Wednesday Writs: The First Texas Abortion Bounty Lawsuit

WW1: The first lawsuit has been filed under the Texas abortion bounty hunting law, and it is a doozy befitting of the absurd statute it invokes.

The Plaintiff is an Arkansas man named Oscar Stilley, a former lawyer and federally convicted felon, who is serving his sentence for tax fraud on home confinement. He runs his own website, “Busting the Feds”, which states its mission as helping you “effectively defend yourself against federal criminal charges”, something he was apparently unable to do himself. By Stilley’s own admission, he does not personally oppose abortion, and wants to challenge the law with which he disagrees:

I woke up this morning…and I saw a story about this doctor, Dr. Braid. He’s obviously a man of principle and courage and it just made me mad to see the trick bag they put him in and I just decided: I’m going to file a lawsuit. We’re going to get an answer, I want to see what the law is.

Should he win, he’s ok with that, too. Said Stilley: “If the state of Texas decided it’s going to give a $10,000 bounty, why shouldn’t I get that 10,000 bounty?”

The defendant in the case is Dr. Alan Braid, whose opinion piece in the Washington Post over the weekend admitted he had performed a first trimester, post-6 week abortion on September 6, five days after the law took effect.

Our case of the week, Stilley v Baird, was filed in Bexar County, where Dr. Baird operates his clinic in San Antonio.  The lawsuit itself is a must-read (and blessedly short), but here are some highlights:

3. Plaintiff is a disbarred and disgraced former Arkansas lawyer, residing at the address set
forth at the bottom of this complaint.

4. Plaintiff is currently on home confinement, in the custody of the United States
Department of Justice-Federal Bureau of Prisons, (DOJ-FBOP) serving the 12 year of a 15 year federal sentence on utterly fraudulent federal charges of “tax evasion” and “conspiracy,” all of which repeatedly changed and morphed away from the purported grand jury indictment, to whatever new theory the government chose to espouse at a given time. Even so, the final judgment and commitment order was based upon false testimony, claimed evidence which was clearly contradicted by the record, etc., all of which the government steadfastly refuses to acknowledge and correct despite ethical obligations promptly so to do.

5. Plaintiff has consistently demanded due process, and continues his attack on the baseless
felony conviction and sentence that has placed him in various federal prisons, and now on home confinement. Plaintiff periodically makes mention of these efforts at www.bustingthefeds.com, often but not exclusively on the blog at that website.

6. Plaintiff currently carries the appellation “federal felon,” but remains confident that he
will eventually receive total exoneration of all counts of conviction.

7. Plaintiff despite all his legal troubles is NOT an officer or employee of any state or local
governmental entity of the great State of Texas.

Read that last sentence again: despite all his legal troubles, he is not an officer or employee of the Texas government.

16. On information and belief, Defendant is kind and patient and helpful toward bastards, but ideologically opposed to forcing any woman to produce another bastard against her own free will.

17. On information and belief, Defendant has some understanding of the cruelty and abuse
heaped upon bastards and social misfits, in Texas prisons.

18. On information and belief, Defendant is ideologically opposed to cruelty and abuse of
persons based upon their status as bastards or social misfits.

19. On information and belief, Defendant would willingly devote substantial parts of his own
personal resources, to assist in improving the correctional outcomes of Texas state prisons.

20. On information and belief, Defendant is thoroughly convinced that his acts, which form
the basis for this lawsuit, contribute mightily to human happiness and the advancement of human society.

21. On information and belief, Defendant believes that his Elohim (“mighty ones,” AKA
“God” is entirely capable of giving a new body to replace a defective fetus, in the here and now, and not only “when you die bye and bye.”

***

25. Plaintiff on the morning of September 20, 2021 placed a call to the office of Defendant,
to inquire whether or not Defendant might repent of his ideology as well as his deeds, and agree never to perform another abortion contrary to the enactments of the Texas legislature in general, and the requirements of Senate Bill 8 in particular.

26. Plaintiff wasn’t able to secure any such agreement despite respectful efforts.

I tip my hat to eccentric old (disgraced, disbarred) lawyers with time to kill and just enough skill and knowledge to cause trouble. A suit like Stilley’s is the only way this law is going to be adequately challenged, though his is likely only the first of many, more sincere efforts to follow.

WW2: Cyber Ninjas, the totally reputable contractor currently conducting an “audit” of the 2020 election results in Arizona, is subject to be sued under the state’s open records law, says Maricopa County Superior Court Judge John Hannah, despite the company’s claims to the contrary. The judge ruled that the company was being paid with public money “which makes the organization a ‘public body’ for purposes of the statute,” and was the custodian of public records, paving the way for record requesters to seek legal recourse if their requests are denied.

WW3: A court in Portland, Oregon says law enforcement violated a law which “prohibits police from collecting or maintaining information about the political, religious or social views, associations or activities of people who are not suspected of criminal activity” when they live-streamed Black Lives Matter protests.

WW4: The other day my middle schooler told me someone at his school stole the soap dispensers out of all the boys’ bathrooms. I thought it was stupid kids engaging in the age old teen activity, vandalism. Turns out it is, like many scourges of the modern day, a TikTok thing. Yukon Public Schools in Oklahoma is filing charges against these junior misdemeanants, and no doubt others will follow this trend, too.

WW5: The trial of alleged “Theranos” fraud perpetrator Elizabeth Holmes is in its third week out in California. The prosecution paints a picture of a villain, the defense counters by portraying Holmes as an idealistic underdog. Employees describe an atmosphere of intimidation and deception.

WW6: Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko died or radiation poisoning in 2006 after drinking tea laced with a radioactive compound called polonium-210. This week, the European Court of Human Rights came to the conclusion most of the rest of the world has held for the last 15 years: the Russian government killed Litvinenko.

WW7: A Loudon County Virginia judge jailed a domestic violence victim for contempt because she smoked pot – which is legal in Virginia – before her testimony. The judge made his own inquiry of the woman without prompting by prosecutors or law enforcement, and without explaining to the woman her constitutional rights against self-incrimination. The judge says the woman was incoherent on the witness stand, an opinion with which even prosecutors disagree.

WW8: In another case of a judge behaving badly in a domestic violence hearing: You can’t punch women, but you should let them know you’re the man and you’re in control, according to a now-suspended New Jersey Supreme Court Judge to a defendant before him on domestic violence charges.