It should come as no surprise to anyone having found themselves the victim of the injustices dealt out daily by our local branch of the Superior Courts of California: Our local authorities are crooked. Corrupt. Unable or unwilling to be impartial, and fraught with unsound judgments.

But that doesn’t mean that John Trice is any more guilty than the rest of the judges serving at the SLO branch of the California Superior Courts. It just means that he pissed one of the other judges off enough for them to throw stones through the glass house windows of Judge Trice first. In the hopes that he wouldn’t throw them back, or that if he did throw them back no one would listen or notice because his windows were broken first. That being said, as a former victim of the corrupt practices of Judge Trice, his minion Lee Cunningham, and their partners in crime at the McGuire and Ashbaugh law firm, I feel that in the end, after 18 months of bargaining and backlash, Judge Trice was fair in his final disposition of my case.

Judge Harmon is the one who should be getting all the negative publicity. She is a terrible judge for criminal or drug court cases (but might do much better in either small claims court or civil court). Put in perspective, both of these judges have accomplished all they will in their career and are nearing the end if their chance to leave a legacy before they retire and die. They will never be Supreme Court judges. They will never be appellate judges beyond the local branch of the court. Let them just evolve out of their present positions of power, to hopefully be replaced by someone of the next generation that have more insight, more understanding, and fewer connections to the local good ol’ boys network. So they can do the job without violating any of the statutes found in the Crimes Against Justice section of the California Penal Code.

-- Diana Rocha - Pismo Beach