Senator Sues God

[Mr Luzcious]

http://www.ketv.com/news/14133442/detail.html

OMAHA, Neb -- State Senator Ernie Chambers is suing God. He says it to prove a point about frivolous lawsuits.

Chambers says senators periodically have offered bills prohibiting the filing of certain types of suits. He says his main objection is the constitution requires that the doors to the courthouse be open to all. Chambers said, "Thus anybody can file a lawsuit against anybody - even God."

Chambers said he decided to file this lawsuit after a suit was filed in early September in federal court against Lancaster County Judge Jeffre Cheuvront. He's the judge who was hearing a sexual assault case, where the woman wants to use the words "rape and victim" during her testimony.

Chambers lawsuit, which was filed on Friday in Douglas County Court, seeks a permanent injunction ordering God to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.

The lawsuit admits God goes by all sorts of alias, names, titles and designations and it also recognizes the fact that the defendant is “Omnipresent”.

In the lawsuit Chambers says he’s tried to contact God numerous times, “Plaintiff, despite reasonable efforts to effectuate personal service upon Defendant (“Come out, come out, wherever you are”) has been unable to do so.”

The suit also requests that the court given the “peculiar circumstances” of this case waive personal service. It says being Omniscient, the plaintiff assumes God will have actual knowledge of the action.

The lawsuit accuses God “of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent.”

It says God has caused, “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects, and the like.”

The suit also says God has caused, “calamitous catastrophes resulting in the wide-spread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants including innocent babes, infants, children, the aged and infirm without mercy or distinction.”

Chambers also says God “has manifested neither compassion nor remorse, proclaiming that Defendant “will laugh” when calamity comes.

Chambers asks for the court to grant him a summary judgment. He says as an alternative, he wants the judge to set a date for a hearing as “expeditiously” as possible and enter a permanent injunction enjoining God from engaging in the types of deleterious actions and the making of terroristic threats described in the lawsuit.

[greg63]

Knowing our judicial system he'll probably win; good luck collecting though.

[Thig Lyfe]

That's nothing; Fred Phelps was an attorney on the landmark case God v. Fags.

[SBK]

Knowing our judicial system he'll probably win; good luck collecting though.

Oh he'll collect all right, but I don't think it'll be the judgment he desired.

[el borracho]

That is pretty funny. I wonder what the court will do. Are they obligated to hear the case or can it be dismissed immediately?

[HonestChieffan]

Ron Paul needs to make a statement on this

[Bob Dole]

If nothing else, it was a chance to use the word "pestilential".

A person just doesn't get to use that one often enough.

[Dave Lane]

I hope he wins. And if he does can he take anything he wants?

Dave

[HypnotizedMonkey]

God will countersue.

[StcChief]

God will countersue.
ROFL Ever hear of random Lightning strikes.

[pikesome]

Here's the why for this lawsuit:
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - The accuser in a sexual assault case is suing a judge because he barred the word "rape" and other words from the trial.

The federal court complaint filed Thursday claims Lancaster County District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront violated the accuser's First Amendment right to free speech by barring her from saying words including "rape," "victim" and "assailant" during the trial of Pamir Safi.

Safi, 34, was charged with first-degree sexual assault stemming from an encounter between him and Tory Bowen, 24, at his apartment the morning of Oct. 31, 2004.

Safi said he and Bowen, who met at a bar the night before, had consensual sex.

Bowen says she was too intoxicated to give consent.

In restricting language, Cheuvront said he was concerned that Safi's constitutional right to a fair trial might be jeopardized if witnesses were permitted to use the banned words in their testimony.

The language restrictions, which also barred the use of the words "sexual assault," were in effect for Safi's first trial, in November.

Bowen testified then for nearly 13 hours, and said the ban had a marked effect because she had to pause and make sure her words wouldn't violate the ban.

Cheuvront declared a mistrial after the jury deadlocked 7-5. He declared a second mistrial in July during jury selection, citing news coverage and public protests on behalf of Bowen.

Lancaster County prosecutors have said they plan to seek a third trial.

The Associated Press usually does not identify accusers in sex-assault cases, but Bowen has allowed her name to be used publicly because of the issue over the judge's language restrictions.

[pikesome]

More background on why this might be frivolous:
Tory Bowen says she knows what happened to her on the morning of Oct. 31, 2004.

But she won’t be able tell her story to jurors — at least not in a way that’s truthful to her, she says — because a judge’s order bars witnesses from using words like “rape” and “sexual assault” in the trial of Pamir Safi, who is accused of sexually assaulting Bowen.
“In my mind, what happened to me was rape,” said Bowen, 24. “I want the freedom to be able to point (to Safi) in court and say, ‘That man raped me.’”

Last month, Lancaster County District Judge Jeffre Cheuvront denied a motion by prosecutors that would have prohibited Safi’s attorneys from using words like “sex” and “intercourse” when describing the encounter between Safi and Bowen.

The Lancaster County Attorney’s Office had argued the words would imply Bowen consented to have sex.

Cheuvront also has sustained an earlier motion by defense attorneys barring the words “rape” and “sexual assault kit.”

In Bowen’s opinion, Cheuvront’s ruling means she will have to lie on the witness stand.

“The word ‘sex’ implies consent,” she said. “I never once would describe (what happened) as sex. He’s making me commit perjury.”

Clarence Mock, one of Safi’s attorneys, said Cheuvront made the rulings to keep the trial fair.

The word “rape,” is not a legal term, he said. “Sexual assault” is, but whether a defendant committed that crime is a question for a jury to answer based on evidence at trial, Mock said.

“Under the rules of evidence, witnesses can’t reach legal conclusions,” he said.

“Trials are competing narratives of what happened,” Mock continued. “They should not turn on politicized hyperbole. They should turn on the facts.

“... Using words like ‘rape’ creates unfair prejudices for defendants and invades the (duties) of the jury.”

Safi, 33, will stand trial in Cheuvront’s courtroom a second time on the charge beginning July 9. The first trial ended in a hung jury in November.

Before the first trial, Cheuvront granted a defense motion to bar prosecutors from eliciting testimony or making arguments in front of jurors using words like “rape,” “sexual assault kit,” “victim” and “assailant.”

Bowen, who testified for nearly 13 hours at the first trial, said the ban’s effect was “huge, huge.” She said she fears a repeat at the second trial.

“They’ll (jurors) think I’m choosing to use the word, ‘sex,’” she said.

“I had to pause (at the first trial) and think, re-navigate (how to say what happened). ... Jurors won’t find me credible because I’m pausing to find the words.”

Safi and Bowen were strangers to each other when they met at a downtown Lincoln bar the night of Oct. 30, 2004. According to testimony from the first trial, the two had drinks and then left together after the bar closed at 1 a.m.

Bowen told an investigator the following day she could not remember most of the previous evening and that she did not willingly accompany Safi, according to a Lincoln Police report from November 2004.

She told the investigator she could only recall waking up in a strange apartment with an unknown man who was “having sexual intercourse with her.”

Prosecutors later charged Safi with first-degree sexual assault, alleging that he knew Bowen was too intoxicated to consent to sex.

The first trial began Oct. 23 and ended Nov. 6 with a deadlocked jury. Seven jurors voted to convict Safi, and five were either undecided or in favor of acquittal.

Chuck Morrison, one of the five, said he did not think the word ban was significant for the jury.

“I don’t see that as having a dramatic effect,” he said. “I knew from her testimony that, in her own mind, she thought she had been sexually assaulted.”

But Wendy Murphy, a professor of law at the New England School of Law in Boston, said the ban’s effect could have been subtle, but no less powerful.

“It’s very difficult to explain why jurors feel the way they do,” she said. “The point is, language is so passively absorbed they don’t even know it.”

Murphy has done research on the role of language in the courtroom. She said Cheuvront’s order barring the word “rape” was unprecedented, especially because it applied to witnesses.

“That is a profoundly unfair thing for a judge to do,” she said. “I have a problem with the idea that you can compel a witness to contrive their testimony.

“I have a problem (with a judge) directing a witness, not the government, to say certain words. It impugns their candor, their credibility.”

Most of all, Murphy said, Bowen won’t be able to explain to jurors why she’s using clinical words — or, worse, words that imply consent — when she describes the encounter with Safi.

“Jurors will go back to their room and say, ‘She didn’t feel it was harmful. After all, she called it sex,’” Murphy said.

“It’s like saying to a robbery victim, ‘You can’t say you were robbed, because that’s a legal judgement. You can only say you gave your stuff to the defendant,’” she said. “That’s absurd.”

Murphy proposed a remedy.

“The judge can say (to the jury) that the attorneys and witnesses will describe (the alleged crime) in a clinical way,” she said.

Bruce Lyons, a past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said he could not understand the controversy over Cheuvront’s order.

Lyons, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., said he knew of similar rulings in other jurisdictions.

He said judges have an overriding responsibility to keep trials fair. And a prosecutor, he said, should be able to elicit testimony that will tell a jury the alleged victim believes a crime occurred, even though the victim can’t use words like rape.

“A prosecutor who has the facts does not have to rely on words like ‘victim’ or ‘rape,’” he said.

“I don’t see what all the hullabaloo’s about. It seems like someone’s looking for a scapegoat.”

[pikesome]

Mock said words like “sex” and “intercourse” are, unlike “rape,” legally neutral.

“You can have forced intercourse, or you can have legal intercourse.”

He said witnesses can testify to the “facts that comprise the elements” of the charged offense. But that’s where it ends, he said.

For example, an alleged assault victim could say, “‘I was hit by the defendant without any prior provocation,’” he said. “But to say, ‘I was assaulted’ is to make a legal conclusion.”

Lancaster County Attorney Gary Lacey, whose office is prosecuting the case, said judges often prohibit attorneys from using words like “defendant” or “victim” in the courtroom. He said he could not recall such a bar on the word “rape,” however.

“When people try to sanitize the English language, they may” change its meaning, he said.

Judges regularly give instructions that charges or allegations are not evidence, Lacey noted. The same instructions could be given for emotionally loaded words like “rape,” he suggested.

“These jurors are smart,” he said. “If they don’t get inflamed by pictures in a homicide, they aren’t going to get inflamed by the word, “rape.”

Lacey said his office would live with Cheuvront’s order.

“Judges are going to bend over backwards to make sure nothing’s prejudicial,” he said. “I don’t agree with it, but we’ll have to live with it.”

[The Rick]

I know this is like 3 levels off topic, but regarding the actual court case with the girl who said she was <strike>raped</strike> forced to have sexual intercourse:

It amazes me how so many people today don't believe in personal responsibility. So this girl was drunk at a bar, went home with a guy, they ended up having sex and now he's guilty of rape?

Granted, it's possible that a rape happened if she did in fact tell him "no". If that's the case, then all of this is moot. However, just because she was too drunk to use good judgment shouldn't implicate him. What is he supposed to do, give her a Breathalyzer before leaving the bar? If she was too drunk, then she needs to accept some of the responsibility and either not drink so much or make sure she has someone with her who will be responsible for her.

Again, if she did in fact say no back at his place and he went ahead anyway, then I would say there's a case. But if she has no recollection of anything because she was too drunk, then she simply needs to be more responsible next time.

[pikesome]

I know this is like 3 levels off topic, but regarding the actual court case with the girl who said she was <strike>raped</strike> forced to have sexual intercourse:

It amazes me how so many people today don't believe in personal responsibility. So this girl was drunk at a bar, went home with a guy, they ended up having sex and now he's guilty of rape?

Granted, it's possible that a rape happened if she did in fact tell him "no". If that's the case, then all of this is moot. However, just because she was too drunk to use good judgment shouldn't implicate him. What is he supposed to do, give her a Breathalyzer before leaving the bar? If she was too drunk, then she needs to accept some of the responsibility and either not drink so much or make sure she has someone with her who will be responsible for her.

Again, if she did in fact say no back at his place and he went ahead anyway, then I would say there's a case. But if she has no recollection of anything because she was too drunk, then she simply needs to be more responsible next time.

We don't require "responsibility" here in the US anymore, they dropped that requirement in the 60's sometime.

[unlurking]

I know this is like 3 levels off topic, but regarding the actual court case with the girl who said she was <strike>raped</strike> forced to have sexual intercourse:

It amazes me how so many people today don't believe in personal responsibility. So this girl was drunk at a bar, went home with a guy, they ended up having sex and now he's guilty of rape?

Granted, it's possible that a rape happened if she did in fact tell him "no". If that's the case, then all of this is moot. However, just because she was too drunk to use good judgment shouldn't implicate him. What is he supposed to do, give her a Breathalyzer before leaving the bar? If she was too drunk, then she needs to accept some of the responsibility and either not drink so much or make sure she has someone with her who will be responsible for her.

Again, if she did in fact say no back at his place and he went ahead anyway, then I would say there's a case. But if she has no recollection of anything because she was too drunk, then she simply needs to be more responsible next time.
I agree 100%, and just from what I have read, think the case should be thrown out since it appears to be nothing but "he said/she said".

Beyond that though, the judge censoring her defense seems out of bounds.

[Dr. Johnny Fever]

So this guy sueing God... Democrat or Republican?

:D

Gotta make it partisan man.

[Frazod]

This has class action written all over it. :D

[InChiefsHeaven]

This is unfair! God won't have a defense...there are no lawyers in heaven...

[greg63]

Oh he'll collect all right, but I don't think it'll be the judgment he desired.


True enough.

[4th and Long]

I think I'll sue Carl Peterson for 25 years of pain and suffering. :D

[Dr. Johnny Fever]

I think I'll sue Carl Peterson for 25 years of pain and suffering. :D
Heeeeeyyyyyy.... you may be onto something there.

[Archie F. Swin]

This is unfair! God won't have a defense...there are no lawyers in heaven...

Thunder....stolen
:(

[manchambo]

Given that he is omnipresent, I would think that God is subject to personal jurisdiction in every state. The more difficult question is whether, and how, one might effect service of process on Him. I suppose one could argue that certain priests or ministers are God's agents, and therefore entitled to accept service. Indeed, the choice of which people are entitled to accept service might provide some insight as to which is the one true faith.

[teedubya]

So if God doesn't show up for court... is he going to have a warrant out for his arrest?

[pikesome]

So if God doesn't show up for court... is he going to have a warrant out for his arrest?

Maybe they'll send Dog the Bounty Hunter after him?

[KCFalcon59]

I can't wait to receive the summons.

[InChiefsHeaven]

Bailiff: God, Please rise...(oh, I guess you're already floating...)Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you...you?

God: Of course I do.