Monday saw another off the rails Lane Myers Experience play out in audio form on the Pima County, Arizona, website as star of the show Lane Myers successfully fired his attorney/advisory attorney William Parven while indicating that he had every intention of firing Judge D. Douglas Metcalf as well.
Before the hearing started, our court reporter, the lovely Judy, had time to have short talk with attorney Parven. She described him as a nice man who really believed in his causes, including having the law governing aggravated harassment overturned. She was surprised that he knew her by name and the encounter was described as pleasant.
Myers’ supporter Mark Brown was back along with a man who had made a scene before the previous hearing in the case. That man had again stated his intention to record in the courtroom before being shut down by Judge Metcalf’s law clerk, who told him that the Judge had ruled that there would be no personal recording devices used in any of the hearings involving this case.
When Myers arrived, he immediately began bickering with Parven about disclosure. Myers complained that he did not have anything from the prosecution. He would later take this complaint directly to Judge Metcalf.
The hearing started and Judge Metcalf immediately began the Faretta hearing to determine if Myers could indeed have Parven removed as his attorney. Myers became outraged when Parven said that at one point he was considering objecting based on Myers’ inability to control himself in court but was satisfied that Myers had the ability to keep things together enough to move forward.
Parven also disclosed that he had been assigned another case that brought him into conflict as he was defending someone who was accused of harassing Myers’ romantic partner. Myers made his views on Parven known, saying that they had irreconcilable differences and eventually demanded that Parven be removed from the courtroom as his very presence was causing him outrage.
Judge Metcalf would eventually grant Myers’ request and Parven would be dismissed from the case. Parven, however, stayed in the courtroom to serve as advisory attorney for the session as Metcalf made it clear that he would be assigning another advisory attorney to help Myers prepare for the case.
Myers, again, was outraged by the Judge’s decision and demanded that attorney Marc “The Shark” Randazza be assigned to his case. Metcalf did not recognize the name and said that the next advisory attorney would simply be the next available attorney on the list of public defenders and implied that if Myers wanted outside help, he could hire an outside attorney.
Myers then informed Judge Metcalf that he would ignore the advisory attorney completely as he was now in control of his case. All discovery would need to go to him directly and the advisory attorney would only be informed of information about the case through him. They would otherwise have no part in the case.
He also informed the Judge that he was filing a motion to have the judge removed, so Metcalf, who Myers said was committing crimes on the bench and refusing to follow procedure, had no say in the future of the cases against Myers.
Metcalf reacted with an “okay” before moving on with other issues related to the case, including moving forward with consolidating the two separate sets of charges and cases into one big case.
The Judge then held onto the July 21 trial date set by Judge Scott McDonald, who sat in for Metcalf at a previous hearing. Myers then demanded that the trial be moved up because his wife would be leaving he United States on July 4. Metcalf refused to move the trial up, telling Myers bluntly that he had 300 cases on his docket and some waiting for a trial date a lot longer than Myers did.
Prosecutor Rachel Stiles interjected that she would depose Myers romantic partner before the time Myers indicated that she was leaving the country. This set off Myers, who said that he was sick of everyone calling his partner anything but his “wife.” He said that marriage was just a way to share assets and that the court should recognize his partnership as a marriage even though they weren’t legally married.
Both Styles and Metcalf had to remind Myers that legally, they could not refer to his partner as his wife because the term “wife” brought legal rights in court proceedings that would not be afforded to his partner they weren’t legally married. Myers was again outraged, yelling that if his partner wouldn’t be called his wife, then he would call the victim in the case “the alleged victim.” Metcalf admonished Myers for this, stating that he would not allow Myers to use the term.
Myers began to state things like “this isn’t a threat, but…” to Judge Metcalf in reminding the judge that he would be filing the motion to have him replaced and anything he could do would likely be overturned by the new judge. Metcalf, again, proceeded as normal and said that if he was removed from the case by the chief justice, Myers could see significant setbacks in his timeline as he would have to start over.
Addressing Myers’ complaints about discovery, Metcalf ordered prosecutor Stiles to included addresses for the handful of witnesses in the case other than the victim and provide those to Myers. Myers argued that he needed to be provided with the address of the victim’s husband, Matt Walker, which was denied by Metcalf.
Myers then stated that he should have hundreds of pages of documentation from the case and indicated that Stiles was lying when she said that she turned everything over to Myers through attorney Parven. Parven attempted to object to Myers’ accusations, resulting in Myers going into what only could be described as a blind rage to the point where Metcalf excused Parven from the courtroom.
Discovery then continued with Myers talking over both Metcalf and Stiles and indicating his belief that he would be able to interview prosecution witnesses without the presence of Stiles or anyone else.
He then complained that Stiles refused to talk to him directly and Stiles responded that she had not been talking to him outside of the presence of his advisory attorney. Metcalf told Stiles from now on, she needed to talk directly to Myers but seemed unphased when Stiles indicated that she would set up a series of Microsoft Teams meetings between herself, Myers and his new advisory attorney (once appointed).
A great deal of time was spent correcting Myers on the differences in policies between Arizona Superior Court rules and those of the local courts that he previously dealt with. Metcalf made it clear that Myers’ advisory attorney would be there to help navigate the differences should Myers decide to listen to the attorney.
Myers brought up settlement hearings and that Stiles had ignored his previous offer of a settlement, without detailing that settlement to Judge Metcalf. That was his previous “release me from jail now and you can sue me to take down the videos at the heart of this matter” offer. Stiles again offered to set up a settlement conference should one be needed.
The next hearing in the case has been set for May 21 to set a trial date for the combined cases.
Myers’ plight did nothing to spark Myers’ fundraising efforts as his GiveSendGo campaign has gone six days without a new donation. Newcomer Clash with Bao took the day with a $65.00 donation to his GoFundMe campaign, followed by $20.00 taken in by Craig Hendry’s generic “To Support Craig’s Work” campaign and $5.00 to Hendry’s Chille DeCastro created freedom campaign.
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