Complaint Review: Joe Smith - Madison Nebraska

The following was written by Art Sobey posted by those who care..

I was convicted of two felony crimes in Madison County, Nebraska, in September, 2000. Both the charges were completely bogus. My only real crime was my failure to have a complete criminal background check done on the woman I had married 2 years earlier. Had I done that, I would have learned the truth about the child-rape case in Stevens County, Washington, some 5 years earlier. My bad!

I was first charged with the rape of Molly, a virginal 8yo child. Later, in April, 2000, I was charged with sexually assaulting the oldest of Debra's daughters, Sarah, a 15yo. The second charge, already investigated and proven to be a lie just months earlier, was resurrected so the jury pool could be poisoned, as well as bringing more weight to the attempt to force me into a plea bargain.

Both cases went to trial in September, 2000. The first case, the one involving Sarah, resulted in a conviction. My court-appointed lawyer, Harry Moore, put up no defense at all for me. After the state rested its case, Harry told me he was not going to put on any defense, and I could testify on my own behalf if I wanted to. I was angry beyond words. I might go into this case at some later time. Right now I am busy as I can be with the other case. This case was used effectively by the cast of crooks you are about to meet to poison the press and the jury pool. It was so sensational in depicting me as an evil person, that I still have trouble coping with the results. The case was overturned on direct appeal by the Nebraska Court of Appeals in February, 2002. It is perhaps the only case in Nebraska legal history where a criminal case involving sex charges and children was not retried following a reversal in the appellate courts. That is how smelly the case was, not that it is any smellier than the case which is currently on-going.

Yes, incredibly, the state refused to re-prosecute the case. My court-appointed lawyer at the time, Mark Albin, refused to force such a retrial; not that he could have forced a retrial, but he refused to try. I had not yet learned of Albin's role in the collusion I had not yet uncovered. I could have used the retrial to get into the record of the new trial all the evidence of my innocence that the state had successfully kept out of the first trial.

The two cases were inextricably linked throughout the trial process and my appellate lawyer was almost speechless that one case was overturned and the other upheld.

Following my conviction in the first case, I fired my court-appointed lawyer and acted as my own lawyer at the second trial. Yes, I knew at the time that it was a bad choice. But, I was unwilling to sit idly by and watch the biggest criminal in my case (my court-appointed hack lawyer, Harry Moore) do one more unethical thing to me. The scumbag could not even look me in the eye by the time I fired him. He had lied to me about everything in the 9 months leading up to trial. His last act was to lie to me about the law. He told me if I wanted to fire him, I couldn't have another lawyer; that I would have to defend myself. I don't know why I believed him about that, but it sounded plausible and I didn't care -- I was definitely getting rid of Harry Moore.

Of course, I was no match for the Assistant Attorney General of Nebraska, George Love. I did my best, but knew nothing about legal trial procedures and looked stupid and clumsy. I knew nothing at the time about the collusion that was determined to protect the original prosecutor, Madison County Attorney Joe Smith. At the time, I just thought the judge was an arrogant, pompous a*s, that Harry Moore was the stupidest, most inept lawyer in the entire state, that George Love was a typical, stuffed-shirt bureaucrat unable to do anything on his own except hold down a state job (Terri Nussbaum, another assistant attorney general, sat next to Love during the entire trial, telling him when to object and why, and what to do next. Had it not been for her, Love would likely have done worse than I did.), and that the state cop who testified was just another lying cop.

Back to the cast of characters. From now on, I will speak of what I know today, which is much more than I knew 9 years ago.

JOE SMITH. Joe Smith is probably the most crooked county attorney in Nebraska. He was caught stealing cable television services and he survived that. His dealings in illegal drugs, something I have firsthand knowledge of, was the focus of a federal grand jury. I don't know how Joe escaped indictment, but he certainly was guilty. Joe was involved with Judge Richard Garden (my trial judge) in a scam to keep the judge's daughter, Sue, out of prison for her many arrests for illegal drugs. Joe did this by finding new and ever more creative ways to put Sue into drug rehab programs instead of charging her for the felony crimes she kept on committing for years. I was involved in one such scam by posing, at Joe's request, as a rehab-type drug person, capable of supervising her rehab. Funny. When Sue skipped town instead of even attempting to comply with her court-ordered probation terms, and I reported it to Joe, he laughed. "You have done just fine," Joe said. "If I don't keep Sue out of Prison, the judge won't recommend me to replace him on the bench." "Just keep quiet!"

Joe is the most powerful person in Madison County. He decides who gets charged with what crime. He decides who goes free without trial, guilty or not. In the 25 years he has been the County Attorney, he has built up a web of people who owe him favors, and many of those people have lied for him in return. Thus, the web of illegal power continues to spin and strengthen itself. Joe Smith is a good man to know in Madison County, unless, like me, you learn too much about him and his corrupt base and thereby threaten him. As you read the court documents and learn more about this man, remember there is no lie he won't tell, even under oath in court, to protect himself.

Joe Smith was removed from my trial(s) several months before the trials began because of egregious misconduct that put him in the position of scuttling the state's case. It is hard to list all of Joe's misconduct, and I make no claim that I know everything now, Joe Smith's misconduct, expounded on in many current court motions, includes the following:

1. The hiding of exculpatory evidence. This included the report of the forensic examination on my personal computer which was seized by court-ordered search warrant and examined at the FBI computer crime lab for kiddy porn in St. Louis, MO. Because there was not a trace of kiddy porn or pedophile related internet activities on my personal computer, Joe continues to hide the FBI report to this day.

2. Hiding the medical exam of Molly until one day before the first trial. This is more important than it might appear. The exam, done 10 days after my arrest for raping Molly, showed Molly was still a virgin with a completely intact hymen and no signs (scarring, tearing etc.) of ever being raped or sexually penetrated in her life. The additional factor of importance is that Molly had previously accused at least three other men of raping her; Molly had accused her own biological father of raping her. The father went on trial in Stevens County, Washington, for two counts of child rape and was not convicted. Every soul in Madison County believed that Molly had been raped and otherwise sexually violated by a band of satanic cultists led by her biological father. Molly's mother was quite passionate about the harm done Molly and her other daughters in Washington. Until I was arrested, nobody checked her story. When I began checking into the past of the Nogrady family, I found out the whole story about Molly and her sisters being victimized by a satanic cult was utter rubbish. So you see, I expected any medical exam to show that Molly had been penetrated at some point in her young life. My lawyer, Public Defender Harry Moore, had received this medical report one day before my first trial and hadn't told me about it!!! I didn't find out about it until 5 days before my second trial, after firing Harry. Harry put the medical report between the pages of some statements by witnesses from the first trial in hopes I might not find it at all I guess. Both prosecutors in this trial hid all trace of the medical exam while at the same time arranging their own medical witness. This had the effect of denying me any medical witnesses at my trial. I was a prisoner in the county jail because of my conviction in the first trial and didn't know how to get a doctor to testify for me. Harry Moore was appointed as my standby counsel on the trial's first day and refused to help me in any way or answer questions like "How can I get a doctor to testify for me?"

3. Violation of my attorney-client privilege. Because the Public Defender refused to represent me at a preliminary hearing, a friend of mine hired Nebraska lawyer Ralph Smith to represent me in an effort to get the charges dropped. (For those of you who are

familiar with legal proceedings, this is correct. I didn't know I had a constitutional right to a preliminary hearing until a couple of years later.) Ralph Smith met with the prosecutor, Joe Smith, on 3-4 occasions about dropping the charges from 12-99 to 3-00. In March, 2000, Joe Smith took from the paralegal working for Ralph Smith all of my trial strategy that was being developed for my preliminary hearing. That included all the paperwork I had bought from the Washington trial (State v. Nogrady, 1994) - this was the impeachment evidence that showed the lies of Molly, Sarah and the mother, Debra Nogrady, Joe Smith also took the voluminous notes I had prepared for Ralph Smith on various people in Madison County that might have been useful to the defense at trial. I had also written out a complete recounting about my arrest and the silly things that followed it. There was an almost-complete trial strategy outline, complete with anticipated witnesses etc. I know now that this taking of the defense trial strategy by intent is a constitutional violation of the highest order, one that usually results in a dismissal of all charges. When I complained to Harry Moore, repeatedly and vociferously over the next few months about the theft, Harry mocked me as an idiot - "That wasn't too hard to figure out anyway" and "Any fool could have figured that out", etc. If Harry had just filed a motion in court about this one issue, I probably wouldn't have even gone to trial. Instead, Joe Smith kept everything he had stolen, shared it with the special prosecutor appointed to take his place, and even refused to give it back to me when I fired Harry and acted pro se at m second trial.

4. Joe Smith had been seduced by my wife, Debra Nogrady, almost 15 months before I was arrested. I knew all about it from the first day. 'Debra and I pursued an "open marriage" relationship. We regularly went to swinging parties. Debra is a bisexual. All of this appealed to Joe Smith, and he was an easy target. This is a part of the misconduct that got Joe removed from my case; sadly he had almost 6 months to really mess me around. Joe did many favors for Debra to make her a prominent part of the Madison County law enforcement operation. Because of Debra's all-but-empty resume, Joe had her phony up a 15 year resume of criminal law enforcement work with sexual assault and child victims. It was all B.S. Joe got Debra work teaching local police about domestic violence and sexual assault victims. (Debra held a position as a domestic violence counselor for about a year before being fired for missing too much work and working too close to Joe. After Debra was fired, Joe backed her for a part-time job as a counselor to troubled teens in the diversion program at the local high school. Joe did his best to get her the job despite knowing Debra was openly bisexual, sexually troubled, and particularly enjoyed having sex with teenagers.

5. Joe colluded with my court-appointed lawyer, Public Defender Harry Moore, to hide his misconduct and keep the sexual affair with my wife from becoming known. This one act alone, engaging in collusion with my lawyer, meant my lawyer was conflicted in his representation of me. Because my lawyer was working for Joe Smith, it was worse than having no lawyer at all. As time passed, and the trial drew closer, my lawyer was drawn farther and farther into the collusion. In fact, without Harry Moore's betrayal of me, I would not be where I am today

6. There are more acts of misconduct by Joe Smith, but this will be enough to get the discussion started and open the dialogue on InjusticeinNebraska.com website.

HARRY MOORE.

Harry was the critical component of the collusion to protect Joe Smith and prevent disclosure of Joe's extensive misconduct. I found out later that there were other times, likely many times, where the two had cooperated in similar fashion to protect Joe Smith from his propensity to engage in misconduct in the pursuit of criminal trials. At the time, it didn't occur to me that such a massive collusion was working against me. I never even suspected it. As most Americans have been taught to believe, I trusted in the inherent fairness and honesty of both the criminal justice system and the people who work in its framework. I just thought Harry was the dumbest lawyer in North America, and that it was just my bad fortune to have caught him as my lawyer.

Harry lied to me about almost everything as time passed and trial drew closer. I argued and argued, and begged him to allow me to work with him to develop a trial strategy. Harry rebuffed every attempt on my part to work with him, and began dodging me when I would call or visit his office.

Harry Moore is scum. He is a most ineffectual man. He is without any self confidence at all. He is a midget among midgets despite his height of 6 feet or so.

I am sure Harry's cooperation with the county attorney to sell out his clients began more than 10 years before my case came along. Harry's willing cooperation has resulted in the convictions of many that were innocent, the over-punishment of some who were actually guilty, and the mishandling of many cases where the defendant actually could have been helped had they had an honest advocate working for them instead of someone selling them out.

One of the reasons Harry sold out his clients was because he was incompetent and unable to represent them effectively. Thus, working for Joe Smith provided him job protection as long as he didn't rock the boat. About a week before my first trial, Harry had made Joe angry about something. As a result, Joe cancelled all the plea bargains the two had arranged. This was how Joe had come to ultimately gain complete control of Harry; the cancelling of all plea bargains. Harry was not only inept as a trial lawyer; he was never prepared to go to trial, especially after reaching a plea bargain. Whatever Harry had done, that annoyed Joe enough to cancel all existing plea bargains, was quickly corrected by Harry. The next day, all plea bargains were reinstalled.

By the time Harry Moore got me for a client, he was nothing more than a pompous shell of a real man. With any reasonably competent lawyer representing me as an ethical legal advocate, my release or acquittal was all but assured. The exculpatory evidence being hidden by Joe Smith, and ultimately George Love, could have been quickly produced by simply filing a motion for discovery in court. Harry never did that. The impeachment evidence from the Washington case would have been overpowering if presented at trial instead of being suppressed. The medical exam report, in combination with the impeachment evidence from Washington, would have showed that a child who had falsely accused at least three (there may have actually been more than the known three) other men of raping her before me, and who was still an untouched virgin - never sexually penetrated ten days after my arrest, was a most accomplished liar. Of course, it was the mother, Debra Nogrady, who was the force behind all the false accusations of rape by her daughters. Instead, I got a lawyer whose plan was to present no defense at all... NONE!!! As soon as the prosecution finished their case, Harry rested the defense case without any presentation at all. That's what he did in the first case, and what he planned to do in the second case too, before I fired him.

There is much more I could tell you about Harry Moore, but this is hopefully enough for now, and enough for you to understand references to Harry and Harry's work.

GEORGE LOVE.

Love was the Assistant Attorney General appointed to take the place of Joe Smith when Smith's misconduct forced him off the case. At first I was ecstatic that a new prosecutor had been appointed to replace Smith. My hopes were quickly dashed when George Love did not investigate Smith's misconduct, as I had hoped he would. Love simply picked up where Smith left off and continued to hide the exculpatory evidence Smith had been hiding. Love quickly joined in the collusion to protect Joe Smith's misconduct from being revealed and poisoning the case against me. Love, undoubtedly guided and otherwise aided by the dishonest Joe Smith, took control of Harry Moore and worked with Harry to prevent the exculpatory evidence from ever reaching trial; the same with the troublesome impeachment evidence of the previous false accusations by the Nogrady tribe.

While it is hard to call one act of ethical misconduct more serious, and while the cover-up of Joe Smith's raid on the defense trial strategy was perhaps the most legally important misconduct of all, George Love's role in withholding the medical report on Molly was his deepest personal misconduct because he personally participated in the denial of required exculpatory discovery evidence. Love not only got his hands dirty in hiding the medical report of Molly's virginity, but he lied to the judge in court on the day of trial about turning all evidence over to the defense months earlier. Love told the judge that all discovery had been accomplished 5 months before the trial (in May, 2000) knowing he had turned over the medical report just a week or so earlier. Harry Moore got the medical report of Molly's physical exam - colposcopy - one day before the first trial began; on the day the pretrial motion in limine regarding the Washington evidence was held.

Love is not part of the Madison County clique of crooks like Joe Smith, Harry Moore, Judge Garden, Investigator Thorson et al are. Love's misconduct was caused by his lack of intestinal fortitude in exposing the misconduct of the others once he learned of it. Love's failure to report the misconduct, a requirement of Nebraska Rules of Professional Ethics, makes him as guilty as those who actively participated in the cover-up of Joe Smith's misconduct in the beginning.

Love also wrote false and misleading argument in his briefing in this case on both direct appeal and the first postconviction action. The system of justice of which many Americans are still proud requires ethical conduct from ALL the court's actors in criminal trials. While it might be appealing to engage in misconduct to convict someone you actually believe to be guilty, such misconduct creates the basis for the destruction of the law and its system of enforcement. No wonder so many innocent people are in prison.

Judge RICHARD GARDEN.

It is hard to accurately judge the extent of Garden's misconduct over the course of time because most of it took place in the privacy of his office without being recorded. There are just the few examples that have leaked out; the protection of his daughter through misconduct with the County Attorney, the misconduct in protecting Richard Krepla in the Hunt case(s), and the protection of Joe Smith in my case. Given the gravity of those three known actions involving Garden and his office as judge, it is more than likely that there are many other perversions of justice that occurred in his court. Garden is retired now, and it's unlikely that anyone in Nebraska is interested in going after him.

The Hunt case is a near match to my case. In the Hunt case, Garden had a clear duty to report, immediately, the fact that Krepla had falsified the police report on the Hunt case in order to remove what was exculpatory evidence from the report. Garden did nothing except enlist the defense counsel and the man appointed as special prosecutor as members of the collusion to protect Krepla's reputation. The cover-up went on for 15 years before being discovered, and finally reported. In the meantime, Krepla went from being an ethically-challenged prosecutor, to being a county judge in front of whom the others still practice today. That is the gold standard of justice in Madison County - cheat and become a judge.

Molly's mother, Debra Nogrady, or whatever her name is today, is a twisted sexual freak who is still gaining revenge on men for her own twisted reasons. Debra gets her own page on this website soon. Only time will tell what damage she wreaked on her own daughters by involving them in so many instances of false accusations of sexual crimes by men. Debra is a psychopath by any definition of the term.

One more thing about Harry Moore... Harry's failure to defend me in the first trial has had devastating consequences for me. The witnesses from my past were manipulated and lied to in order to induce them to tell incredible lies about me. As dysfunctional children of single mothers who were unable to discipline or control them, these children tormented my life when I knew them. As young dysfunctional women - the products of broken homes and questionable upbringing - they got their revenge on me with their lies at the first trial. Because Harry refused to take the time to incorporate into a defense all that I knew about them, and to uncover and expose the lies they had already told in their statements, and because Harry allowed them to testify without any serious cross examination, their false stories became the truth as the press saw it and told it to the world. Those stories, all false and untrue, are still believed by anyone who has read about my case. These lies and distortions, and the perjury committed by those who told the lies under oath in court, are among the reasons the state refused to retry the first case once it was overturned on direct appeal. Still, to this day, whenever the press writes anything on my case, it always starts off with some reference to the lies told by these women.

None of what happened to me could have happened without the complete betrayal of me by Harry Moore. Any reasonably competent lawyer could have defended me and been successful. It took the sellout done by Harry Moore to protect his friend and benefactor, Joe Smith, to convict me and bury me in prison. Harry's bid for reelection as Public Defender was not successful a few years ago. It might have been his utter incompetence in a prominent bank robbery trial or it may be he had used up his usefulness as a stooge for the County Attorney. Being locked up in prison restricts ones view of the world and many other things.

FreeSobey

Humble, Texas

U.S.A.