Affidavit Of Custody: Fill & Download for Free

Some time in the late 70s or very early 80s, I was representing a woman who was defending against her ex-husband’s petition to modify their custody arrangements — he wanted primary custody of their two children transferred from her to him. He’d hired a very aggressive attorney who had developed a reputation for “fighting hard for men in divorce cases” (no mention of effectiveness) — today he’d be referred to as a “men’s rights” advocate, I guess, although that wasn’t a thing back then.My client was a lesbian and in a relationship with another woman, to whom the children were very attached, and I suspect it was that fact plus the ex-husband’s marijuana-saturated brain that first took him to see a lawyer, but once that happened the lawyer was happy to run with it.After months of posturing, truly nasty depositions, and truly outrageous correspondence, we get to the morning of trial.In those days, both sides appeared for trial-call in the Presiding Department the morning of trial, and were assigned out to an available judge at the Presiding Judge’s discretion. Upon assignment, the assigned judge’s waiting law clerk would confer with counsel on any scheduling delays (judges often had a short matter to handle before trial started) and collect trial briefs for the judge to review. Trial briefs were also exchanged at that point between counsel.If you came in 15 minutes early and were nice to the Clerk, she’d give you the list of available judges ahead of time, so you could give some thought to whether you wanted to “affidavit” any of them (file an affidavit of prejudice against him (they were all men at that time). If she liked you and wasn’t too busy, you could sometimes persuade her to assign your case to a particular judge; the Presiding Judge would rubber-stamp that. That morning she was busy.I had thoroughly checked with various more experienced colleagues on what judges might be more or less favorably disposed to my gay client, during which I had learned also which judges were reputed to be gay (there were a couple).As it happened, our case was assigned for trial to one of the gay judges, and although both were closeted to some degree (these were elected positions, after all), our assigned judge was pretty casual about it. That was a relief — he wouldn’t be hostile to my client because he was gay himself, and he wouldn’t feel the need to rule against her to protect himself from suspicion.We were scheduled to start in 30 minutes, so I sat in the hallway with my client while I perused my opponent’s trial brief.Although there were several elements to the father’s case (my client was not perfect and neither was her partner), his lawyer had chosen to focus on just one: the trial brief was a rambling and very unprofessional diatribe against homosexuality, which moreover completely ignored a recent binding case that expressly held that homosexuality of a parent was not, per se, evidence of parental unfitness in custody determinations.And the diatribe continued during opening statement — apparently my opposing counsel was completely unaware that the judge listening to it was himself gay.That lawyer lost his case before he ever put on his first witness.

A lot of answers here, many seeming to buy into the idea of this as, at very least suspicious, and possibly the “smoking gun” everyone has been waiting for. But it might be worth pulling out some facts.This was a 90-second video without context, of a process most people are not familiar with, viewed through the lens of confirmation bias (people want to see fraud), and revealed with the flourish and drama that would make PT Barnum proud. But it hasn’t been taken to court. And it won’t be. Because it will lose. Why? Because, as Guiliani and his team already know, those who DO know the process and context have already said they see nothing out of the ordinary here.They weren’t suitcases, they were the same ballot containers used throughout the facility and elsewhere in the video. Use of the word “suitcase" (which implies something shady and suspicious) when they're quite clearly not suitcases, should ring alarm bells.The media and poll watchers weren’t “told to leave”. They chose to leave at the same time as the ‘cutters’ (who’s job it was open the envelopes) under the assumption that work was done for the night. The counters were also planning to leave but were later instructed not to by Rick Barron. At least two election officials returned and observed the continuing count after a short break. [Note for transparency: there are elements of this part of the official narrative which are legitimately disputed and there was undoubtedly some confusion here. See my edit at the bottom of the answer]The boxes weren’t “hidden under the table”. According to the officials, the bins were initially empty, ballots were opened on the table in full view of monitors by the cutters, then placed in the bins to be counted in batch later. When the counters thought they were done for the night, they began to “secure the area” - the bins were closed, sealed, and then stowed at around 10.01 pm - again, observers and media were still in the room at this point.When Rick Barron heard the counters were planning on stopping for the night, he instructed them to keep going (see below). This meant that they had to pull the sealed boxes back out from under the tables where they had been stowed in order to be unsealed and processed.The full Chain of Custody of the table (which was placed there at 8.22am, on camera, with nothing underneath) and the boxes in question can be seen for those who choose to watch the full 14-hour security footage and not a 90-second clip. [Spoiler Alert: Guiliani HAS watched it, see below]Although they’re entitled to be there, there is nothing in the State rules to say that party observers have to be present during the counting.These facts come from numerous election officials. Notably, Gabriel Sterling, the voting system implementation manager (and a Republican)…The 90 second video of election workers at State Farm arena, purporting to show fraud was watched in its entirety (hours) by @GaSecofState investigators. Shows normal ballot processing. Here is the fact check on it. https://t.co/HVJsvDjDvi— Gabriel Sterling (@GabrielSterling) December 4, 2020Also, Fulton elections director Rick Barron, who said:“What the video shows is that they have pulled out plastic bins from underneath the desks. It was normal processing that occurred there.”On finishing for the night:“I told them not to do that. At about 11:15 [p.m.] they were fully scanning again, and once they were scanning, Carter Jones, the State Election Board monitor, he told me 11:42 or 11:52 [p.m.] that he arrived.”So even if the scanning was being done fraudulently (which no officials believe was the case), they had around 30–35 minutes at most before the independent monitor turned up to observe, and the implication would therefore be that Rick Barron was “in on it”, having apparently orchestrated the whole charade about them continuing to count after stopping.Indeed, this is the phone call in which Barron instructs the counters to keep counting after he’d been harassed by the media for stopping. Notice all the “suitcases” in the background.And Frances Watson The chief investigator of the Georgia Secretary of State, whose signed statement on this can be read here. (see point 7 in the images):Georgia Secretary of State’s Chief Investigator Frances Watson: “Our investigation & review of the entire security footage revealed that there were no mystery ballots brought in from an unknown location & hidden under tables as has been reported by some.”https://t.co/vBy7XCPIeE pic.twitter.com/i3euD2zA4s— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) December 7, 2020Now, if you ARE genuinely just interested in free and fair elections, and you’re not just clinging on to any shred of hope that Trump’s team might overturn the election, then this story SHOULD trouble you. Not because it shows systemic voter fraud in Georgia. But because it shows a borderline seditious attempt to use misinformation to undermine an election.Rudy Guiliani and his team watched the full video. They were shown the Chain of Custody of the “suitcases” [hint: not suitcases] and were briefed by State investigators regarding the counting process and that there was nothing improper in the video. Everything in the post above… they know. Nevertheless, they took 90 seconds of the video, out of context, and absent of the explanations they were given, and they spun a fantastical tale to sow mistrust and doubt about the process to further their narrative that “the election was rigged”. They knew it would never stand up in court, and that they’d be risking disbarment by even trying. But as a bit of viral misinformation which perpetuates the ‘mountain of evidence’ myth, it’s worked an absolute treat, as many of the other answers to this question indicates.I just spent 2 hours going through State Farm surveillance video with @GabrielSterling & state investigators. We watched chain of custody of the table & ballot boxes in question - from 8am until midnight. The boxes were packed & sealed with observers in room - nothing improper pic.twitter.com/gKxS2GwD0Z— Justin Gray (@JustinGrayWSB) December 4, 2020[The video of the interaction in this Tweet can be seen here: Georgia election officials show frame-by-frame what happened in Fulton surveillance video]********EDIT:It’s already a long answer, so feel free to skip this bit. But I wanted to touch upon some of the counterarguments made in the comments below.“The Water Leak” - Some of the conspiracy theories conflate news of a water leak in the State Farm Arena with the call end to counting, suggesting the former was used as a cover story to get people out. This is false. The two events were 17 hours apart, the leak was fixed quickly and had no influence on the counting. There’s no evidence this was mentioned as a reason for calling time on the counting.“The vote dump” - People call into question the spike in Biden votes during this period. Hands up if you’d heard a million times in the days and weeks running up to the election that mail-in votes would favour the democrats? With Trump actively discouraging mail-in voting and Biden doing the opposite it was expected. So when you’re counting mail-in ballots in an urban, Democrat-leaning district… how do you think it’s going to go?“Georgia’s Rejection Rate for Mail-in Ballots dropped from 4% to near zero” - This one came from Trump, the implication being that counters were either allowing through favourable suspicious ballots, or the boxes had been stuffed with ‘clean’ ballots. While the rejection rates for 2020 have not yet been released, the 4% figure from previous elections is a lie.[1]“The Sworn Affidavits from Republican Poll Watchers” - Two comments below this raise this point, one saying the affidavits confirm the official story, the other saying they contradict it. The truth is that they broadly support the official narrative in that the counting had supposedly stopped for the night, with the only contentious part around whether they were instructed to leave, or - as some other witnesses suggested - they drew their own conclusions and left because things appeared to have wound down and stopped. Indeed, the counters themselves believed they were done for the night at this point which would have added the general sense that “we’re done for now”. The fact the poll watchers weren’t told the counting was restarting after Barron’s phone call appears to be true, though it isn’t clear who was where at this point. They may have already left. Nevertheless, this is undoubtedly an oversight, although the independent election monitor confirmed he was told and did return. Local NBC News affiliate WXIA-TV confirmed their media reps had left the arena and weren’t aware that counting had restarted. As I have already pointed out though, there’s no legal requirement for partisan poll watchers to be present. Whether you think this was just a communications oversight or something nefarious will probably depend on your political persuasion, but the investigators erred towards the former. And, as the rest of this answer points out, even if it was nefarious, they gained nothing from it.“The Number of Ballots Counted Unmonitored” - Some commenters are suggesting that whether it was intentionally engineered this way or not, the counters were given a period of time in which there was no-one watching them (ignoring the CCTV). Some have suggested this could have equalled “tens or even hundreds of thousands” of ballots. It was actually 9,750 during the additional 2 hours of counting. And an independent monitor turned up after 35 minutes, meaning the number of actual unmonitored counted ballots was, at most, a few thousand.“The Georgia ‘Apparatus’ WOULD say that the video showed nothing, wouldn’t they(!)” - The implication is that several entirely unrelated groups, from Fulton County election board, the independent election monitors, through to the Georgia Secretary of State, her inspectors, and other Georgian election officials are all “in on it” and somehow conspired to engineer and then cover-up an elaborate plot to get people out of the room so that counters could count, in full view of CCTV, an extra 10,000 ballots to swing their state to the Democrats. Ignoring, of course, that Georgia is a Republican-controlled state, and many of those individuals are card-carrying Republicans.“It took them a month to release the CCTV!” - It didn’t. They haven’t released the CCTV to the public, nor is there any reason they would. Investigators has access to the footage immediately. The video turned up online after a month because the 90-second clip was created and released, Tweeted out by “Team Trump” and retweeted by Trump himself. By this point, investigators had already analysed and dismissed the full video.Fact Check: Video From Georgia Does NOT Show Suitcases Filled With Ballots Suspiciously Pulled From Under A Table; Poll Watchers Were NOT Told To Leave | Lead StoriesPolitiFact - No, Georgia election workers didn’t kick out observers and illegally count ‘suitcases’ of ballotsFact Checking Rudy Giuliani's Grandiose Georgia Election Fraud ClaimDid Georgia Poll Workers Hide 'Suitcases' of Ballots From Republican Observers?Footnotes[1] Fact check: Georgia rejected ballots did not go from 4% to “almost zero” in 2020

The entire case was heavily documented by the client’s own evidence including multiple Affidavits of Support. Then she got on the witness stand and began to prattle away with an entirely new made up story of events, never heard before or since, which negated her entire case and created potential jail time. In the middle of her wild running story and unquestioned testimony the judge simply stood up, slammed the court file on his bench and left the courtroom. Luckily the bailiff didn’t take anyone into custody. I quickly pulled her out of the courtroom and we literally ran out of the courthouse before the judge had second thoughts. Have never returned to that county. She thought it was an extemporaneous winning stellar performance and never understood she proved herself a felon on the witness stand.