Submitted by Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
John Thompson spent 18 years in prison, 14 of them on death row, following convictions for attempted armed robbery and murder in separate incidents. A scant month before the scheduled execution, an investigator hired by Thompson’s lawyers made a startling discovery in the crime lab archives: a lab report which completely exonerated Thompson on the attempted robbery charge.The report contained results of a test conducted on blood left by the robber on the clothing of one of the victims. The robber had type B blood. Thompson’s is type O.
In Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963), the Supreme Court held that a prosecutor has a duty to disclose exculpatory evidence to the accused. The prosecutor in Thompson’s attempted robbery case deliberately withheld the test results from defense counsel. At his subsequent trial on the murder charge, Thompson understandably declined to testify so that the attempted robbery conviction could not be used for impeachment purposes.
In due course both convictions were overturned. A second trial on the murder charge produced a defense verdict after only 35 minutes of jury deliberation. Thompson thereupon sued Harry Connick, the New Orleans district attorney, under several theories, including a violation of Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871. The jury awarded Thompson $1,000,000.00 for each year spent on death row, a total of $14,000,000.00. The verdict was affirmed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Thompson will never see a dime of his award. In a 5-4 decision announced on March 29th, the Supreme Court reversed the Fifth Circuit. Writing for the majority, Justice Thomas found the evidence of prosecutorial misconduct was insufficient to support a conclusion that the district attorney had been “deliberately indifferent” to his duty to insure that prosecutors in his office adhered to the requirements of the Brady rule.
Justice Thomas reaches his conclusion by framing the issue in a manner which admits of no alternative result. The sole question for the court, he says, is whether Section 1983 liability may be based upon “a single Brady violation.” Of course it can’t. The reason is that a district attorney cannot be held liable for the actions of his subordinates under the theory of respondeat superior. Instead, it was necessary for Thompson to establish a pattern of such violations in Connick’s office sufficient to permit a conclusion that Connick was deliberately indifferent to the need to adequately train his staff on the Brady requirements.
But Justice Thomas ignores substantial evidence in the record that Connick’s office was a virtual cesspool of prosecutorial misconduct. Indeed, at least four prosecutors were aware of the withheld evidence in Thompson’s armed robbery trial. The responsible prosecutor had actually confessed to a colleague that he had withheld the lab report. Connick had had a number of prior convictions reversed for Brady violations. Connick himself openly admitted to never having cracked a law book subsequent to becoming district attorney in 1974.
Justice Thomas finds this record unpersuasive because, as he notes, none of the previous Brady violations “involved failure to disclose blood evidence, a crime lab report, or physical or scientific evidence of any kind.” Accordingly, he concludes, Connick could not have been on notice of the need to train his staff concerning the specific violation in Thompson’s case. Besides, he continues, prosecutors are trained attorneys who can be expected to know and understand their obligations. I don’t know how many potential violations exist in the Brady universe, but presumably Justice Thomas would require that Connick’s prosecutors commit all of them before “deliberate indifference” might be inferred.
The decision in this case is not so much about law as it is about a public policy position intended to impose the most formidable barriers possible to pursuing a Section 1983 claim against a state agency. I prefer to call it the doctrine of prosecutorial impunity.
I posted three times on this blog re Rule 16(c), which was the basis of USCourts survey of federal judges on duty to disclose exculpatory evidence. Not one lawyer nor the author mentioned Rule 16 they were so caught up with trying to destroy my credibility as someone who can actually read even if I didn’t go to law school.
In this blog, various people who claimed to be lawyers made comments like:
“181, April 14, 2011 at 3:44 pm
“No one with a legal background gives a shit what you think, Kay.” Buddha Is Laughing”
I posted three comments about Rule 16 including
“170, April 14, 2011 at 12:08 pm
170 Kay Sieverding
“In Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Rule 16. Discovery and Inspection (c) Continuing Duty to Disclose.
A party who discovers additional evidence or material before or during trial must promptly disclose its existence to the other party or the court if: (1) the evidence or material is subject to discovery or inspection under this rule; and (2) the other party previously requested, or the court ordered, its production.
I am not a lawyer but I think this means that if the government didn’t rely on the blood, sperm or other evidence to convict that it can suppress evidence that the defense lawyer didn’t request. According to the notes to Rule 16, the defense can’t just demand discovery of all evidence. So therefore according to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, it appears to be legal to suppress exculpatory evidence. Rule 16 should be revised to require disclosure of exculpatory evidence even if not requested.”
comment 180 “I looked at Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure Rule 16(c) which I think needs to be revised to include a mandatory release of exculpatory evidence. No
one has acknowledged this citation. That is something we could actually draft a proposed revision to and send to the House and Senate judiciary committees. That’s
actually something we as bloggers could really do that could make a difference to those charged with a federal offense. That wouldn’t have directly helped John Thompson
since he was charged in state court but if federal law was changed, state law wouldprobably follow.”
Comment 198 “What do you think of the idea of amending Fed. Rules Crim Proc Rule 16(c) to require disclosure of exculpatory evidence?”
Buddha et al. should apologize to me. I didn’t go to law school, but I can and do read.
Federal Judges Surveyed on Government’s Duty to Disclose Exculpatory Evidence
April 21, 2011
http://www.uscourts.gov/News/NewsView/11-04-21/Federal_Judges_Surveyed_on_Government_s_Duty_to_Disclose_Exculpatory_Evidence.aspx
The nation’s federal judges were evenly divided when asked whether a federal rule of criminal procedure should be amended to incorporate the government’s constitutional duty to provide exculpatory evidence to criminal defendants, a recently published survey shows.
Exculpatory evidence indicates that a defendant may not have committed the crime.
The Federal Judicial Center surveyed all federal district and magistrate judges, U.S. Attorney’s offices, and federal defenders in June 2010, along with a sample of defense attorneys in criminal cases that terminated in calendar year 2009.
The survey’s findings are available on the FJC’s website.
Forty-three percent of the judges (644 of 1,505) completed the online survey. The judges were evenly split whether Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 16, which governs discovery and inspection of evidence, needs to be amended to incorporate the constitutional duty to disclose exculpatory evidence.
That duty was first articulated in the Supreme Court’s landmark 1963 decision in Brady v. Maryland.
Among the survey’s other findings:
More than 90 percent of defense attorneys favored an amendment to Rule 16, while the Department of Justice opposes any type of amendment.
Eighty-eight percent of judges said federal prosecutors usually or always follow a consistent approach to disclosure.
Over 60 percent of judges reported having no cases during the past five years in which they concluded that a federal prosecutor or defense attorney had failed to comply with disclosure obligations.
AY,
You’re right… Who knows…
anon nurse,
Surely you are not suggesting that Cops, Detectives and Prosecutors would ever cover up evidence that would go to prove a person did not commit a crime? Well if they did do such a thing and I am not suggesting that they would, the person convicted must have done something or else they would not be convicted of this crime……
Yeah right…. I would even suggest that there are people in prison that plead guilty to avoid longer jail time exposures….
I have known dirty cops, prosecutors and detectives…yes…the person in this article may not have done anything…..
Evidence, Exculpatory and Unheard
By JIM DWYER
Published: April 21, 2011
“Now the men, Everton Wagstaffe and Reginald Connor, have filed motions in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, arguing that the verdict should be thrown out on the grounds that the police and the prosecutors covered up evidence that would have saved them from a guilty verdict in a crime they had nothing to do with.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/nyregion/evidence-in-92-kidnapping-covered-up-lawyers-say.html?hp
Otteray Scribe 1, April 17, 2011 at 12:41 am
Brian, all the mental health professions, as well as law and medicine, are licensed professions. Just as you are a licensed engineer. Did you ever stop to think why the State requires a license for a professional to practice.
Let me answer that for you. IT IS TO GUARANTEE THE PRACTITIONER HAS BEEN SCREENED FOR QUALITY CONTROL AND TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC FROM CHARLATANS AND THE INCOMPETENT!
You keep trying to tell people who spent a lifetime going to school and practicing their profession how you can do it better. Brian, I have just as much alphabet soup after my name as you do, maybe more. So does BIL. What makes you, who apparently gained your understanding of psychology and law by having lunch with someone, know more about it than I do. Or BIL, or any of the other professionals here.
Brian, If I promise to not practice engineering, how about you stop trying to be a psychiatrist or lawyer? I do not know what I am doing if I try to take on an engineering project and would be a danger to the public. So, if you try to practice other people’s professions…..
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Had certain members of the Psychiatry Profession not poisoned me into a profound dementia with psychotropic medications appropriate only for conditions I never had, because of errors of diagnosis, I would have continued to leave the Psychiatry Profession to its own devices.
However, some members of the Psychiatry Profession not only mis-diagnosed me, but insisted, over my strong protests, that they knew me, because of their professional training, better than I knew myself.
Being poisoned into a severe dementia against my protests led me to work at understanding how very caring and highly educated people could make such terrible blunders.
Until I was poisoned into a severe dementia (oriented times zero), I let psychiatry take care of itself. However, once the Psychiatry Profession had brought into my life sufficent damage, it became a valid concern of mine to understand why, and, if possible, to learn what I could as to whether better alternatives might eventually be possible.
Until, after our son and daughter-in-law were killed and the Law Profession set out as though with relentless will to destroy my family, I allowed the Law Profession to take care of itself. Alas, the Law Profession invited (unwittingly?) my attention by its catastrophically damaging work done to my family.
I went to the Psychiatry Profession to find a safe place (asylum in the original sense) to sort out why morphine had not only properly controlled post-surgical pain, but had flung me into what I experienced as an iatrogenic psychosis. Some four year of intensive psychoanalytic work led to the recognition that I had been massively traumatized as a second grade child because I did not know how to tell lies on command. (I have never yet learned that, and guess that I would die before I could learn that traditional social skill.)
By 1993, as indicated in the letter from Irving F. Miller, Ph.D., P.E., the text of which I already put out on the Internet, it was clear that my work if valid, would likely undermine many established views.
Came 1997-1998, and the law suits drafted by Door County Attorney James O. Ebbeson, and the financially catastrophic effects of those lawsuits on my family, and I found it necessary, in accord with my understanding of engineering ethics and my area(s) of competence in engineering and bioengineering, to study what leads decent people to act with horrid indecency toward some people with whom an adversarial relationship is intentionally created.
I do not require that attorneys or psychiatrists become engineers, nor do I require that attorneys or psychiatrists obey rules established by engineers. Alas, the Law Profession, through some of its members, treated me, and my family, with what I observed to be unmitigated hatred, and, only because my wife and I were sued after an accident which we did not cause and which we could not prevent, did my attention get drawn to the horrors some members of the Law Profession inflict on those not of the Law Profession.
Trash me, and I do not trash the Law Profession in return, I merely describe my experiences in being so trashed as well as I am able to describe them.
If my use of word is poor, I am autistic, and I do not “think in words.”
Life is sometimes difficult.
Late Saturday, I noticed some slight discomfort at one of the surgical sites of the surgical efforts directed toward cancer-prevention because I have a variation of the gene for familial adenomatous polyposis. By Sunday afternoon, yesterday, I was in the Emergency Room Area of Door County Memorial Hospital, for some five hours or so. This morning, before 6:00 AM, I was back in the ER for follow up, and now have an appointment to see a physician in Green Bay, because it appears that serious complications of surgery done over twenty years ago may have materialized.
The ER physician, after consulting a specialist, observed that the surgery done over twenty years ago may not have been done optimally. Suppose I find that there was a surgical mess-up? Suppose the statute of limitations had not run out? Would I entertain making an effort through the law profession for compensation? No, not after what some members of the Law Profession did to my family.
I would guess that almost every attorney and almost every psychiatrist can safely ignore Ohm’s Law with impunity. No engineer I have ever known would set out to incarcerate an attorney for not understanding Ohm’s Law. That said, if the Law Profession did not require those not in the Law Profession to pay any notice of the rules of the Law Profession, I would have no issue with the Law Profession.
It is the overlap of the Law Profession with the lives of those not of the Law Profession which has created the difficulties I have set out to describe having encountered.
However, in my work as an engineer, I share what I do with those with whom I work, and I never expect anyone to do anything according to my professional knowledge or understanding unless I have shared my knowledge and understanding sufficiently well that the person or persons with whom I am working is able to independently validate the worth of my work for those whom I am helping.
I never get to where, asked a serious question about my work, my answer is, “I don’t know,” as happened when I asked an attorney, “What is the law,” and the attorney replied, “I don’t know.” My professional competence is such that I have never answered, “I don’t know,” to a serious question raised by someone I am helping.
Tell me what the law is, so that I can know and understand the law well enough to never be in violation of any law, and I will cease my protest efforts against what I experience as a severe abuse of entrapment.
Demonstrate one mistake actually made and demonstrate the achievable process through which the mistake made could have been avoided after it had already been made, and I will avow that my doctoral thesis is seriously flawed.
Every sort of authoritarian coercive intimidation directed my way is quite exactly what my research leads me to expect if the research is truly valid.
For every person I have heard of, who, like me, raises objections to subjectively experienced abuse, there are many more who have been so damaged by that to which I object that they dare not object.
I have yet to hear of a tyrant who, as best I could tell, was not sincere in believing the person was not a tyrant.
By attempting to inflict what I experience as time-corrupted learning onto me and into my life, the Law Profession has truly earned the attention I give to it.
My work was properly peer-reviewed by my thesis committee and my qualifications as a professional engineer were properly evaluated, in the public safety interest, in Wisconsin.
I welcome differences of opinion and understanding as ways of increasing human understanding and the quality of life people may have.
For all I yet know or understand, my work may partly be about one of the most significant of all civil rights issues yet to arise, the right of a person to be truthful with self and with others.
First of all I realized that I made a typo in my long post and said economic damages in one place where I meant emotional damages.
That alone is one reason to have other people involved in drafting pleadings. My husband will add paragraphs and ideas but he is not necessarily a reliable proof reader. So the chance that he would have picked that up is maybe 50%.
One interesting fact is that there are all sorts of legal writers out there who are not attorneys and offer their services solely to attorneys. But they are worried about being cited for unauthorized practice of law if they sell services to non attorneys. Some of them are disbarred attorneys too. Anyway, I looked at the ABA magazine a few years ago and there were a bunch of classified advertisements offering legal writing services by people who were not licensed.
I read part of the documents of the current Supreme Court pleadings and they were really useful. They reminded me that we should frame it explicitly in terms of statutory construction. The case can be a template for us.
There are pros and cons to hiring a law-firm and if we did hire one the contract terms could be more or less favorable for us.
The Privacy Act has a statutory authorization for payment of attorney fees. Theoretically the attorney fees wouldn’t affect how much we got.
In the past what has always seemed to me to work best is to take the road that is good public policy. In this case, either pro se or represented could be good public policy. A pro se win could advance pro se rights. A law-firm could build up expertise on Privacy Act law at government expense and then serve as a watchdog on government making themselves available to sue the government again representing someone else. There are privacy acts in other countries too. The whole idea of placing constraints on the governments use of computers to control the boundaries of government’s interaction with individuals is really the forefront of civil rights law. If I got some smart lawyers studying it from that perspective it could make a big difference to the future of the world. Whereas, if we do it alone, and then get in a car accident, or our car is blown up, then the opportunity is lost.
I’m going to go back and read the rest of the stuff I printed out last night and then I am going to buy a box of paper and print out the government’s petition. Then I am going into PACER and looking up that case and downloading the pleadings at 8 cents a page or $2.40 a document and I am going to sit in a comfortable chair and read them while making notes in the margins.
Then what I am going to do is try to draft it out as best I can and circulate it while I wait for more pleadings in the S.C. case, which are due in less than one month — 5/16
I’m just going to try to take one step at a time and if I make a mistake I will fix it.
O.S. I think you are completely wrong the way you are lecturing Brian. Protecting the public by licensing lawyers is one subject and leads directly to the subject of attorney regulation. The existing mechanisms were obviously inadequate as shown by the empirical evidence of the amount and extent of lawyers involved in various criminal activities in the last decade.
Protecting the public through implementation of the Privacy Act involves multi disciplinary expertise. We are obviously in many ways at crossroads in rights and privacy. We need engineers, psychologists, etc and also real life experience to get us to the best place for rights.
The government is fighting Bivens actions. (A Bivens action is one in which you sue a particular government employee for violation of constitutional rights). In my case, I don’t know the name of the guy who created and entered the JABS records. Practically everything the government sent me was redacted and it looks like they didn’t keep the password records and audit trails that they were supposed to. The Privacy Act is better anyway because it is through systems of records requirements that we WILL preserve our rights and the rights of future generations.
My husband and I basically “own” our cause of action. We are multi disciplinary people and we want multi disciplinary input.
Brian, all the mental health professions, as well as law and medicine, are licensed professions. Just as you are a licensed engineer. Did you ever stop to think why the State requires a license for a professional to practice.
Let me answer that for you. IT IS TO GUARANTEE THE PRACTITIONER HAS BEEN SCREENED FOR QUALITY CONTROL AND TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC FROM CHARLATANS AND THE INCOMPETENT!
You keep trying to tell people who spent a lifetime going to school and practicing their profession how you can do it better. Brian, I have just as much alphabet soup after my name as you do, maybe more. So does BIL. What makes you, who apparently gained your understanding of psychology and law by having lunch with someone, know more about it than I do. Or BIL, or any of the other professionals here.
Brian, If I promise to not practice engineering, how about you stop trying to be a psychiatrist or lawyer? I do not know what I am doing if I try to take on an engineering project and would be a danger to the public. So, if you try to practice other people’s professions…..
And the truth is that neither of you know what you are talking about. If you want nice? Buy a puppy.
Were it not for my family having been trashed by the legal system for the crime of adopting an eleven year old boy who was said to be in need of a decent home, I might think that Kay is wrong to do what she is doing.
Were it not for Woosty’s still a Cat being trashed by legal system professionals for treating Kay with decency, I might harbor some residual doubts about what I find to be a pre-historic error about the nature of evolution which I surmise has innocently trapped (some?) members of the law profession in a form of murderous deception, I would have far more doubt regarding my bioengineering research findings than I now have, because the way some people whom I believe to be members of he law profession have treated Kay, Woosty’s still a Cat, and me, has erased almost the whole realm of doubt I had before beginning to post comments here.
Had I intended (and I cam with no such intent) to find, on this Turley blawg, the strongest evidence I have yet found that no mistake ever made either could or should have been avoided, what has happened here in the past few months is turning into a remarkable set of research findings regarding socialization trauma and its effects.
The view of some professional engineers and engineering professors, to the effect that engineering may be the only profession with methods capable of solving the most difficult of human social problems has, in my view, been profoundly demonstrated here through the (overbearing?) tactics used by some folks who state that they have J.D. (or equivalent) law profession standing.
The predicament at hand is not new, particularly for people who have sufficiently read Dickens… “Mr Bumble…if the law supposes that…”
There may be many lawyers. There are far more non-lawyers.
I am adamantly non-violent, and do not retaliate. Not everyone is like me. To share difficult personal experiences is not retaliation.
Truth has a way of telling of its presence, regardless of how much truth may be hated.
Kay, do what you feel you must, but remember, you are tickling the tail of the dragon.
Whatever, enabler.
“Get some support from someone who is NOT connected to the legal system”
does not look like, as you say; “That’s encouraging her to go full speed ahead.
On her own. “, to me. It looks like saying what you yourself were saying ie; get some help.
I rarely throw tantrums but I do get upset when I am falsly accused of behaviors I haven’t indulge in…by people who do…
now I’m cranky and I don’t see where any good can come of furthering this tonight so go find somebody else to jump on.
Well then. If you want to play it that way . . .
“and Kay dear….when you are dealing with thugs, threatening to kill yourself is nothing more than doing their own dirty work for them. Get some support from someone who is NOT connected to the legal system….they can’t clean up a mess they are afraid to even look at. People who say they are ‘annoyed’ and “you are nuts” and other off putting things are only saying…’too scared’, “I can’t handle this”, and “this is too big for me” and you are being cruel not to notice it. Don’t be so awfully mean to the lawyers.” – Woosty’s still a Cat 1, April 15, 2011 at 11:11 am
That’s encouraging her to go full speed ahead.
On her own.
By supposing motives or rationales that are not there in people who have given her good advice whether you like the advice or not.
Good advice like “hire an attorney before you get yourself in more trouble”.
You’ve said you are a nurse. Nurses are licensed too. Are you familiar with the Nightingale Pledge? It in part states “I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug.”
By encouraging Kay to proceed on her own – despite warnings from other professionals in the appropriate fields that in doing so she runs the real risk of effects not only financially and legally deleterious, but most certainly emotionally deleterious and possibly physically deleterious – you who lives in a glass house are throwing stones while urging someone into likely deleterious actions.
If she were standing on a bridge, you might as well be saying “Go ahead and jump! Maybe you can fly!” despite the physicist standing next to you saying “Uh, no. She can’t really fly.”
So why don’t you take your own advice about fornication.
Since you want to play that way.
Now get mad and throw another tantrum if you like.
It makes no difference to me.
Law is a huge subject. Most lawyers work where the money is. And that is not civil rights lawsuits nor Privacy
Act lawsuits. There really just aren’t that many of them.
I tried a lawyers’ website where you pay for advice and they didn’t have a clue. It was like they never heard of the Privacy Act. And they weren’t prepared to discuss the equitable powers of the court. They were prepared to discuss divorce, DUI, stuff that affects a lot of people.
I have two goals: 1.) take care of my family 2.) use the unfortunate situation I found in for the public good as I conceive it.
I did make some progress tonight. I went on DOJ’s website and searched on “Data Integrity Board” and looked up the 5 hits. One of them was Supreme Court filings in another Privacy Act lawsuit. I printed out over 100 pages and have more to print. I can’t read that much on-line; I need to print it. I’m still going through it.
From DOJ’s website, I got a lawyer written Privacy Act complaint part of which I am going to copy and paste into my document and part of which I am going to copy for form. Then this party also won in the appellate court on the issue of whether emotional damages can be compensated under the Privacy Act. The party didn’t claim any economic damages. The district court dismissed his claim but the Court of Appeals overrode him.
The government appealed that to the S.C. and it is in progress
Federal Aviation Administration, et al., Petitioners
v.
Stanmore Cawthon Cooper
I went from the DOJ website to the S.C. website and found the docket there.
Apr 7 2011 Order further extending time to file response to petition to and including May 16, 2011.
Of course I have more damages than just emotional damages and I want to base my damages on the face value of the lawsuits that the USMS intervened with but having a decision that economic damages alone suffice would definitely be good for me. I haven’t read the appeal yet but just having had the 9th Circuit rule the way I need is a big help.
I don’t think the lawyers who blog here have absorbed the extent to which the Internet and computers in general are changing the practice of law.
One reason a lot of people go into law is that they are technology phobic.
It’s not just the Internet either. My own personal computer, an imac, is just amazing. At this point I have a huge number of legal references on it and using the word search functions I can pull them up really fast.
This opens up a whole future for me to work on something useful that I actually have specialized knowledge of. It’s neat because it relates back to things I learned in college. It really is important to me to have meaningful work. When my husband and I got married, part of our wedding ceremony involved having the guests make good wishes towards us and one of them was having meaningful work. One of the reasons I put so much work into my lawsuit is that I looked at it like starting a business, a long term investment of time and money.
I was on another website recently and I posted some my ideas to improve attorney regulation. I got 12 “likes” and I got a big kick out of it.
Good night
“unhelpful behavior”…that’s rich.
I didn’t see the ‘private session’ sign on the door Dr….so sorry to intrude….
‘show me where I have given advice or encouraged her’…..nevermind, this isn’t really about Kay or her issues is it?
If you have a valid piece of information or question (after answering what I have asked) then I’ll be happy to continue, otherwise this is just you trying to discourage, or manipulate, or control, or something who knows what…
Ad hominem attacks are always productive and add to the exchange of real information.~OS
——————————-
yes, I agree….again with your projection and evasion of my request.
I’ll try to think of a word as good as smarmy to describe your utterances….
Kay Sieverding 1, April 16, 2011 at 2:44 pm
Wootsy
There is no right to representation in civil matters. Even in serious criminal matters there is no right to a competent, honest, or dedicated lawyer, only to someone with a license.
————————————–
The license implies competence, dedication and by law, honesty.
That’s what licenses do…imply standards.
There ya go. Ad hominem attacks are always productive and add to the exchange of real information. Congratulations. Get confronted on unhelpful behavior and the response is, “I doubt your credentials.” Heh! Doubt away m’dear. Doubt away.