Tamela Grace Massengale, a disabled and impoverished widow, is free from a bogus criminal case that consumed all her savings and her car. (Photo David Tulis)

They answered and said unto him, Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us? And they cast him out.

— John 9:34

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., July 13, 2024 — Judge Larry Ables has dismissed a criminal case against a fraud victim whose arrest shows the effect of lawless policy by the county magistrate, Lorrie Miller.

At a general sessions court hearing July 8 in downtown Chattanooga, Judge Ables threw out two counts against Tamela Grace Massengale, petty theft and harassment. The charges came from the hand of city cop Brandi Siler, who’d heard a rumor of a theft called in by telephone and swore out an arrest warrant without any sworn witness or victim statement.

Judge Larry Ables oversees a general sessions county court in Chattanooga Tenn. (Photo Larry Ables election campaign)

Mike Little told her, “The DA is going to dismiss this and there’s nothing you can do. When the DA dismisses it the judge is going to agree and there is nothing you can do.” She’d been concerned the case be dismissed with prejudice (meaning, it cannot be revived).

“They dismissed everything,” she said. “They dismissed it totally.”

The absence of sworn statements by victims made before a magistrate with office at Silverdale county jail is the grievous due process problem ordained by magistrate Miller.

Miss Grace, 60, rendered homeless for weeks pending the case, is a victim of false imprisonment and false arrest. “That was an unreasonable, unlawful seizure,” Miss Grace says about the hearsay-only and no-investigation-by-cop warrant.

“I can’t find an attorney” to sue for redress “because they’ll be blackballed in Hamilton County. I’m going to have to go to Nashville to find an attorney to sue Hamilton County.”

Mike Chauncey, county commission chairman

That the county refuses to reform the magistrate’s practices make the corporation and its taxpayers liable for damages to her. Since the county commission, led by chairman pro-tempore Mike Chauncey, knowingly and intentionally harmed Miss Grace (because of repeated notice by me) — and thousands of others — merits punitive damages for bad faith and malice. 

Clear departure from law

The county commission and the county judiciary accept the departure of law illustrated by Miss Grace’s case. The woman is a Venmo refund scam victim, the original cause involving the proposed sale of a puppy to a woman, Regina Lawton of Murfreesboro, Tenn. A dispute over a refund in a sale where no 100 percent refund is promised in writing cannot be construed as theft. Nor can slightly angry language by text message be construed as harassment except as a joke.

Mrs. Miller’s closure of the magistrate’s court is at least 20 years old. She doesn’t just accept pure hearsay as basis of arrest warrants. Her office forbids fact witnesses and crime victims from swearing out and drafting their arrest warrants before the magistrate.

Lorrie Miller, Hamilton County magistrates, is liable for false arrest in numerous cases, starting with that of Grace Massengale, arrested under a warrant unsworn by the alleged crime victim. Mrs. Miller forbids public access to the magitrate’s office. She runs a “doggie door” policy where only cops swear out warrants, and these based on sketchy, unverified and unsworn claims. (Photo David Tulis)

In the case Mrs. Massengale was “representing herself,” but Judge Ables assigned Mr. Little “to be elbow counsel and represent you,” which concepts are mutually exclusive.

Brandi Nicole Siler, cop generating the false arrest of a disabled widow with no rebuke from CPD.

Mrs. Massengale had intended to “waive the court” and obtain grand jury review of the charges. The dismissal occurred before she was able to stand her ground and deny subject and in personam jurisdiction to Judge Ables’ general sessions authority

Miss Grace had said she would not enter a plea (guilty, not guilty), understanding that to do confers jurisdiction.

Magistrate Miller has received protection from criminal court judge Amanda Dunn and in this case has also received protection from judge Ables, who refused to consider the merits of Mrs. Massengale’s challenge the abusive program.

Judge Dunn refused to consider Miss Grace’s powerful filings against the Miller breach because I stood as her next friend and drafted the complain about the illegal practices, demanding an order that they be halted. Judge Dunn says, effectively, Mrs. Massengale filed blank pieces of paper with the criminal court.

Judge Amanda Dunn rules that Tamela Grace Massengale may not have counsel of her choice, and that her next friend David Tulis has no authority to file a remonstrance and legal defense on her behalf, nor to demand an order correcting institutionalized due process violations. (Photo Amanda Dunn campaign)

Judge Ables threatened this reporter for his boldness in speaking with Miss Grace in court, petitioning with her for relief against the bogus policy in her case, and against the general public.

Judges Dunn and Ables, of like mind, would rather focus on the form of Miss Grace’s pleadings (using my hand and pen) than on the substance, which is continuing harm and injustice violating the law and the rules of criminal procedure.

Here’s the link to my Affidavit and remonstrance in re Tamela Grace Massengale false imprisonment & false arrest; Petition for writ of certiorari. This document outlines the policy of knowing, intentional and malicious abuse by people in public office against citizens and residents in Hamilton County.

Judge Ables berates this reporter as a lawbreaker in speaking with and in defense of Miss Grace in his court. It’s abusive and harsh enough to recommend his re-election by voters, who long have been indifferent to public harms under decades of low-grade Christianity and pro-police “conservatism” subsisting in Southeast Tennessee.

Mike Little, assistant public defender

Miss Grace says Chattanooga police department’s internal affairs unit “found no wrongdoing on Brandi Siler’s part. She lied. She didn’t do an investigation.” Miss Grace is ordering all records in the case to establish she was wronged.

Mrs. Massengale intends to swear out an arrest warrant against her accuser, Mrs. Lawton. But she’ll have to do it apart from swearing under oath the facts — which broken process is the basis of her own false arrest.

In other words, to counterattack her false accuser, she must submit herself to the same half-wit hearsay-only system that allowed the Lawton phone call to generate the Massengale arrest warrant.

Reminded of her affidavit describing the case, she says she will present that to the police officer or deputy,to generate the arrest warrant. I describe the closed courts as the “doggie door” system that forbids members of the public from approaching the magistrate. All demands for an arrest warrant are filtered through LEOs (the county’s most honest, peaceloving and reliable people).

“I can’t get in to see the magistrate,” Mrs. Massengale says. “Right? So, I’m going to have to call an officer. *** If he doesn’t do what you want, call the supervisor,” she say she was advised by a Mrs. Greer in the expungement office.

Ruin of false arrest cost her a 2002 Montero Sport worth  F$5,000, seized when she was arrested using the public road. “I didn’t have money to get it back. It was either that, or the dogs.”

The false arrest effectively forced her out of her subsidized apartment. “I have an apartment now, but Salvation Army which was going to pay my deposit and they ran out of funds. So I still owe. He let me move in. But by the time HUD approved it, Salvation Army ran out of funds. So I spent all last week, exhausted, looking for funds.”

Tamela Grace Massengale certiorari demanding reform