if you have ever represented yourself in court without an attorney or are thinking about it going forward you'll want to hear the story of brian bokeh did a bitch who represented himself in federal court against an indiana school board many for his courage to journey through a complex court system and stand up for his rights against seasoned attorneys welcome brian i'm aaron how you doing thanks so much for federal level a court case without legal representation i would like you to just give us an overview of what led to this legal conflict and why you decided to take it on yourself and not get an attorney yes i'm a teacher and i worked for the school corporation and then other hanover community school corporation for eight years since twenty twenty  and the final year i was there was my principal and he decided that whatever reason he had in his mind that he was going to eliminate my curriculum that i was teaching in the classes and i was refused to meet with me because i did have serious questions about it which in fact we later found out in discovery after after the discovery process got started that they actually increase the number of teachers they didn't decrease the number of teachers so there was a smaller rack on on and the school was just absolutely refused to meet with me and so i had to i had to go through the steps of the before you file such a complaint in federal court you have to go through the equal employment opportunity commission go ahead to file the lawsuit and i and then i went ahead and filed a lawsuit in federal court and hammon in april of two thousand and thirteen and then you know the case was very prolonged with a lot of things involved in the case to emotions for this summary judgments and all kinds of things that were taking place it took its work several years more to get into the trial so they filed a very extensive motion for summary judgment i believe it was a forty page brief and i countered it and was able to successfully defeat that which consequently gave me the right to a trial which we had in march twenty twenty sixteen filed why did you decide to go pro se did you did you interview any lawyers and then just say you know what i'm not going to spend this money how did you make that decision that well i'll be totally honest with you i really i knew all along that i wanted of course the pro se i did have a couple of friends of mine very good friends who were concerned about taking this on without a lawyer and so forth and asked me if i would at least consider speaking to a couple  lawyers that they knew so as a courtesy i did although i knew all along that i really wanted to want to proceed pro se so i did talk to a couple lawyers it was a couple of lawyers in chicago that wanted to make a slew of couple lawyers in indiana that won several actually and it was actually you know three or four in chicago that wanted to do it but it just became very you know money issues part i'm not going to say the name of the lawyer but first it was i need a twenty five hundred dollars retainer which i said was fine and then the next time i came over well we have a we're having a cash shortage in our firm so we're going to have to make it four thousand i thought well your cash your cash crunch problem your heart is not my problem really so i just you know i just lightly just declined then and that was kind of the final final straw in the whole thing where i just said i'm going i'm going on this alone and then another lawyer that i spoke to in indiana  i don't want you speaking about this to anybody and all of those things and that's not what i'm about you know when there's something going on that needs to be addressed my d n a is is to discuss things and openly because i don't think the problems  solved the way that the normal procedures in a place where everybody's hush hush about everything and then deals are being made and see and then confidential agreements of being made and insurance companies pay settlements and then nobody knows the better what's when you said it's in your d n a i mean have you always been really this courageous in everything in your life or was there something about this particular experience that you just said i have to stand up to this well first of all i have to give credit to my mother because my mother taught me long ago that you stand up for what you believe and she's a she's a came from europe she's an immigrant that came here from europe europe had a very hard life and i learned a lot from her that things sometimes are unfair and that you just have to stand up so that's where i got it from so i so i just and then also along the way along  i i did have a couple of involvements in the in the past was i know we don't have enough time in the show to discuss everything but there is a lot of politics involved some things in my life in with jobs and my speaking out and so forth them i don't want to i'm not here to plug my book but i did write a book and i talk about all these things in there about politics a place of mine the scenes with lawyers and even sherry to a very certain extent so that's always been in my d n a i believe in standing up for what you believe then and sometimes there is the penalties the paper that oh how long did your case take from start to finish once you got the letter jury verdict came in on march eleventh twenty six oh it's only just a little over three years only three years that's that's actually relatively short wow for the litigation part but there could even read the jury how did they react to a pro se litigant well the judge didn't like it he made that very clear to me and several different ways in fact point blank point blank told me at one hearing about oh about a year before the trial when we were discussing my me representing myself he made a comment to me that well the jurors it was a very negative kind of comment he said well the jurors are going to see you with lawyer and and quite frankly i i said to the judge i said well you know that can that can also be looked at as a plus as well because i mean let's face it there's a lot of people that don't like lawyers and  just you know i honestly didn't appreciate that comment and so but i responded to it and he he made it very clear that he was not happy about you know he wanted this to be with a lawyer dominated type thing and then at one point  we had a hearing and and we had an issue with the pleading one of the one of the issues in a pleading and he was saying to me at the hearing that he did not see that issue in my pleading and my complaint so i pointed him right to it on what page it was on and so forth and then he looked at it again and he said to me well i don't see that in here and then i had a lightly remind the judge it was judge simon and him and i had to politely remind the  judge that under and by the way i want to say one thing i never played the pro se card in this in this case and all this is the very first time i ever ever discussed pro se was when he brought this up to me and i had and i pointed out to him that under the supreme court decision of haynes versus kerner that he was obligated to liberally construe the complaint so when i said that to him his exact words to me in a very negative tone were there we go just like that wow so then i responded back i said what do you mean here we go what do you mean by that and then he just dropped it right then and there he knew that he made a mistake that he should have been making a comment like that but that told me that told me what is added to who was going in and then when we had our we had our i mean literally just just probably two weeks before the trial we had we had a hearing and then we had a  conference a settlement conference and and he told me point blank that he didn't think i was going to win well i i didn't appreciate that coming from a judge so i said to him i said so you've already decided before we even start the trial that i'm not going to win and i receive some dirty looks back from him and so forth and that's all that's all i want so he know i was so i was concerned about him and you know i think he is a really good guy i don't think he's an evil person by any means but i think he's a pro government you know much and i think that's a problem that we have in the country and even if you represented or not but certainly and i it was to the point that i actually wrote a letter to supreme court justice elena kagan and i reported this to her i didn't know she would do anything or could do anything about it but i wanted her to know all of it so i told her  were you treated along the way by the other attorneys by the court staff paralegals said court administrative staff how did you feel overall that you were treated the court staff was absolutely magnificent the cork's there were number of times i had to go there and file things and they were very very good very cordial always got my things filed no questions raised everything was great in the judge's particular staff in his courtroom you had a couple of ladies there a case management person and they were very very good i had i had several involvements where i would have to go up there and do things with them self the court staff was on the clerks and even the marshals i really appreciated even the marshals how they just handle things neuronal throughout the trial how cordial they were and it was a very good experience i just didn't feel comfortable with how the judge was proceeding in the case now you asked me about the jury and i'm not just saying this because i was able to win my case i was saying this all throughout the week telling my brother  friends i had a very good feeling about the jury i'm not just saying this you know and since that case is over i just well i had like by almost when i went up there and question the witnesses and so forth i could almost feel a  goodbye and then when they were questioning the witnesses you know i'm not trying to make a point to look over there and on and so forth but you know i would glance over there just to kind of get a read for what they looked like and i could tell they were very very attentive to what was going on so i was i was very happy with the jury from the get go how do you think you know having gone through this do you feel that  anyone can go through this process if they're given maybe a certain number of tools or a certain amount of support or do you think that you know someone such as yourself who has the fighting spirit and has the tenacity to go through this system you know has more of a chance how do you feel the app you're obviously not the average person ok so do you think the average person could do this that's a very good question i think i think that the way the system is set up that the average person particular pro se going in is already has the next act against him or her in a lot of different ways and in fact i'll just you know use an example here judge richard posner of the seventh circuit one of the most renowned judges in the entire country been on the seventh circuit for thirty six years he said it best the actually retired from the seventh circuit not very long ago because of the mistreatment that the proces were receiving in the seventh circuit and he even said that the se is trash and that's you know that's just a serious problem that we have because people if the judge is what actually although they're all in every judge in the united states has taken all that he's going to be fair and impartial and he's going to follow the rules on the laws and quite frankly they're not doing that by any stretch of the imagination they are not doing that i have i have numerous  cases that i help people with and the just the horror stories and i can tell you is just to be a two hour show by itself but if the judges would all the rules let the process come in and state their case instead of having an attitude going in i believe the process could have a chance at least a fighting chance so you know it's difficult and i you know and i tell though i get a lot of calls from process from all over the country and i and i tell  then the judges are just sitting there licking their chops here is a good way that i can get rid of this procession so it's just it's very very hard now i mean i'm going to bed over and you know i saw all the signs or what i was i felt like i was like expected to have to down and and but i you know i stood my ground i just said to myself i want you know i want justice here and i said to the judge i'm going to expose these liars we're the liars that they are that's why we're going to go to trial here i turned on a lot of money i turned on one hundred fifty thousand dollars before this case and you know the money was not important to me that what was important to me was the issue to be able to show what's happening and and the they don't they don't like understand it that way what they want to have what are a couple of pieces of advice a few i know there's and you've written a book and i'm going to ask you about that but just a few pieces of advice that you would give  litigants who are real newbies at this well the first piece of advice is all we understand going in that the deck is stacked against you you can read all these things and i used to read all these things about how we're a fair country of laws and the rule of law and all these kinds of things but a lot of those things get passed by the wayside when you actually come in and try to represent yourself so i think they need to understand that that there's two strikes against the basically before they go in so you better be on look at the local rules of a particular court you know what the rules are so when you file things and address things you're doing them properly a lot of pro se is try to wing it they don't do that so that's one of the things that i really discuss with them to a great extent so brian what are a few changes that you would like to recommend to the american legal system court system that might make it leveled the playing field a system a monitoring system of some kind that's a system where i believe there should be citizen input and that presently if a pro se or any other litigant for that matter has a problem with not being treated fairly by by a particular judge the procedure as it is now set up is that that person gets to file a complaint that will usually go to to the appellate circuit where that person is in for example where i'm at a would be into the seven circuit and then the chief judge lehr that circuit will look at it and make a decision and i can tell you this because i've seen i've talked to a lot of people and and generally speaking i mean i don't know if it's one hundred percent right but it's pretty close that they just they don't do anything and i think that rather than having judges monitoring judges that there should be citizens involved because it's pretty much the little boy system  if i could correlate it will i win and police misconduct cases will be citizens not on boards that are reviewing that type of conduct and there's no reason that citizens should also be involved in cases like this but it's just not it's just not a fair system and there needs and also there could be an independent solicitor general of some some type of the court system that oversees these types of things but the way it is right now it's just very infected system that just simply does not work that's i mean that's just the plain and short of it ok tell us about your book what is the title and what is it about to the book is called a motion for justice i rest my case and it will be coming out in about a month and show it's getting pretty close around the cover design and what it talks about is it talks about the experiences that i've had in my adult life battling things example and asked for some help a long time ago i know we don't have a lot of time to get into the details but in one thousand nine hundred one i was in a bank with my mother doing doing some banking business and the police appeared and they were call out that was a problem at the bank and then they came into the bank and they attacked me and put me against the wall the bank people were trying to tell him that it wasn't me they had the wrong person but then when they finally realized it and they then rather than just apologizing and let me go they they hit me with the charge i had to go to court and fight the charges oh yeah i had to go to the expanse and this is what all of this started and you know also i went to court the judge chastised the police and so forth and you know acquitted me and then after that it was just want to rest after another after another which i talk about in the book in great detail numerous arrests and then and then with that came to the job things would come into play then so and then the same lawyers would come into play so i got to be a very very dirty very dangerous game and so it's all going to be it's all going to be exposed in the book of names are going to be named there's going to be judges that are going to be named prosecutors lawyers so it's the type of book that i don't think there's a lot of legal books that are written but i don't think anybody has went so far as the put in book form what i'm putting in here because i'm putting it out there i want the public to know i want the public to know what do you hope people will take away from your book to understand how how unfair and corrupt the system can be and is to a great extent how costly it is to get justice to have to hire lawyers and fire charges or fight employment actions or so forth how costly that is and can be and even in my case when i represented myself there's still a cost a major cost about now in my case it was it was a lot of headaches and so forth but it was very important and again i could i could lay down and just accepted it and took it but it was not right and i fought it and you know it was just something that was a very very infected process that was very disappointed now not all judges i mean there are some very good judges that came into play with with these things and i talk about them as well but there are we have a major problem in in the judiciary with the local politics and state politics and and so forth that people may not realize is real and sometimes you hear things that you don't really know if you want to believe them so my book is you know there's going to be more than allegations i mean i'm going to have you know when i talk about things i'm going to show documents in there to substantiate the statements and i make when i say that you know there was a policeman who don't know a prosecutor over here that we're working to try to take my freedom away from me i'm going to i'm going to show the letters that were written and it and the proceedings that took place and so forth and then and then it evolved into my jobs which i had to fight and as i told you i had the arbitration decision that i won and again even though i won i lost know you've lost and you've won but in the end all of us are going to benefit from this and i really thank you for your courage and your tenacity it's amazing you know most people would just kind of gripe about it for the rest of their lives or gripe about it to their friends and family but not necessarily take action and you have taken action so thank by thank you about