Western District of Virginia. I objected, to no avail.
Judge Turk then issued a ridiculous decision saying that my suit was dismissed because Charles and Shelby Roberts had adopted my daughter. No such thing had occurred.
In this third suit, since I realize by now that Judge Turk was in league with the kidnappers, I merely complained that my daughter, Shamema, was not being allowed to attend public school, in Violation of the Virginia compulsory education law.
Although this might seem to be a minor point it was of great significance because the sole reason that the kidnappers had kidnapped my daughter was to indoctrinate her into their religion. In order to accomplish this goal it was necessary for them to keep my daughter out of school. Instead they put her into a non-registered religious academy. If you try to look up Jerry Falwell's Liberty Christian Academy in the telephone book, you will find that it is not listed there. This is because Jerry does not accept temporal authority over the education of children within his organization. If Jerry Falwell wants his children to grow up illiterate and uneducated, I have no objection. But when he goes out and kidnaps my daughter just for the purpose of preventing her from going to school, that is where I draw the line.
As it happened, when Judge Turk issued his ridiculous decision dismissing my complaint because the Roberts had adopted my daughter, I was out of jail and I went to the Clerk's Office of the Federal Court in Lynchburg. To my great surprise, when they saw me they called Judge Turk on the telephone and then told me that he wanted to speak to me.
I got on the line and told Judge Turk that his decision was ridiculous because nobody had ever adopted my daughter. He seemed friendly and reasonable and said that he would look into it.
A few weeks later, Judge Turk issued another decision. He acknowledged that my daughter had not been adopted and said that he was withdrawing his decision for that reason, but said he was dismissing my complaint anyway because my daughter was in the custody of the Department of Social Services.
What an outrage! This was not true either. My daughter had simply been kidnapped. Furthermore, his decision said that he had spoken to some person who had told him this. I would like to know who that person was. It was likely one of the people involved in the kidnapping of my daughter, because I cannot imagine that an uninvolved third party would express any opinion about this.
More than that, the idea of a judge not allowing service of process to go out, not hearing testimony or oral argument and not receiving pleadings but of calling some unknown friend on the phone and making a decision involving the fate of an eight year old kidnapped child is mind-boggling.
Needless to say, I have filed many appeals. However, I was never able to get a hearing or oral argument on any of my appeals.
See e.g. Sloan vs. Roberts, 928 F.2d 399 (4th Cir. 1991)
United States vs. Sloan, 996 F.2d 1213 (4th Cir. 1993)
In re Sloan, 37 F.3d 1495 (4th Cir. 1994)
Sloan vs. Murphy, 15 F.3d 1089 (9th Cir. 1994)
Sloan vs. Gurney, 50 F.3d 7 (4th Cir. 1995)
Sloan vs. Hughes, 56 F.3d 62 (4th Cir. 1995)
Not all of the above cases involved Judge Turk. However, in any case involving the kidnapping of my daughter, Judge Turk made sure that he was the judge. The reason is obvious: Judge Turk does not want to go to jail and once it becomes apparent that he was involved in the kidnapping of my daughter, that is where he will be.
You may think that my cases were totally lacking in merit and that is why Judge Turk dismissed them so quickly. However, after the first two-day dismissal, which was of the Sloan vs. Roberts case, I filed virtually the identical complaint in the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn where I was living. I filed this suit in May, 1992. The federal judge did not dismiss it. He conducted a hearing and assigned it to a federal magistrate. The case went on for three years. Finally, it was dismissed on the grounds of inconvenient forum. The proper forum was Virginia, the federal court in New York said. I had not bothered to tell them that the judge in Virginia was involved in the kidnapping of my daughter and had dismissed a virtually identical complaint after only two days.
The complaint in that case is posted on my web site at http://www.ishipress.com/pattison.htm
Also, the complaint in my third case, in which I demanded that my kidnapped daughter be allowed to attend school, is on my web site at http://www.samsloan.com/spagnolo.htm
You may think that I am just a typically disgruntled litigant. However, what is involved here is the kidnapping of an eight-year-old child, which is a federal crime. It is not merely a crime to physically kidnap the child. It is also a crime for a person who has the power to prevent the crime from taking place not to prevent it.
All Judge Turk had to do was schedule a hearing on any of the three complaints I filed regarding the kidnapping of my daughter, and it is likely that the kidnappers would have become concerned about the long years in prison they were facing and might have given my daughter back. By dismissing the lawsuits only two days after they were filed, Judge Turk conveyed the message to the kidnappers that it is all right to kidnap a child.
If Judge Turk was not going to give me a hearing on that, he could at least have given me a hearing on the fact that I was arrested three times by the FBI on orders issued by his court, twice on June 30, 1988 and once on August 18, 1992. However, he refused to allow a hearing on that either.
I might mention that my daughter escaped from her kidnappers by joining the United States Marines promptly after she turned 18 years old. My daughter is now in basic training in Parris Island. However, that does not make the issue moot. My daughter has lost her childhood and her kidnappers have had ten years to brainwash her. Had my daughter been with me, she would be attending university now, and not boot camp.
Accordingly, I demand that Judge James E. Turk be impeached and that criminal proceedings be instituted against him.
Very Truly Yours,
Samuel H. Sloan