Judge Steven Douglas Merryday
Shame on the Justice System
“Perhaps Judge Steven Douglas Merryday, to gain a better understanding of the defendants, should have first familiarized himself with some of the basic tenets of Scientology.”
When the Tampa-based federal judge presiding over the wrongful-death lawsuit—Steven Douglas Merryday for the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida—ruled in favor of the defendant’s motion for summary judgment, he noted the following: “Assuming that Kyle’s father [Tom Brennan] and the others [Gerald and Denise Miscavige Gentile] are liars, Scientology’s responsibility is possible, but this theoretical and remote possibility is unsupported by evidence or any reasonable and direct inference from the evidence. If the witnesses are ignored in gross as liars, the fact finder is left to guess. Attenuated and compound inferences and speculation uniformly fail to create a genuine issue of material fact sufficient to avoid summary judgment.”
Obviously, we strongly disagree.
Not only did the defendants in the case lie, but the Clearwater, Florida, detective investigating Kyle’s suspicious death—Stephen Bohling—lied in his police report. These assertions can be easily verified through testimony and documentation.
Did these individuals commit perjury (a felony in the State of Florida)? According to The Law Dictionary, available online, In criminal law, perjury is “The willful assertion as to a matter of fact, opinion, belief, or knowledge, made by a witness in a judicial proceeding as part of his evidence, either upon oath or in any form allowed by law to be substituted for an oath, whether such evidence is given in open court, or in an affidavit, or otherwise, such assertion being known to such witness to be false, and being intended by him to mislead the court, jury, or person holding the proceeding.
http://thelawdictionary.org/perjury/#ixzz2qURWg1aC%5D
Obviously, if a witness deliberately lies, twisting the testimony in one way or another, the false testimony may lead to a highly skewed outcome in a case. Documents and testimony have supported that Detective Stephen Bohling deliberately lied in his Clearwater Police Report (the CWPR). His investigation is replete with conflicts of interest and mishandled standard investigative procedures.
By twisting statements made by others—in other words, assigning the lies to others such as Marti Scholl of the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s Office, FDLE Agent Barbara Mendez, or Kyle’s psychiatrist, Stephen McNamara—he may have believed that he could wheedle his way out of perjury charges. Perhaps he thought he could turn the entire situation into a “he said, she said” scenario.
Unfortunately, all of this illegal behavior had a direct impact on the outcome of the wrongful death lawsuit.
Here’s how:
On May 29, 2009, Lee Fugate—the attorney representing Gerald and Denise Miscavige Gentile—attached Bohling’s CWPR to his “Motion to Dismiss Complaint.”
June 11, 2009, Attorney Kennan Dandar—the attorney representing the Estate of Kyle Brennan—filed a motion to strike the report.
On June 24, 2009, Judge Stephen D. Merryday granted the Estate of Kyle Brennan the motion to strike the police report.
Did this stop the defendants from using the police report’s content? Absolutely not!
In the end, all of this—the lies, the mishandling of information, the obstruction of justice—came at the expense of a twenty-year-old college student whose existence to the corrupt powers that be in Clearwater, Florida, was absolutely meaningless.
Attorney Luke Lirot’s statement regarding Judge Steven Douglas Merryday.
“The plaintiffs did not dispute the right of Scientologists to their beliefs and their right to express their anti-psychiatry views, wrote Lirot. However, those beliefs should not be imposed on non-believers. And this, he argued, was exactly what had happened here, with tragic consequences. “This is a case about negligent and invasive conduct, not religious freedom. The District Court erred by glossing over this huge fact.”
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Affidavit of Lance Marcor: The Handling of Kyle Brennan
Rush to judgment
The plaintiff’s contention that Tom Brennan had confiscated his son’s medication was not groundless speculation. It was supported by Brennan’s own statements to the police. “His testimony is inconsistent, and the District Court, painfully, disregarded these inconsistencies….,” wrote Lirot. “Under any analysis of the record, in this case, the ‘voluntariness’ of the disuse of Lexapro is a disputed issue.” 20
Judge Merryday also ruled that those targeted in the lawsuit had no duty of care to Kyle Brennan.
But Lirot argued: “Kyle’s psychiatric ailments were known, the importance of his continual taking of Lexapro was communicated, and the results of this tragedy were foreseeable.” (Lirot’s emphasis)21
And if there was any dispute over the question of foreseeability, well, that too should have been left for a jury to decide, he added.
Citing case law, Lirot argued: “A judge should only remove the question from the jury if there is a total absence of evidence to support an inference that the intervening cause was foreseeable.'” 22
That was not the case here, he wrote.
Scientology’s legal team had cited a wealth of case law in defense of their clients, Lirot noted. But certain aspects of this affair made it unique. For one thing, he argued, “…none of these cases involved an ‘International Church’ with a well-known and militant aversion to psychotropic drugs.”
For another, he argued: “Taking away important psychiatric medication and negligently leaving a handgun and easily available ammunition accessible to a person with known psychological problems creates an entirely different factual scenario.” 23
The plaintiffs did not dispute the right of Scientologists to their beliefs and their right to express their anti-psychiatry views, wrote Lirot.
But those beliefs could not be imposed on non-believers. And this, he argued, was exactly what had happened here, with tragic consequences.
“This is a case about negligent and invasive conduct, not religious freedom. The District Court erred by glossing over this huge fact.” 24
The suit asserts that members of the Scientology organization, including the father of Brennan, removed access to the deceased’s anti-depression medication and provided him with the means to utilize a loaded gun. Brennan had been staying with his father for a week prior to his death. Police in Clearwater, Florida, investigated the 2007 death of Brennan and determined it was a suicide. Kyle Brennan was not a member of Scientology. The lawsuit, filed in 2009, was filed by Brennan’s mother on behalf of her son’s estate. Named as defendants in the lawsuit include the Scientology organization, its subdivision, the Flag Service Organization, the twin sister of Scientology leader David Miscavige, Denise Gentile, and her husband, Gerald Gentile.
Attorney Dandar had previously represented the estate of Lisa McPherson in a separate civil wrongful death claim against the Scientology organization. After being under the care of members of the Scientology organization for 17 days, McPherson died in Clearwater in 1995. The wrongful death suit claimed that Scientology officials permitted McPherson to deteriorate to a dehydrated state, where her condition was such that she did not have the energy to fend off cockroaches from biting her skin.
Scientology management settled the McPherson wrongful death case in 2004; lawyers representing the organization stated the settlement included a confidential arrangement with Dandar to never again represent clients in lawsuits against Scientology entities. The settlement included an agreement that both sides would never speak again about the case; California lawyer Ford Greene commented, “The church bought silence.” The Scientology organization had also filed a countersuit against the estate of Lisa McPherson and named Dandar a party to that lawsuit. The organization claimed Dandar had inappropriately tried to add the head of Scientology, David Miscavige, as a party to the wrongful death lawsuit.
Scientology legal representatives requested that Judge Beach see to it that Dandar abides by the secret settlement agreement, and Beach subsequently issued an order in June 2009 that Dandar be removed from the Brennan wrongful death case. Dandar faced sanctions from Judge Beach, including the suspension of Dandar’s law license, a $130,000 judgment to be paid to the Scientology organization, and a $ 1,000-per-day fine. Judge Beach ruled that all funds from the sanctions imposed against Dandar were to be paid directly to the Scientology organization. The Tampa Tribune noted that Judge Breach made his ruling “in an inexplicably closed hearing from which Beach tossed a St. Petersburg Times reporter.”
Faced with these possible sanctions, Dandar filed an “involuntary” motion to withdraw from the Brennan wrongful death case in federal court, but Judge Merryday denied this request. Dandar stated to The Tampa Tribune, “I’m stuck in the middle of two courts.”
D. Wallace Pope, a lawyer for the Scientology organization, stated that he wished to show evidence regarding the settlement in the McPherson wrongful death case. However, Judge Merryday emphasized his main issue was determining whether or not Dandar was being penalized for obeying the federal court’s order denying his request to be withdrawn from the Brennan wrongful death case. Judge Merryday stated he would prevent the Scientology organization, along with Judge Beach, from punishing Dandar for representing his client in the US federal court. Merryday stated Beach had attempted to usurp control outside of his jurisdiction, thereby “aggressively” interfering with the US federal court process by imposing sanctions on Dandar.
Merryday has served as a US federal judge based in Tampa, Florida, since 1992. The St. Petersburg Times noted that Judge Merryday “has presided over some of the region’s most noteworthy cases.” Judge Merryday’s court order creating an injunction against Beach was 29 pages long and criticized the “stunning severity” of Beach’s sanctions imposed on Dandar. Merryday explained that the federal court needed to “act in defense of the (federal) court’s jurisdiction” due to Beach’s actions. Referencing Judge Beach, Merryday wrote in his court order, “A judge should not undertake, directly or indirectly, overtly or through a surrogate, to compel an act by another judge, especially in a different jurisdiction.”
Judge Merryday stated to Scientology lawyers, “You have forced my hand on this issue.” Merryday stated to Scientology lawyer Robert Potter, “I don’t like being put in this position. When people start to squeeze, other people can squeeze back.” Potter asked him to seal the proceedings from public view, and Judge Merryday responded, “I’m not going to be entering any seals unless I see a lawful reason, and I can’t even see the beginning of a reason.” Merryday stated he would not allow his court to be influenced by “some circuit judge somewhere who appears for all I can tell to have sealed something for some unknown reason.”
Judge Beach responded to Judge Merryday’s injunction, which “permanently enjoined” him from imposing sanctions on Dandar, by filing a motion on Thursday in federal court in Tampa. Beach asked Merryday to rescind his order so that Merryday could recuse himself from acting as a judge in the Scientology case related to Dandar. Beach’s motion argued that he was denied due process because he was not given notice by Merryday of the hearing, which occurred before Merryday issued his ruling. In addition, Beach asserted Merryday did not have the power to issue the ruling restricting him from sanctioning Dandar because Beach was not a party to the Brennan wrongful death case, and Merryday lacked authority to restrict the powers of a judge from outside his federal court jurisdiction. In response, Judge Merryday has scheduled a hearing for October 12 in federal court to hear from state court Judge Beach.
Martin Errorl Rice is an attorney in St. Petersburg, Florida, who represented Beach in the motion before the US federal court. Rice stated his client’s motivation in requesting that the ruling by Judge Merryday be rescinded was to allow Beach to recuse from the Scientology case. Rice told the St. Petersburg Times that his client’s conflict with the US federal court has “cast a kind of a cloud” over Beach’s position in the Scientology case.
Constitutional law professor Michael Allen analyzed the clash between the US judge and the Florida judge for The Tampa Tribune. Allen observed that it was “very, very rare” for a US federal judge to order a state judge. He noted that a 1793 federal law contravenes such orders, except in “extraordinarily narrow” cases where the federal judges are permitted to create rulings in order to safeguard the jurisdiction of their federal court proceedings.
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Judge Steven Douglas Merryday
Excerpt from the deposition of Detective Stephen Bohling
The recorded exchange between Attorney Lee Fugate and Detective Steve Bohling.
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Excerpts from the Deposition of Dr. Stephen McNamara
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The Honorable Steven D. Merryday-“Fool me Twice” Shame on the Justice System
Excerpts from the Deposition of S. Brennan
Excerpts from the Deposition of G. Robinson
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Excerpts from the Deposition of Tom Brennan
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Excerpts from the Deposition of Detective Jonathan Yuen
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Excerpts from the Deposition of V Britton
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Luke Lirot Email: Notes on my meeting with Detective Steve Bohling
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Excerpt from the Deposition of Detective Steve Bohling
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Attorney Ken Dandar, email: Martha Scholl, Medical Investigator
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https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/balance-of-power
https://javafilms.fr/film/scientology-suspicious-deaths
Judge Steven Douglas Merryday Information
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1994/02/05/judge-is-sentenced-for-dui/
Right wing judge decides the freedom to disobey the military chain of command is more important than national security
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