Mark Vena

The Beagle Has Landed! We have our United States Supreme Court Docket Number in "The Case of the Disappearing Woman" more in comments below .... #AccessToJustice #ProSe #JusticeSystem #SCOTUS

We addressed the digital filing divide directly: On Aug 19, we emailed our U.S. Supreme Court Certiorari Petition to the Charleston County Clerk of Court. On Aug 20, the Clerk accepted that email, and - even though, as Respondent, it had zero duty to docket it - printed the digital PDF to paper, and scanned it (using a 1980s-style 1-bit bitonal setting on 123 of 125 pages), stripping the vector text layer and degrading the visual exhibits. Then it docketed the newly-degraded digital file. On Oct 23, we emailed a Notice of Demand for Visibility Parity, offering a labor-saving turnkey protocol: print and physically stamp Page 1 only, email Page 1 back, and our software overlays the official stamp onto the native vector PDF so search engines, legal aggregators, and AI systems can index self-represented filings on equal footing with corporate lawyers. Yesterday (Oct 26), a Court Management Supervisor removed all judges and lawyers from the email chain and wrote back: "The Clerk of Court does not accept emailed filing." Apparently, email is accepted when they can strip the text layer and degrade the evidence, but email is refused the moment a citizen asks for equal digital fidelity. Today we restored the entire judicial and counsel service list, formally invoked the 14th Amendment, 1st Amendment, and ADA Title II, and put a direct question on the record with a deadline of October 28, 2026 (tomorrow) at 5 PM And we addressed this list of attorneys, judges, and court administrators with statistics and a question: Since creating the lawyer-legislator Judicial Merit Selection Commission (JMSC) in 1997 under a "Justice Requires Status" model, South Carolina has fallen to: 50th of 50 states in attorneys per capita (2.06 vs. 3.94 U.S. average) SC is 47th on the @NCAJ Justice Index for self-represented access and pays a ~$62,000/yr average income penalty for SC lawyers compared to the top 10 open-access states. It certainly appears that trying to corner the market by handicapping unrepresented citizens broke the system by draining our independent judicial decision making capacity and thereby depleting public trust. And it's a public confidence issue: It wouldn't be unfair for an observing public to ask, "If attorneys add value, why the need to deliberately and systemically (not to mention unconstitutionally) obstruct pro se?" To be clear, we believe good lawyers add tremendous value but a bad system hurts all of us, but especially them. So we asked them, "What is the legal, administrative, or public-interest argument against adopting "Most Vulnerable Member" (MVM) centered design?" Read the full Oct 26–27 exchange & docket audit: rocketsfight.org/the-case/ch… #SCOTUS #AccessToJustice #SCpol #LegalTech #14thAmendment #Scannergate #HousingJusticeAudit