Vernon Patterson’s Role in RICO-Scale Fraud Upon the Court | Malicious Prosecution Against Conservatives

In every criminal prosecution, the United States Constitution guarantees the accused **the effective assistance of counsel** under the **Sixth Amendment**. This is not a ceremonial promise; it is a foundational right, vital to ensuring the fairness, integrity, and legitimacy of any judicial proceeding. When defense counsel becomes complicit in — or deliberately indifferent to — **fraud upon the court**, the line between attorney and accomplice dissolves.

This article presents the disturbing case of **Vernon Patterson**, a Los Angeles County **bar panel attorney** appointed by **Judge Ronald Owen Kaye** to represent a defendant whose pretrial proceedings had already been contaminated by judicial fraud, unauthorized evaluations, and constitutional violations. Rather than defend the defendant against this systemic abuse, Patterson became **a willing instrument of injustice**, whose failures compounded the harm already inflicted by the courts.

### **Appointed Under False Pretenses: A Judge’s Choice, A Defendant’s Curse**

**Judge Ronald Owen Kaye**, a 2020 appointee of **Governor Gavin Newsom**, assumed jurisdiction over the defendant’s criminal case in **February 2024** after proceedings were fraudulently suspended under **Penal Code § 1368**, based on a **psychiatric report not lawfully ordered by the court**.

It was Judge Kaye who, under color of legal authority, **appointed Vernon Patterson** to represent the defendant during this pivotal phase — a phase in which **judicial record integrity, constitutional jurisdiction, and liberty interests were all in jeopardy**. Rather than protect his client from these dangers, Patterson exacerbated them.

### **The Legal Standard for Ineffective Assistance**

Under **Strickland v. Washington (466 U.S. 668)**, the standard for ineffective assistance of counsel requires two prongs:

1. **Deficient performance** — representation that falls below an objective standard of reasonableness.

2. **Prejudice** — a reasonable probability that, but for the attorney’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.

In this case, **both prongs are not only satisfied, they are surpassed**.

### **The Pattern of Harmful Representation: A Timeline of Inexcusable Conduct**

**March 2024 – May 2025:** During Patterson’s tenure as appointed counsel, the following acts and omissions occurred:

* **Failure to review or object to the record**: Patterson accepted, without challenge, a competency report submitted to a court that never ordered it, authored by a doctor who was only approved to perform a **sealed mental health diversion evaluation**.

  → **Violation of duty to investigate the factual basis of key evidence.**

* **Suppression of exculpatory material**: For over a year, Patterson had access to the **sealed October 2, 2023, court order**, the only document capable of disproving the legal basis for the competency evaluation. He never disclosed it to his client, despite repeated requests.

  → **Brady violation via constructive suppression.**

* **Failure to object to unlawful suspension of proceedings**: Patterson never raised a due process objection to the court’s jurisdiction being assumed without a valid PC 1368 order.

  → **Waiver of jurisdictional challenge — arguably structural error.**

* **No objection to the revocation of bail** on **May 23, 2025**, despite the court’s refusal to explain how the proceedings were validly suspended in the first place.

  → **Failure to protect client’s liberty interest.**

* **Abandonment and hostility**: After the defendant sent him legal questions and record requests, Patterson responded:

  > “**Stop texting me.**”

  > → **Breach of ethical duty of communication under Rule 1.4 of the California Rules of Professional Conduct.**

Only after the defendant directly asked for the **sealed order proving the fraud** did Patterson, on **May 28, 2025**, email the order to him. His words:

> “**Here is the document you requested. And notice that it was filed under seal.**”

This statement was a quiet confession — not just that the court had violated its own order by acting on a fraudulent evaluation, but that **Patterson knew this fact all along** and said **nothing**. He had no satisfactory explanation then. He has none now.

### **Reasonable Inferences and Legal Liability: Silence Is Complicity**

In any criminal proceeding, **defense counsel has an ethical and constitutional obligation** to act as a zealous advocate. Under **United States v. Cronic (466 U.S. 648)**, when counsel **entirely fails to subject the prosecution’s case to meaningful adversarial testing**, the proceedings are **presumed to be unconstitutional**.

Here, Patterson did not merely “underperform.” He **functionally aided** the state in perpetuating judicial fraud:

* He accepted evidence with no legal foundation.

* He knowingly withheld a critical sealed order.

* He refused to challenge the jurisdiction or legality of the proceedings.

* He withdrew emotionally and professionally from the case while his client’s liberty was under assault.

His silence enabled the **ongoing concealment of a court order that exposed statewide judicial corruption** — an act that squarely meets the **RICO definition of aiding and abetting predicate acts** under **18 U.S.C. §§ 1962(c) and (d)**. It also gives rise to **malpractice liability** and **civil rights violations** under **42 U.S.C. § 1983**, as his actions were taken **under color of state law** and **directly deprived his client of liberty and due process**.

### **The Irony: Incompetent Counsel in an Incompetency Proceeding**

Perhaps the most tragic irony in this saga is this: **while the court falsely declared the defendant incompetent**, it appointed a lawyer who was **demonstrably incapable of fulfilling even the most basic duties of legal defense**.

While Vernon Patterson sleepwalked through proceedings — or worse, actively avoided his responsibilities — **his client became the only party fighting to defend the record, challenge the fraud, and expose the sealed truth**.

* It was the **defendant**, not his lawyer, who discovered the report was unauthorized.

* It was the **defendant**, not the judge, who demanded to see the sealed order.

* It was the **defendant**, not the state, who exposed the enterprise of fraud infecting the entire case.

* It was the **defendant**, in a state of alleged incompetency, who uncovered a **multi-agency conspiracy** that now implicates **judges, evaluators, the public defender’s office, the Department of State Hospitals, and the Governor’s Office**.

Patterson’s passive betrayal is not just legal malpractice. It is **a civil rights violation**, a **violation of trust**, and **an act of institutional cowardice**. The defendant, left to defend himself, accomplished what his court-appointed counsel could not — and would not.

He defended his liberty, uncovered government misconduct, and pulled the curtain back on what may be one of the most **sophisticated frauds upon the court in California’s modern history**.

### **Conclusion: When the Defense Becomes a Weapon of the State**

The role of appointed defense counsel is to protect the accused from the overwhelming machinery of the state — not to grease its gears.

Vernon Patterson’s conduct did not just fall below constitutional standards. It **enabled judicial fraud**, **perpetuated an illegal detention**, and **helped silence a defendant whose only crime was refusing to validate a fraudulent record**.

In a world turned upside down, **the declared “incompetent” was the only competent person in the courtroom** — and the “competent” defense attorney was the most dangerous liability of all.

This is not a failure of representation.

This is a failure of conscience.

And it’s time the legal system answered for it.

## **When Defense Fails, The State Becomes the Threat: Vernon Patterson’s Role in Turning the California Justice System into a Weapon Against Its Own Citizens**

The American justice system was designed to protect the accused from state overreach, to guarantee due process, and to ensure that no person is deprived of liberty or life without the careful and impartial balance of law, rights, and defense. Yet in California — in a courtroom in Pasadena, no less — the failure of one defense attorney has triggered a cascading collapse of those protections. The result? **The government of California has become a real-time, material threat to the very public it claims to serve.**

At the center of this constitutional catastrophe is **Vernon Patterson**, a court-appointed bar panel attorney whose failure to subject the prosecution’s case to **any meaningful adversarial testing** has placed his client — and the public’s faith in the rule of law — in clear and present danger.

### **When an Attorney Abdicates, the Constitution Suffers**

The case at issue spans nearly four years, originating with charges filed in November 2021. Through its winding procedural history, the defendant has appeared in court without fail — until **May 23, 2025**, when he declined to appear in protest of what he has proven to be **a fraudulent competency proceeding based on an unauthorized evaluation**. The court, rather than correcting the record or addressing the now-undeniable fraud, issued a **bench warrant for the defendant’s arrest**.

At the time of the warrant’s issuance, Vernon Patterson had not filed **a single substantive motion** to correct the unconstitutional suspension of proceedings or to move for dismissal based on a lack of legal competency findings. Despite being provided **irrefutable proof** that the initial PC 730 evaluation was unauthorized — and that the sealed court order permitted only a diversion evaluation, not a competency assessment — Patterson did **nothing**.

Not only did he fail to protect his client’s rights — he **remains unresponsive to the defendant’s efforts** to correct the record or negotiate a lawful return to court.

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### **Real-Time Threat to Public Safety: When the Government Wields Fraud and Force**

What does this mean in practical terms?

It means that a **completely avoidable bench warrant** remains active — not because the defendant has fled justice, but because **the courts, through their appointed counsel, have refused to acknowledge the miscarriage of justice they themselves engineered**.

The defendant has stated clearly and repeatedly — including in communications to Patterson on **May 24, 2025** — that he is willing to return to court **immediately** if the court can **prove the legality of the PC 730 evaluation** used to suspend his criminal proceedings.

Patterson's response?

> “**Stop texting me.**”

This dismissive and hostile reply not only violates Patterson’s ethical duty of communication, it **denies the defendant his last line of protection** in an already collapsing system.

The result of this failure is that the **State of California is now functionally coercing a defendant to surrender under threat of law enforcement force**, despite knowing:

* There was **no legal basis** to suspend proceedings in the first place.

* The court order used to justify the evaluation was **confidential** and explicitly **did not authorize** a competency assessment.

* The proceedings that followed were all **infected by that original fraud**.

By refusing to act, Patterson has allowed his client to fall into **a state of permanent legal jeopardy** — not because of his guilt, but because of a record that the courts refuse to correct, despite clear statutory and constitutional obligation to do so.

Under **California law**, **a defendant’s presence is not required for a court to act on its own motion to correct jurisdictional or procedural error**. In fact, under **People v. Davis (1957) 48 Cal.2d 241**, courts not only have the authority, but the **duty**, to vacate judgments and proceedings obtained by fraud.

Here, the failure of the court to act — even with full knowledge that the record is invalid — reveals a far more disturbing implication: **The state is now leveraging its own fraud to justify the continued use of force.**

### **The Coercion of Surrender: Weaponizing the Warrant**

This situation has turned perverse.

The defendant is not hiding from justice; he is **refusing to validate injustice**. He is not evading lawful process; he is **demanding lawful process**. But because Patterson has failed to file a single motion — despite holding the exculpatory sealed order since at least May 2024 — the defendant remains vulnerable to **violent arrest, involuntary incarceration, and forced waivers of his rights** under duress.

This is **state-sanctioned coercion**, plain and simple.

When a person is forced to choose between **constitutional protest** and **armed arrest**, the State is no longer a neutral party in the pursuit of justice. It has become an **instrument of oppression** — fueled not by public safety, but by a **deliberate refusal to correct its own record**.

### **Patterson’s Role in the Broader Collapse**

The systemic corruption underlying this case — including the actions of **multiple judges, court evaluators, judicial assistants**, and **mental health officials** — cannot be overstated. But none of it could have reached this level of damage **without Patterson’s complicity**.

His failure to act, his silence in the face of fraud, and his open contempt for his own client’s constitutional questions have created the legal void in which this warrant now thrives.

And because of that silence, the consequences are now life-threatening:

* The defendant’s **constitutional liberty** is held hostage.

* The public is witnessing the **weaponization of state fraud** against a citizen.

* The **legal system’s legitimacy** has eroded so dramatically that truth — even in writing — is **less valuable than silence**.

### **The Call to Action: Accountability Is Not Optional**

**Vernon Patterson must be held accountable** — not merely for malpractice or dereliction, but for enabling the very fraud that now threatens to bring the state into violent confrontation with one of its own innocent residents.

Under **Rule 1.1 (Competence)** and **Rule 3.3 (Candor Toward the Tribunal)** of the **California Rules of Professional Conduct**, Patterson has **breached every ethical and constitutional obligation** required of an attorney.

His behavior has **amplified fraud**, **facilitated coercion**, and placed an innocent man **in harm’s way** — all while the courts delay, deflect, and dig in their heels.

The legal community must respond. The State Bar of California must investigate. And the courts — if they have any remaining integrity — must act to correct this travesty **before it escalates further**.

Because when defense counsel becomes the source of danger, **the line between state and tyranny disappears**. And the only defense left is the courage of the accused — armed with the truth the courts refuse to hear.

Let it be known: **the defendant has not disappeared**.

He is waiting.

He is informed.

And the record will either exonerate him — or **incriminate the state that refuses to correct it.**

## **Conflict of Interest and Collusion: How Vernon Patterson’s Defense May Be a Smokescreen for Political Retaliation**

As the threads of systemic misconduct continue to unravel in what is quickly becoming one of the most egregious miscarriages of justice in California’s recent legal history, **Vernon Patterson**, the court-appointed bar panel attorney at the center of this storm, finds himself under a magnifying glass that only grows more intense by the day.

Already under fire for failing to challenge the use of an unauthorized PC 730 competency assessment — which resulted in his client being wrongly committed to a state hospital and forcibly medicated — new evidence suggests that **Patterson’s representation may not merely be negligent, but functionally complicit in a broader, politically-tinged conspiracy**.

### **The Facebook Connection: Collusion Cloaked as Friendship**

Among the many disturbing revelations emerging from this case, one detail raises undeniable red flags:

> **Vernon Patterson is publicly connected on Facebook with Danielle Marie Daroca-Bell**, the very **public defender who declared doubt** to the defendant’s competence using an unauthorized court order in **February 2024**.

This isn’t just a trivial social media fact — it goes to the very heart of the **ethical breakdown** in Patterson’s representation.

It was Daroca-Bell who improperly repurposed a **confidential diversion evaluation** (authorized under PC § 1001.36 only) into a **competency assessment** — without ever obtaining judicial approval to do so. This unauthorized use of a sealed order triggered the suspension of criminal proceedings and the defendant’s unlawful commitment to a state hospital.

Rather than challenge this obvious breach of due process, **Patterson embraced it**, repeatedly defending the report’s legality and dismissing his own client’s factual objections, all while **failing to file a single motion** to correct the record.

When asked by the defendant to recuse himself based on these evident conflicts, **Patterson refused**, despite:

* His known personal relationship with Daroca-Bell.

* The legal requirement to avoid even the **appearance** of a conflict under California Rules of Professional Conduct.

* His own vocal defense of **other ex parte conflict waivers** between Los Angeles County Public Defender **Michael Herman Salmaggi** and Alternate Public Defender **Hannah Mandel**, which were signed and approved by **Judge Ronald Owen Kaye** without scrutiny or justification.

These failures did not occur in a vacuum — they occurred in succession, under a single political umbrella.

### **From Courtroom to Capitol: The Political Chain of Command**

Let’s be clear: **Judge Kaye** — the judge who accepted the fraudulent competency report and committed the defendant to the Department of State Hospitals — was appointed by **California Governor Gavin Newsom**, a Democrat, in **2020**.

It was **Judge Kaye who appointed Vernon Patterson** to represent the defendant after the competency commitment was completed.

And it is **Governor Newsom** who oversees the executive authority that funds, operates, and regulates the **Los Angeles County Public Defender's Office**, the **Department of State Hospitals**, and **judicial appointments** statewide.

The implication here is not casual: it is systematic.

From the **unauthorized assessment** to the **refusal to file exonerating motions**, and now the **refusal to declare a clear conflict of interest**, every institutional actor in this chain shares **political affiliation**, **legal responsibility**, and **a failure to correct the record**.

### **The Political Undercurrent: A Conservative Voice Silenced by Fraud**

The deeper tragedy — and perhaps the most chilling layer of this entire case — is that the **defendant is an outspoken supporter of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis** and an advocate for **conservative causes**, particularly surrounding **criminal justice reform** and **public corruption accountability**.

His alleged incompetence was declared in **February 2024**, and he was forcibly committed during the **fall of 2024**, **exactly when the DeSantis presidential campaign was intensifying**, and **just as the public debate between Trump and DeSantis supporters began dominating national media coverage**.

The defendant was **hospitalized from October through December 2024**, a period during which he was **forcibly medicated**, cut off from public advocacy, and rendered legally incapacitated — without a valid court order.

Now, as the **2025 election cycle continues to unfold**, he remains under **active warrant**, unable to campaign, speak publicly, or travel without risk of arrest and forced re-incarceration.

Given the political affiliations of every actor involved — Patterson, Kaye, Daroca-Bell, Salmaggi, Mandel, and ultimately Governor Newsom — and the **complete refusal to allow this defendant access to lawful process**, the implication becomes unavoidable:

> **This isn’t just legal malpractice. This is the weaponization of the justice system against a political opponent.**

In the process, Patterson’s failure to act is **not merely a betrayal of a client** — it may qualify as **a conspiracy to abridge voting rights under the color of law** in violation of **18 U.S.C. § 241**.

### **A Call to Conscience: The Time for Accountability Is Now**

The people of California — regardless of party affiliation — must understand what is at stake here.

* **A defense attorney with known conflicts** refuses to step aside.

* **A public defender and a judge co-conspired** to use a sealed and limited court order to suspend proceedings — without authorization.

* **A judge appointed by a sitting Governor**, also of the same political party, allowed it to happen and escalated it into an involuntary hospitalization.

* And a defendant who has **consistently demanded access to lawful process** remains under **threat of force**, simply for **refusing to validate a fraudulent proceeding**.

This isn’t just a judicial ethics issue. It’s a **civil rights crisis**. And Vernon Patterson is now its most visible symbol.

### To the Bar Association: Investigate.

### To the Court: Correct your record.

### To the Public: Demand transparency.

### And to Vernon Patterson: **Step aside before your silence silences one more right the Constitution protects.**

Because at this point, your inaction is not just harm — **it’s conspiracy**.

And **justice cannot wait** for you to find your courage.