COMES NOW Relator, Marc Perkel, pursuant to Rules 87, 94, and 97 to petition the Court for a Writ of Mandamus to order the Honorable Phillip R. Garrison, Chief Judge of the Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District, to direct, in his administrative capacity, that orders of the court are to be in writing and signed by a judge. Relator requests that the Court of Appeals be ordered to comply with Rule 74.01(a), 74.02, and Administrative Rule 4.09(6) which require that judgements and orders be in writing and signed by a judge. Relator petitions this court for a writ of prohibition prohibiting the court of appeals to delegate judicial powers to non-judges, such as clerks and research attorneys, and to prohibit them from signing orders of the court and exercising judicial authority. Relator petitions this court for a declaration declaring void the attached two orders, and all other similar orders that are not signed by a judge, of the Court of Appeals joining cases 22947 and 22948. In support of this writ, Relator states as follows:

1. On November 9^th 1999 an "order" was issued by the Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District, ordering that the relator's appeals 22947 and 22948 be joined. This "order" was signed by the clerk of the court.
2. On November 12^th 1999 the relator appeared at the court and requested to view the original order of November 9^th 1999 signed by the judge and was informed that there is no original order because the judges of the court of appeals do not sign orders of the court.
3. On November 15^th 1999 the relator filed a motion to declare this order void because it was not signed by a judge. He also requested that his motion for an order, signed by a judge, addressing the issues raised.
4. On November 19^th 1999 another "order" was issued denying the relator's motion and refused to give the relator an order signed by a judge. This order was also signed by the clerk of the court, who is not a judge.
5. On November 22^nd 1999 the relator called Sandra Skinner, clerk of the court and had a long conversation about court procedures. In that conversation Ms. Skinner informed the relator that; a) Judges in that court do not sign orders. b) That it has always been that way. c) That the orders are often verbal and not in writing. d) That the orders are often given to her second hand through the research attorneys. e) That often she has no direct knowledge which judge made the order or if the order even came from a judge.
6. A recording of this conversation exists and is available on the Internet in Real Audio format at the following URL: http://www.perkel.com/pbl/married/signed/sandrask.ram
7. No written orders signed by the judge are on file pursuant to Administrative Rule 4.09(6) and there exists no way to verify, other than the memories of the court staff, that these orders were actually issued.
8. The November 19^th 1999 "order", if it can be called that, appears to be a decision that the Court of Appeals, Southern District, does not have to comply with the Missouri Rules of Court raising the question which rules the courts are allowed to decide not to follow.
9. Sandra Skinner, the clerk of the court made it clear that the judges controlled these policies and procedures requiring non-judges to sign orders of the court.
10. The relator believes that policies and procedures of the Missouri Court of Appeals are unconstitutional and violate the plain language of the Missouri Rules of Court. Furthermore, the relator raises the issue for this court to consider that perhaps all of the decisions made by the Court of Appeals might be void as well as decisions made by other courts that might have relied on these decisions. There may be people on Missouri's death row awaiting execution whose appellate decisions were never signed by a judge. The relator questions if his divorce appeal is valid.
11. The relator contends it is the duty of this court to take the necessary steps to ensure the integrity of the courts of Missouri and to ensure that the orders and judgements are, in fact, made by judges and only judges, and that they are made in compliance with the rules, and that the public can rely on the validity of these orders and judgements.
12. The people of Missouri have the right to due process of law pursuant to the 14^th Amendment to the United States Constitution. This right of due process includes the right to safeguards to ensure that their cases are decided by those and only those vested with judicial authority.

WHEREFORE, Relator asks that this court will:

1. Order the respondent(s) to comply with the Missouri Rules of Court requiring that orders be in writing and be signed by only judges.
2. Prohibit non-judges from exercising judicial authority.
3. Declare void the attached "orders" of the court and all other orders that were not in writing and signed by Article V judges.
4. In its administrative capacity, to audit the Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District, to ensure that its policies and procedures are in compliance with the law and the rules of court.
5. To make any other order necessary to ensure the integrity of the judicial system and ensure the people's right to due process of law as required by the Constitution.

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Marc Perkel * Relator * 12-06-99

Article V, Section 4 of the Missouri Constitution vests jurisdiction in this court to hear original remedial writs. This court has original jurisdiction because subsection 1 provides that the supreme court will have superintending control over all courts and tribunals. This court has a duty mandated by the Constitution of Missouri to ensure that the subordinate courts comply with the Missouri Constitution, Missouri Rules of Court, and Missouri Statutes. This court also has a duty mandated by the 14^th Amendment of the United States Constitution to ensure due process of law. This court has direct supervisory control over the administrative procedures of the Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District.

Besides the plain language of Rules 74.01(a), 74.02, and Administrative Rule 4.09(6), in the famous 1998 case of Slay v. Slay, 965 S.W.2d at 845 the Missouri Supreme Court stated:

The Missouri Supreme Court has clearly upheld the Missouri Constitution and the plain language of the Rules deciding that orders not signed by a judge are void. In Slay, the court voided the orders of commissioners who are a lot closer to being judges that the Clerk of the Court is. The Clerk has only administrative powers and in no way has any judicial powers. The research attorneys don't have judicial power either.

In Rufus Rhine V. M. E. Montgomery, Magistrate Judge Of Scott County, Missouri, 422 S.W.2d 661, it was decided that any kind of proceeding to cancel a void judgement is proper. And it is the duty of this court to declare the order void as a matter of law:

Thus, this court has jurisdiction to rule on the issue of voidness, as well as jurisdiction to declare the status of all similarly situated cases because any kind of proceeding is proper. Relator contends that this suit in mandamus constitutes the requirement of "any kind of proceeding". And it establishes that a void judgement is void forever and does not become unvoid after the passing of time. It is as if the act never occurred and therefore isn't subject to any statute of limitations or waiver or collateral estoppel.

Additionally, an unsigned judgement or order can't be fixed by signing the order now or through a nunc pro tunc procedure. If there were just one judgement that was unsigned by mistake or oversight then a nunc pro tunc would apply. But here you have a situation where there are thousands of orders where only the memories of the current staff contain the record of who issued what order and was it relayed through a third party and who the third party was that relayed it. And everyone can sign an affidavit swearing that they remembered every last one of these thousands of cases with 100% accuracy? What about judges who are retired or deceased? Shall we appoint a current judge to retroactively sign the orders in behalf of the accurate memory of a deceased judge? A judge signing another judge's order is prohibited as well.

Recently the Eastern District court of appeals ruled on a case similar to this one. In Keck v. Keck No. 75021 (Mo.App. ED 05/11/1999) the court was faced with the issue of trying to retroactively convert the "findings and recommendations" of Commissioner Winston G. Davis into an appealable judgement by nunc pro tunc amendment. The court failed to do so stating:

Clearly the court has decided that rule 74.01(a) would move the date of the decision forward in time because a judgement is entered when it is signed. The retroactive signing of the order would cause the date of the judgement to be the signing date the signature occurred. So, if for example an inmate was on death row just one week away from execution, and suppose he learns that the date of his first appellate decision has moved forward in time ten years, what does that mean? If the Court of Appeals, Southern District never signed that first appeal and the date changes ahead 10 years, then how will that have affected the filing of his appellate proceedings that followed? Would those courts have had jurisdiction to act if there existed no valid judgement at the time? It seems to me that the inmate on death row would have the right to raise the issue that all the appellate proceeding following the unsigned judgement are void and that the whole process it a do over.

Furthermore, the case of Leonard O. Larue V. Janette Lohman, Case # 71802 establishes a bright line test on the validity of orders and judgements. That bright line test is that the judgement or order must be IN WRITING and SIGNED BY THE JUDGE. It states:

The relator believes that the term "bright line test" indicates that something is either on the good side of the bright line or the bad side of the bright line. It indicates that the test produces clearly defined results. Thus if an order were in writing and signed by a judge it would be on the good side of the bright line. But if the order were either unsigned or not in writing then it is on the bad side of the line. In this case these orders were verbal and unsigned. The relator therefore contends that the orders in question clearly fail the bright line test and are therefore all void. They always were void and will continue to be void forever.

The Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District, has issued the attached "order" joining two of the relator's appellate cases. The "order" is not signed by a judge and the court has specifically denied the relator an order signed by a judge. The relator, relying on the plain language of the rules and the case law cited here contends that this order is void on its face because it is not signed by a judge. The relator therefore requires a ruling as to whether or not this order in particular and other orders not signed by judges are valid orders of the court.

The relator also contends that the plain language of the rule is clear and that any person of reasonable intelligence can comprehend what it means. Therefore the Court of Appeals surely must have known about this plain language which raises the question if these rules were deliberately ignored. If these rules were knowingly ignored it raises the question about the environment where these decisions were made. How do we know that the research attorneys or other non-lawyer might have made some of the rulings? How do we know that the judges have even read or are aware of decisions made with their judicial power? What level of accuracy is the public entitled to have confidence that a judge, and not someone else, is making the orders. The relator contends that the public is entitled to 100% accuracy. If you were on death row and were heading to be executed, wouldn't you want to at least know that your death warrant wasn't just in a stack of things to sign between the phone bill and the payroll checks. Wouldn't you want to know for sure that a judge at least picked it up and read it before he signed it. That you weren't sent to die by a clerk?

The relator contends that there exists an environment in the Southern District Court of Appeals that fails to protect the public from fraud or mistake. The procedures count on the accurate hearing and memory of the court staff to accurately remember verbal orders and in some cases, second hand verbal orders. The clerk of the court admits that she doesn't know if a second hand verbal order given by a research attorney was actually given by a judge or not. She has to have "faith" that the research attorney actually did get the order from the judge and has the ability to convey, through his memory, what the order is with 100% accuracy.

The underlying case on appeal deal with some of the same issues presented here. In the underlying case the relator discovered an original order that was a handwritten order on plain paper with no signature at all and nothing to identify whom the author of the order is. The relator has reason to believe that this unsigned order is not the work of either a judge or commissioner because it makes findings that had nothing to do with the underlying maintenance hearing that were favorable to the position of the law firm of Wear and Sharp, and that the anonymous order is a forgery.

The relator brought a suit for declaratory judgement asking the court to declare the unsigned order by the unknown author void. A hearing was held and Judge Gerald McBeth dismissed the case and sanctioned the relator with attorney's fees. The relator believes that the judiciary is openly hostile towards people who would question the constitutional merits of the policy of judges not signing orders. In fact, Judge McBeth failed to sign his original order he wrote on the docket which was later replaced by a formal order prepared by the law firm of Wear and Sharp.

The relator therefore wonders how many other people have attempted to bring this issue of judges signing orders to the attention of the court and were punished by the courts for doing so.

The relator contends that it is necessary for the public to have confidence in the integrity of the judiciary, and that when the judiciary decides to break its own rules, it undermines public confidence.

In the case of Elkins Et Al. v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 80 S. Ct. 1437, 4 L. Ed. 2d 1669 the United States Supreme Court, speaking about the imperative of judicial integrity stated:

If judges don't have to obey the rules then why does the relator have to obey the rules? It would appear that the real rule is, "whatever you can get away with". It certainly has caused the relator to lose respect for the courts as he is expressing publicly on his web site at the following URL: http://www.perkel.com/pbl/married/signed/index.htm

There is another test of public confidence known as the "giggle test". When the relator tells the "average man on the street" that the judges of the Court of Appeals refuse to sign orders of the court, it causes him to giggle and scratch his head in disbelief. The relator contends that allowing judges to refuse to sign orders of the court fails the giggle test and this court has a duty to insure that the policies and procedures of the courts pass the giggle test.

The relator therefore contend that this court has a duty to conduct an external audit to independently investigate the policies and procedures of the Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District, to determine if the integrity of the judicial process has been materially compromised and to what extent the orders of the court can be relied on to pass the bright line test. The relator contends that it is important for public confidence in the results that the audit be conducted by a private independent security firm or accounting firm so that no government influence will impact the determination of facts.

The signature is accepted by every society on the planet that has a written language to be the act of authenticating a decision. A signature is well established on every level of society and in all walks of life to authenticate or intentions. You can write down anything, but it doesn't mean anything to you sign it. We have to sign our checks to cash them. We have to sign contracts. We have to sign our drivers license. If we get a ticket we have to sign it. We have to sign our library card. If the relator were to file a motion in this court without signing it, the clerk would refuse to file it. When we go to Radio Shack, we have to sign our battery of the month club card. The relator therefore contends that society would agree that orders of the court are sufficiently important that one would expect the proper person to sign them, and that the public would be unsatisfied if the court continued to allow the procedures that are currently being practiced in the Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District of allowing non-judges to sign orders of the court.

Additionally, it would raise the question that if the Court of Appeals judges don't have to sign their orders then do the circuit courts have to sign their orders? If Judge Garrison can bestow judicial powers on Sandra Skinner and their staff attorneys, then why can't meter maids issue arrest warrants? There are courts in the Southern District where the clerks are signing arrest warrants and ex-parte orders to throw people out of their homes. Child support enforcement agencies are issuing arrest warrants to put people in jail without a judge ever seeing the order, let alone signing it. These circuit courts have no idea that they are breaking the rules because the Court of Appeals is doing it. If the Court of Appeals can rule, as they did in my case, that they don't have to follow the plain language of Rule 74.01(a), then what other Rules of Court can they ignore? And which courts can and can't ignore which rules?

As a non-lawyer the relator finds it confusing when he reads the plain language of the rule and then have an appellate court rule the opposite of the plain language. The relator also thinks this would be confusing to non-lawyer court staff such as clerks and law enforcement personnel. He also finds it disturbing that this has been going on for years and no judge or attorney has come forward and said anything about it? Perhaps not even notice it? Or perhaps others were punished for raising the issue. The relator therefore contends that because a computer programmer and not a lawyer brought this to the attention of this court after years of violations of Rule 74.01(a), that this court lacks the proper safeguards to ensure the integrity of the courts. This court therefore has a duty to take the necessary steps to correct these safeguards to instill confidence in the public that the courts will never again issue rulings denying a party a copy of the written order signed by a judge.

The relator contends that the chief justice has a duty act in his administrative capacity to ensure that the courts policies and procedures comply with the requirements of the Constitution and protect the right to due process of law. The relator contends that if the chief justice fails to implements these constitutional safeguards that he would be violating the 14^th Amendment right to due process of law of the relator in his individual administrative capacity.

The relator contends that these are serious issues that have to be dealt with immediately. The relator is mindful of the potential consequences raised herein if this court were to rule that thousands of cases are void. However, the relator would remind the court that the longer this goes on, the worse it gets and that the Court of Appeals, as well as the circuit courts that follow their example, continues to issue more void orders every day. The relator have visited the web site of the Missouri Supreme Court where he has found and order posted on the Internet titled "Court Performance Standards". In section 5.2 of this order it states, "Expeditious, Fair, and Reliable Court Functions. The public has trust and confidence that basic court functions are conducted expeditiously and fairly, and that court decisions have integrity." The relator contends that the public isn't going to have trust and confidence when the courts decide to disobey their own rules and refuse a litigant an order signed by a judge.

The relator is a non-lawyer and is stumped as to what can be done to fix this painlessly. He will therefore defer to the wisdom of this court to craft a solution that stands up to constitutional scrutiny.

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Marc Perkel * Relator * 12-06-99

(Form 16)

Marc Perkel, Relator, pro se with cases pending before the Southern District Court of Appeals.

The Honorable Phillip R. Garrison, Chief Judge, Southern District Court of Appeals, and the court staff.

Appeal if two cases from circuit court.

Judges refusing to sign orders of the court and delegating judicial power to non-judges. Declaration declaring orders signed by non-judges void. Compliance audit of policies and procedures.

Date: 11-19-99

Mandamus, Prohibition, and Declaratory relief. Order the judges to obey the Rules of Court.

Oral Arguments scheduled for 01-04-2000. The writ must be decided before then.

________________________________________

Marc Perkel * Relator * 12-06-99

Attachments:

Order joining two appellate cases signed by the clerk.

Motion to declare order void and for an order signed by a judge.

Order denying motion signed by the clerk.

Check for $50