Full Thread: Edgar Steele
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Old March 31st, 2012 #2520
Donald E. Pauly
Banned
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: Las Vegas
Posts: 4,130
Angry Steele Letter to Judge

This nine page handwritten letter from Steele to the judge has been posted before but never given the attention that it deserves. It gives a bit more insight into his mental condition. I retyped it from the photos posted at the link below.

Steele mentions "E&O" which is a term used by accountants (He is also one). This means "errors and omissions" which is what they get sued for over an improper audit or if they misbehave as a controller. The term is NEVER used to describe legal malpractice. Steele worries that if he demands money from McAllister for malpractice, that he will never find another lawyer who will touch him.

Steele whines about the confidentiality of his legal mail being violated but has forgotten how he abused that system to write steamy love letters to his Ukrainian honey Tatyana Loginova.

This is not the kind of letter that we would expect from the Edgar Steele of old before he went crazy. His spelling and sentence structure is good but the letter is quite bizarre. It appears from the court files that the judge answered this letter but the reply is sealed.

Quote:
http://www.free-edgar-steele.com/wp-...letter_pg1.jpg
thru
http://www.free-edgar-steele.com/wp-...letter_pg9.jpg

Confidential Legal Mail

Edgar Steele
Latah County Jail
POB 8068
Moscow, Id
83843

July 14, 2011

Hon. B, Lynn Winmill, Judge
U.S. district Court for Idaho

Re:US v. Steele, Case No. 2110-CR-148-BLW

Dear Judge Winmill:

In accordance with your order during last week's hearing, I write you to request permission to contact (confidentially) two lawyers who are not my Attorney of Record at present:

? Riordan of San Francisco, CA
?Benjamin of ?, Idaho

If I have trouble getting these two lawyers' phone numbers, how do I confidentially secure them?

This rule of yours, restricting my confidential communications to only my attorney "of record" is new to me and raises a great many questions as to how I am to observe it:

1.For example, I have been forbidden confidential access, even to my previous attorney of record, Robert McAllister, through a phone number he gave me that is answered in the name of a furniture store warehouse. How do I use such numbers to confidentially call my attorney of record?

2.Must I secure your permission each and every time I wish to confidentially contact an attorney who is not my attorney of record? That is, the same attorney, again and again?

3.Must I secure your permission to send confidential "legal mail" to attorneys not "of record"?

4.How does an attorney not "of record" contact me confidentially? Must he first secure your permission, too?

5.You specified in court that I must contact you, judge, which is why I write to you today (though I am having difficulty getting your phone number or address).

6.This is course, constitutes an ex-parte communication with this court, which I thought was frowned upon if not actually illegal. Should I contact you through someone else? If so, then who?

7.Should I be contacting you only through my attorney of record? If so how do I keep confidential from him the fact of my communication with other lawyers?

8.How do I call any attorney, even my attorney of record, if I am short of funds? Calls here at Latah County Jail cost me $0.50 per minuute, which mounts up quickly.

9.If I am not to contact you ex-parte, how do I seek your permission to confidentally contact an attorney not "of record" and keep that fact from the prosecution, not to mention the rest of the world?

10.I have been so distressed by how much of this case against me has been conducted in secret (closed hearings, sealed filings, all those trial sidebars that I was forbidden by you from attending, and so on). Even so, some documents have disappeared from the court record and I see that the trial transcript has been altered in places. I am not suggesting that you would be a party to such things, judge (except denial of my access to side bar conferences, of course), but I truly am disturbed by how both the facts of my prosecution have been hidden and the documentation of how it was conducted now seem to be disappearing. How can I possibly organize an effective appeal? Even so I would like to have some confidentially for my attorney contacts.

11.After the way I was deceived by Spokane and Bonner County Jail Deputies, I simply do not trust any jail's personnel to honor my attorney-client confidentiality, not to mention the US Attorney's Office and the US Marshall's Service. How do I keep them from knowing about such contact, let alone prevent their secretly listening despite written jail policies and specific assurances to the contrary?

13.Spokane County Jail opened my marked legal mail, copied it and gave the copies to the US Attorney (just my letters to attorneys not "of record", I think, though I cannot be sure). In order to comply with your new, more liberal rule, how do I designate such attorneys to the jail so that I do not have that intrusion continue, yet still comply with your rule?

14.Is this letter going to be opened and read by the US Attorney's Office, since you are not my "attorney of record"?

15.It is too late for me to talk confidentially with other lawyers before the deadline to file post-trial motions? Is there some form of expedited request approval for me to speak confidentially with attorneys not "of record"?

16.I had a hard enough time securing McAllister and now, Hoyt to sign on as my attorneys of record. McAllister absolutely committed legal malpractice leading to my conviction. I must file a claim with his E&O insurance to finance my appeal, since all my funds (and then some) were expended upon McAllister's representation. Once word of that claim gets out, no lawyer in American will be willing to come near me. How do I avoid that taint from attaching to me?

17.Speaking of taints, I was absolutely doomed to conviction by your ruling that I had waived my right to confidentiality in my calls and letters, previously, to attorneys "not of record". If I do manage to secure a new trial on appeal and if I somehow can find a way to pay for it and if I find a good lawyer to handle my appeal, How do I remove that taint from the US Attorney's files or, for that matter, from your mind? This worries me greatly, judge.

18.Finally, why do the USMS policies forbidding confidential (sic) in my communications with attorneys not "of record" trump the Federal Rules and Bar Ethics Rules, Judge, as you so clearly intimated by your remarks during last week's hearing?

Judge, I do not mean to be contradictory, impertinent or even, disagreeable with you. The stakes (the rest of my natural life) are too high for me to risk that sort of behavior. However, I am in a fight, literally for my life and now, with four unjust convictions, my back truly is against the wall.

I have been held in jail, essentially incommunicado, for over a year, therefore prevented from any meaningful defense of myself while I have had two truly horrible and incompetent "do nothing" attorneys of record. Now my money is gone and I wonder how I can pay for the motions or appeal, let alone a new trial. I feel like a drowning man, going down the for third time. Please help me! All I have been asking for is a level playing field, not the stacked deck I have been facing. Just simple fairness, Judge. Why do I not seem to deserve even fundamental fairness?

By the way, every time I am taken to Kootenai County Jail for holding in relation to hearings befoe you, I am treated in truly horrible fashion by some of the meanest and rudest County Deputies I ever have seen. I am held in a holding cell in Booking with no prvacy and no shower and forbidden anything to read, not even the Bible I regularly ask for. I must sit there on a concrete bench or a thin mattress on the floor, all day and all night with no rec time, nothing to read and with the temperatgure so low that I seem to shiver all the time. Do not even the Geneva Accords (to which the US is a signatory) forbid "cruel & unusual punishment", Judge?

Detention is not supposed to be punishment. I have spent a year being punished illegally. I really can't take it anymore. Please, Judge, help me!

Respectfully

Edgar J. Steele