Bad Justice From Maine

Suz sent me these two links about a nasty little family law case in Ellsworth Maine. From one of the articles:

You may have heard of a man named Vladek Filler. He’s the ex husband of a woman named Ligia Filler.

Ligia is now a resident of Maine, who entered the country on an marriage immigration visa, who falsely accused Mr Filler of spousal abuse, and of raping her, resulting in two trials.

Through VAWA, her citizenship in the United States was fast tracked by bringing these accusation, but we all know that even if given incentive, women would never lie about abuse.

However, although she has never been charged, Ligia Filler, aside from abusing the couple’s children and Mr. Filler, also threatened to murder him and to murder the police officers who picked her up, promising to dismember their bodies with the help of her relatives.

Both prosecutions brought against Mr Filler were pursued by Bar Harbour Assistant District Attorney Mary Kellett. The first prosecution included no actual evidence against Mr Filler, but, based only on the testimony of Ligia Filler, Kellet obtained a conviction. This was overturned due to Kellett’s prosecutorial misconduct. Kellet had suppressed evidence clearly establishing Mr Filler’s innocence, as well as tampering with witnesses and instructing law enforcement officials not to comply with subpoenas.

Although the first pass at prosecution was thrown out, Kellet brought a retrial. Vladek Filler was acquitted. But we aren’t really dealing with a prosecutor who’s motivated by anything as quaint and old fashioned as justice. Ellsworth, Maine County Sheriff’s Office Medical Examiner had given Ligia Filler a full physical inspection, following her claims of abuse by Vladek, and found no signs of any physical abuse. Four days after this physical inspection, a photo of Ligia Filler’s arm, depicting a bruise, was used to convict him of spousal abuse. And he was sentenced to 21 days in jail.

Go read the the whole thing in both because this is a VERY dense story. Also these videos tell at LOT of the facts of the case.

A Voice for Freedom is doing good work to push back the bias against men in Family court, but this case goes even deeper than that with immigration and corruption issues.

Suz (who BTW’s blog link is dead, I hope that’s temporary) sent this to me because I’m from Maine, and have a good bunch of readers from my home state. We need to be aware, and take action on this monster of a case!