A comprehensive record of the 2017 representation appeal Dinse relationship and connected pattern
Executive Assessment
The available record supports a serious, focused criticism of Seymour I. Amster’s representation. The concern is not simply that he lost a difficult misdemeanor trial or selected an imperfect strategy. The concern is that the direction of his choices repeatedly favored a psychiatric-dangerousness explanation over an innocence, self-defense, false-reporting, provocation, or police-influence defense. He recognized several components of the defense—protected expression, vigilante conduct, witness provocation, and the danger of using criminal law to suppress unpopular speech—but did not assemble the objective records capable of proving those components. He then used language that invited jurors to understand Kevin Perelman as mentally ill, paranoid, and potentially violent, including references to guns, Parkland, and Columbine.
That choice had consequences extending beyond the verdict. The trial court imposed mental-health treatment and force-and-violence conditions. Amster then handled the appeal from his own trial, repeated the psychiatric premise, reproduced damaging prosecution-centered facts, failed to develop a section 1118.1 sufficiency issue, and did not present the extra-record ineffective-assistance claim that would have required examination of his own files and decisions. The Court of Appeal expressly treated the sufficiency issue as forfeited because the opening brief did not develop it and the reply appeared to disavow it.
The relationship to Officer Charles “Sean” Dinse is evidentiary rather than personal on the current record. Dinse testified to an extensive police-centered information stream: more than fifty social-media interactions, approximately fifteen field contacts, and thirty to forty telephone calls, including calls from Burbank and Thousand Oaks asking whether Perelman “was a problem.” Amster did not expose the identities, dates, sources, repetition, independence, or police feedback underlying that apparent mass corroboration. Later public material concerning Dinse’s official neighborhood-watch communications, online groups, location sharing, psychiatric descriptions, and the Schellenberg litigation shows why that testimony demanded investigation. It does not by itself prove that Amster and Dinse made a private agreement.
The strongest supportable conclusion is therefore narrower than a proved conspiracy but more serious than ordinary negligence: Amster knew the defense theory, knew that police and civilian actors used psychiatric and dangerousness language, knew the State relied on numerous ostensibly independent complaints, and knew there was evidence of provocation and vigilante behavior. Yet he did not build the factual defense, affirmatively introduced an extreme psychiatric-danger narrative, and then occupied the appellate position from which his own trial conduct should have been challenged. That consistent direction supports an inference of purposeful adverse representation or abandonment sufficient to justify a detailed investigation. Intentional loss remains an allegation requiring direct or circumstantial proof, not an established fact.
Identity Professional Capacity and Expected Competence
Seymour I. Amster is an active California lawyer, State Bar No. 105308, admitted in December 1982. Public professional descriptions identify criminal defense, appellate practice, and federal and state trial and appellate work as principal areas of practice. A current nonprofit-board biography describes more than forty-three years of experience and claims certification as a criminal-law specialist since 1998. His reported background includes Loyola University of Los Angeles and Loyola Law School. These facts matter because the disputed choices cannot readily be attributed to an inexperienced lawyer unfamiliar with criminal trials, appeals, confrontation, preservation, or the difference between a lay label and a clinical diagnosis.
Amster’s reported appellate work includes published or publicly available federal and California matters involving confrontation, cross-examination, ineffective assistance, sentencing, and constitutional claims. In Murdoch v. Castro, he litigated a Sixth Amendment confrontation issue through repeated Ninth Circuit proceedings. Other public cases show that he knew how to challenge prosecution evidence, develop alternative-suspect theories, attack DNA or scientific proof, and allege prosecutorial misconduct. His work in the Grim Sleeper prosecution demonstrates that he could pursue extensive alternate-source and evidentiary arguments in a high-stakes case. This background does not prove misconduct in Perelman’s case, but it weakens an explanation that the central omissions resulted merely from ignorance of basic defense practice.
The profile should not distort that professional history. Public decisions also show ordinary losses and criticism of missed administrative duties in unrelated litigation. They do not establish a general pattern of intentional sabotage. The relevance is competence and capacity: the record presents a lawyer experienced enough to recognize the importance of source evidence, impeachment, preservation, confrontation, and appellate issue development.
The Representation in Context
The 2017 prosecution combined separate incidents and cases into a broad course-of-conduct narrative. The amended case ultimately submitted six counts to the jury, including public-nuisance, criminal-threat, battery, and handbill allegations. The prosecution was permitted to present a continuous history involving cards, photographs, websites, neighborhood encounters, community complaints, and police contacts. That structure created a predictable danger: separate accusers and anonymous callers could appear to corroborate one another even if they shared information, received a common warning, responded to the same online circulation, or repeated a police-supplied description.
A competent defense did not have to prove every event across Perelman’s life or ask jurors to accept a worldwide theory. It needed to isolate representative modules and prove them. The available modules included the Bailey Bernard 911 call and residence-gate sequence; Dinse’s community-contact testimony, parking citation, and alleged residence recording; representative Scroggins recordings and statements; the HOA relationship; the origin and location of the disputed photograph; and records showing that Perelman sought police assistance. Properly organized, those items could have tested initiation, claimed fear, motive, report reversal, police influence, independence, and self-defense without overwhelming the jury.
What Amster Correctly Recognized
A fair profile must acknowledge that Amster did not simply endorse the prosecution. Portions of the trial record show that he recognized several important defense principles.
· He argued that the public-nuisance prosecution implicated protected speech and that public-nuisance law should not become a device for suppressing expression merely because distribution annoyed residents.
· He stated that the Scroggins and Bernard encounters were initiated by others who approached or provoked Perelman and would not disengage.
· He identified vigilante conduct and criticized people who take law enforcement into their own hands instead of using lawful channels.
· He argued that the prosecution displayed the photograph of Perelman with a gun to portray him as dangerous.
· He attacked the prosecutor’s personal characterization of Scroggins as an unusually “brutally honest” witness and preserved a vouching objection.
· He sought special First Amendment instructions and argued that the jury had to distinguish expressive distribution from littering or nuisance conduct.
These points are significant for two reasons. First, they show that counsel understood the core defense theory. Second, they make the omissions harder to explain as an innocent failure to recognize relevance. Counsel rhetorically identified provocation, vigilantism, protected expression, and danger framing, but did not present the strongest objective evidence needed to turn those themes into reasonable doubt.
The Psychiatric Dangerousness Narrative Introduced by Defense Counsel
The closing argument
The most consequential conduct appears at approximately reporter’s transcript pages 999 through 1005. Amster began his closing not with innocence, factual contradictions, self-defense, or missing police evidence, but with a claimed societal mental-health crisis. He discussed the closure of state hospitals, described mentally ill people as previously being “locked up,” referred to “their paranoia,” and said they were now “among us.” He asked whether society should use criminal statutes to find a way to lock them up.
“I don’t think it’s any surprise to you if I make a statement to you that we have a mental health crisis in our society.” — Defense closing, RT approximately 999
“They were locked up. They had their paranoia they were able to deal with on their own. And they were nice away from us.” — Defense closing, RT approximately 999
“Now we have them in our society. We don’t have them locked up in hospitals. They are among us.” — Defense closing, RT approximately 999
Amster then moved from institutionalization to prospective violence. He asked what would happen if Perelman’s passive distribution were stopped, whether “the mentally ill” would move to extremes, and whether they might “pick up a gun and get violent.” After the prosecutor objected and the court warned the jury not to consider punishment, Amster continued the same theme. He invoked “the mothers in Parkland” and “the mothers at Columbine,” asking jurors to consider whether future violence could have been prevented by allowing the allegedly passive conduct.
“Do they eventually, as you close down their avenues, pick up a gun and get violent?” — Defense closing, RT approximately 1002
“I want each of you to think about the mothers in Parkland and the mothers at Columbine.” — Defense closing, RT approximately 1003
This was not a neutral plea for tolerance. It associated counsel’s own client with paranoia, institutional confinement, firearms, school massacres, and future lethal violence. It supplied a propensity and dangerousness narrative more inflammatory than the charged misdemeanors. It also treated mental illness as established without the present record identifying a competent diagnosis supporting that characterization.
Why the argument was internally contradictory
Amster’s stated rhetorical purpose appears to have been that criminalization could make a troubled person more dangerous and that society should tolerate passive expression. But the means of making that argument undermined the client. A defense attorney can argue that unconventional expression is protected without declaring the client mentally ill. Counsel could have said that the State may not convert unpopular speech into criminal propensity, that the incidents had to be judged from objective evidence, and that witnesses who approached or provoked the defendant could not erase their own conduct. Instead, he asked jurors to acquit partly because restriction might cause the client to become violent.
That is especially damaging in a case involving a criminal-threat count and a photograph used to imply dangerousness. The prosecution needed jurors to fear Perelman and to interpret ambiguous words as serious threats. The defense reinforced the emotional premise by supplying its own prediction of possible gun violence. Even if intended as social commentary, it exposed the client to precisely the inference counsel had accused the prosecution of seeking.
Client authorization and factual foundation
The existing record does not establish that Perelman consented to a mental-illness defense, agreed that he had paranoia, authorized comparisons to mass shootings, or received advice concerning the risks. Nor does it identify a qualified expert who diagnosed him and supported this strategy. A treatment history, attendance letter, family assertion, police opinion, or counsel’s belief is not a clinical diagnosis. The counsel file should reveal the factual foundation, strategy memoranda, consultations, proposed expert evidence, client objections, and reasons counsel believed these references advanced acquittal rather than dangerousness.
Failure to Build the Objective Defense
Bailey Bernard and the battery count
Count 7 concerned an alleged battery involving Bailey Bernard. Perelman’s account was that Bernard followed him from a park to his residence, physically crowded him, obstructed his entry, interfered with his camera, and struck the hand holding his keys. Perelman states that he called 911 and went to a police station. Those assertions were capable of objective testing through the 911 recording, CAD and dispatch records, gate or property video, police-station surveillance, photographs, injury evidence, the first report, report drafts, and witness statements.
The trial presentation acknowledged only generally that Bernard followed Perelman. It did not reconstruct the pursuit to his home and the gate encounter through the original records. That omission mattered to self-defense, initial aggressor, claimed fear, report reversal, and credibility. The section 1118.1 acquittal motion did not develop the battery count, and the prosecution’s appellate brief later noted that no acquittal motion was made as to Counts 2 and 7.
Scroggins and the criminal-threat count
Scroggins was not merely a passive recipient of a spontaneous statement. The record and proffered material identified an HOA role, repeated contacts, property or vehicle approaches, windshield letters, continued proximity, claimed financial or property-value concerns, acknowledged PTSD and anger-management history, and recordings that allegedly included “That’s the man I want to kill.” Those materials were relevant to bias, motive, claimed fear, who initiated encounters, and whether the disputed statement was interpreted accurately.
The precise wording was also disputed. The State used the formulation, “If you do this one more time, I will slice you open.” Perelman’s testimony used materially different conditional language: “If you don’t let me take a walk, I will cut you down,” followed by an explanation that he meant leave him alone and did not want to hurt anyone. Counsel needed to compare the exact words, context, conditional phrasing, conduct afterward, speaker perceptions, and evidence of actual sustained fear. Instead, the most inflammatory wording dominated the verdict and later appellate narrative.
Amster did object when the prosecutor called Scroggins one of the most or more “brutally honest” witnesses she had encountered. But that narrow vouching challenge did not substitute for factual impeachment. The reviewing court treated any impropriety as harmless after the objection and instruction. Objective recordings, HOA evidence, threats, approaches, and inconsistent statements would have attacked the witness’s credibility directly rather than merely attacking the prosecutor’s phrasing.
The evidence archive
Perelman states that counsel received or was offered an evidence archive of approximately seventy terabytes. Volume alone is not a defense, and counsel was not required to play or file everything. It did require a review protocol: inventory the media, preserve proof of delivery, identify representative incidents, authenticate selected clips, create transcripts or stills, interview custodians, and map each item to a charged count or impeachment purpose. No complete inventory, review log, selection memorandum, or admissibility plan is presently identified.
The absence of organization became self-reinforcing. Because counsel did not convert the archive into a limited evidentiary presentation, Perelman’s broader account could appear unsupported or symptomatic. Counsel then used that appearance to support a psychiatric framing. The lawyer’s failure to organize corroboration effectively became evidence against the client.
Officer Charles Sean Dinse and the Untested Information Network
Dinse’s trial testimony
Dinse’s own testimony made the police-community network a case-specific issue. He described receiving complaints about Perelman’s cards in multiple locations through “several different sources and methods.” He testified to being flagged down in the field, receiving calls on city cellular and desk telephones, and using social media. When asked to quantify contacts, he estimated more than fifty social-media interactions, approximately fifteen field approaches, and thirty to forty telephone calls. Some callers came from Burbank and Thousand Oaks and asked whether Perelman “was a problem.”
That testimony allowed the prosecution to present numerical repetition as apparent independent corroboration. But the jury was not shown whether the contacts came from fifty different people or repeated activity by a smaller group; whether callers saw conduct firsthand; whether they received a common photograph, label, business card, warning, or police post; whether Dinse communicated information back to community members; or whether contacts preceded the charged events. The identities, dates, content, geographic origin, and resulting police action were foundational facts, not peripheral curiosity.
What Amster did not establish
· Who contacted Dinse, how often, and about what specific conduct.
· Whether contacts were independent or coordinated through the same neighborhood groups or social-media posts.
· Whether Dinse supplied descriptions, labels, photographs, location information, or advice before later witnesses encountered Perelman.
· Whether the calls generated CAD entries, reports, field contacts, citations, or enforcement activity.
· Whether callers from distant cities had personally met Perelman or were responding to circulated information.
· Whether Dinse’s own notes, direct messages, account exports, telephone logs, and group-administrator records contradicted or qualified his summary testimony.
· Whether a limiting instruction was required to prevent jurors from treating anonymous contacts as substantive proof of character, conduct, or mental state.
Recurring Dinse contacts and impeachment
Perelman identifies Dinse in the 2013 sidewalk contact, the 2017 prosecution, a parking citation bearing Dinse’s name approximately two weeks before expected defense testimony, a residence-area recording in which an officer allegedly suggested checking whether a door was unlocked, and a later accusation that Perelman followed Dinse home. Recurrence alone does not prove wrongdoing. Combined with Dinse’s own testimony about extensive community communications, however, it made assignments, reports, messages, citation metadata, complaint history, social-media activity, and bias obvious subjects for investigation.
The parking citation and residence recording provided concrete tests. The citation could have been compared with the trial schedule, Dinse’s assignment, location, vehicle position, photographs, metadata, and preceding communications. The residence recording could have been authenticated and compared with dispatch, CAD, body-camera, access, and authorization records. Amster allegedly possessed or was directed to this evidence but did not organize it into an admissible foundation or confront Dinse with it.
Later public evidence explaining the missed inquiry
A public 2014 introduction attributed to Dinse described the Senior Lead Officer role as monitoring crime trends, quality-of-life concerns, and neighborhood watch, and stated that community members used Facebook and other communications to alert one another. Public posts attributed to his officer account later showed residents being asked to identify, locate, or report people and activities. Independent reporting identified the private Valley groups “Crimebusters of West Hills and Woodland Hills” and “Homeless Transient Encampments of our West Valley,” in which officers and residents exchanged photographs, locations, descriptions, accusations, and requests for action.
The Los Angeles Times reported that LAPD ordered officers to stop participating after violent and harassing comments appeared in the groups. The reporting identified Dinse as an active officer participant and quoted his explanation that he used the pages to absorb street information and assist residents. This evidence does not show that he endorsed every member’s words, but it confirms that a police-connected neighborhood information channel was neither imaginary nor inherently impossible.
Rex Schellenberg’s 2020 federal complaint separately named Dinse and the City under 42 U.S.C. section 1983. The complaint alleged that Dinse circulated Schellenberg’s location, referred to him as a recurring subject, used an unverified “drug addiction/mental illness” explanation, and relied on community reporting as a pretext for contacts, towing, or property action. These were allegations, not adjudicated findings. Their significance is comparative: another identified person alleged a similar police-to-community process beginning during the same general period. The separate 2018 Schellenberg property-seizure case named the City rather than Dinse and must not be conflated with the 2020 Dinse case.
How Amster’s Choices Functionally Supported Dinse
No presently reviewed record proves that Amster privately coordinated with Dinse. “Supporting Dinse” is therefore best understood first as a functional result. Amster’s choices protected the evidentiary value of Dinse’s narrative and prevented meaningful testing of its source.
1. He allowed anonymous volume to operate as corroboration. Dinse’s counts of calls and contacts remained largely unexamined, permitting repetition to look like independence.
2. He failed to trace the information stream. Without names, dates, posts, messages, CAD records, and telephone logs, the defense could not determine whether police information preceded civilian accusations.
3. He failed to use recurring-contact impeachment. The citation, residence recording, 2013 history, and other reported Dinse contacts were not assembled into a chronology.
4. He substituted psychiatric explanation for source analysis. Instead of showing how labels and complaints circulated, counsel told jurors that his client was mentally ill and paranoid.
5. He reinforced dangerousness. His gun, Parkland, and Columbine references supported the preventive logic that an unconventional person should be controlled because of what he might do.
6. He preserved only a narrow appellate record. The missing investigation and exhibits made later review depend on the same incomplete trial record.
The functional result was that Dinse appeared as a reliable collector of independent community concern rather than a potential source, amplifier, or coordinator of the narrative. The jury could treat numerous contacts as proof that many unrelated people independently reached the same conclusion, while the defense failed to test whether they shared a common channel.
The Preventive Control or Pre Crime Theme
“Pre-crime” is not used here as a formal legal doctrine. It describes a preventive-control logic: restrain, monitor, label, exclude, treat, or confine a person because officials or community members predict future danger from speech, unconventional behavior, reputation, or psychiatric characterization rather than proving a completed offense through reliable evidence.
Amster’s closing embraced the vocabulary of that logic even while nominally criticizing criminalization. He asked what society should do with “the mentally ill,” discussed whether they should be locked up, and warned that limiting passive conduct might lead to guns and mass violence. This framed Perelman as a future-risk problem. The question subtly shifted from whether the State proved the charged conduct to how society should manage a supposedly mentally ill person who might become dangerous.
Dinse’s publicly reported methods raise a parallel concern. Community members supplied photographs, locations, warnings, psychiatric descriptions, and predictions of risk; police used those streams to decide whom to watch, approach, move, cite, tow, or refer. The Schellenberg allegations similarly challenged location sharing and psychiatric labeling as a basis for repeated intervention. Amster’s failure to investigate those channels allowed the preventive narrative to enter trial as an apparently neutral accumulation of concern.
The “political agenda” supported by the record is therefore not necessarily a partisan affiliation or campaign platform. It is an institutional preference for community surveillance, risk sorting, psychiatric characterization, exclusion, and preventive control. The current record can show that Amster’s argument and omissions advanced that framework. It cannot yet prove that he joined a political organization, received instructions from Dinse, or intentionally participated in a coordinated policy. Those stronger claims require communications, counsel-file evidence, testimony, or other direct proof.
The Appeal and the Conflict of Reviewing His Own Work
Same attorney trial and appeal
Amster represented Perelman on the appeal from the same trial. That dual role did not automatically disqualify him, but it created an obvious practical conflict. Meaningful appellate review required asking whether trial counsel failed to investigate, subpoena, authenticate, object, seek limiting instructions, move for acquittal, preserve claims, consult on strategy, or avoid prejudicial concessions. Amster could not present those arguments without evaluating and potentially accusing himself.
The record should establish whether Perelman knowingly waived that conflict, whether independent counsel reviewed potential ineffective-assistance claims, and whether Amster explained that extra-record claims required habeas development. No adequate waiver or independent review is presently identified.
Prosecution centered statement of facts
The opening appellate brief reproduced substantial portions of the State’s narrative: witnesses allegedly saw Perelman throw or drop large numbers of cards; Scroggins received the inflammatory threat; and the website described a worldwide conspiracy. It did not reconstruct the Bernard pursuit and gate encounter with original 911 and residence evidence, develop the Scroggins recording and alleged death statement, expose possible common sources underlying Dinse’s community contacts, or explain the defensive documentation purpose through authenticated representative proof.
The problem was not that an appellate brief must omit adverse facts. Counsel must state the record accurately. The problem was selection and balance: damaging allegations were repeated as the organizing narrative while the facts necessary to show provocation, nonindependence, self-defense, police influence, and report reversal remained undeveloped or outside the record because trial counsel had failed to build them.
The forfeited section 1118.1 issue
The Court of Appeal expressly stated that the opening brief did not develop why the evidence was insufficient under section 1118.1. The reply brief appeared to disavow the claim by characterizing the thrust as instructional error. The court therefore found the sufficiency argument forfeited and alternatively found substantial evidence. This was not merely an unfavorable legal ruling; it was an identified briefing failure by the same lawyer who had made the trial motion.
Narrow vouching claim and psychiatric sentencing premise
The appeal pursued the prosecutor’s “brutally honest” characterization of Scroggins, but the reviewing court found reversal unwarranted. The appeal thus attacked the prosecutor’s phrase while leaving the strongest factual impeachment outside a developed record. It also argued that the sentence punished “the mentally ill” rather than treating the psychiatric premise itself as unsupported. The reply brief stated that the community did not know how to interact with “one who is mentally ill” and asked whether incarceration would merely prolong mental illness. That framing carried the trial concession into the appeal.
The sentencing challenge raised the federal Eighth Amendment but did not develop the separate California constitutional “cruel or unusual” analysis noted by the appellate court. The court also treated aspects of the sentencing claim as forfeited for lack of a trial objection. These outcomes illustrate the cumulative problem: incomplete trial preservation, the same attorney on appeal, a psychiatric premise repeated as fact, and claims narrowed or forfeited.
Evidence Supporting an Inference Beyond Ordinary Negligence
Intentional loss cannot be declared solely because a lawyer made damaging choices. Lawyers sometimes adopt unsuccessful, inconsistent, or poorly executed strategies. The inference becomes stronger, however, when choices repeatedly run in the same adverse direction despite counsel’s demonstrated knowledge and available alternatives.
· Amster knew that provocation and non-disengagement mattered, because he said the central encounters were initiated by others.
· He knew vigilante conduct mattered, because he criticized witnesses taking law into their own hands.
· He knew the State was using dangerousness, because he accused the prosecution of using a gun photograph to make Perelman appear dangerous.
· He knew protected expression mattered, because he litigated First Amendment instructions and argued against nuisance-based suppression.
· He knew Dinse relied on an extensive community information stream, because Dinse quantified it before the jury.
· He had the training and experience to understand confrontation, source testing, impeachment, sufficiency, preservation, and appellate briefing.
· Despite that knowledge, he did not present the strongest objective proof and affirmatively associated the client with paranoia, institutionalization, firearms, Parkland, and Columbine.
· He then handled the appeal, continued the mental-illness premise, reproduced damaging facts, and failed to develop a claim the appellate court found forfeited.
This pattern permits a responsible inference of purposeful adverse representation, abandonment, or a strategy aligned with institutional control rather than acquittal. It does not establish which explanation is correct. The missing proof lies principally in the counsel file, communications, billing and review records, investigator decisions, client consultation, and Amster’s sworn explanation.
Competing Interpretations and Their Evidentiary Tests
Interpretation one misguided humanitarian strategy
Amster may claim that he sought to humanize Perelman, defend tolerance, prevent criminalization of mental illness, and argue that passive expression was socially preferable to confrontation. The test is whether he had a factual basis for the diagnosis, discussed the strategy with the client, obtained informed consent, considered its prejudice, and documented why mass-shooting references helped rather than harmed.
Interpretation two overwhelmed or poorly organized defense
He may claim that the evidence archive was too large, authentication was difficult, time was limited, or the broader account risked confusing the jury. The test is whether he created an inventory, hired or sought an investigator, selected representative clips, issued subpoenas, requested continuances, consulted experts, preserved originals, and explained rejected items. A reasonable narrowing decision requires prior investigation; counsel cannot strategically reject evidence he never reviewed.
Interpretation three tactical focus on the First Amendment
He may claim that a speech-centered defense was the strongest available approach. The test is why that theory did not include the objective context showing defensive purpose, why the battery and threat counts were not fully addressed, why anonymous community contacts were left unexplored, and why counsel introduced a psychiatric-dangerousness concession unnecessary to First Amendment analysis.
Interpretation four adverse or agenda based representation
Perelman alleges that Amster’s conduct was not merely ineffective but aligned with a wider effort to establish a mental-illness label and justify preventive control. The circumstantial support is the consistent direction of omissions and concessions. The test is communications with police, prosecutors, family, community participants, or third parties; undisclosed conflicts; retainer and payment arrangements; statements concerning desired disposition; evidence-access history; and whether contemporaneous notes reveal an objective inconsistent with acquittal.
Records Needed to Complete the Profile
· The complete unfiltered trial and appellate files, including native electronic folders and metadata.
· Retainer, payment, scope, third-party payer, and conflict-disclosure records.
· Every communication between Amster and Perelman, the prosecution, Dinse, other officers, witnesses, HOA participants, family members, and appellate personnel.
· A complete inventory of the evidence supplied, proof of delivery, access and download histories, review notes, clip selections, and excluded items.
· Investigator requests, refusals, assignments, reports, witness contacts, subpoena decisions, and budgets.
· Pitchess, Brady, discovery, preservation, and public-record research concerning Dinse and the community-contact evidence.
· Drafts and notes for opening, closing, the section 1118.1 motion, jury instructions, sentencing, the appellate opening brief, and reply.
· All records concerning a mental-health defense: diagnosis, expert consultation, treatment records relied upon, client authorization, and strategy memoranda.
· The Bernard 911 call, CAD and dispatch records, gate and station video, original reports and drafts, photographs, and injury evidence.
· The complete Scroggins recording set, native metadata, letters, HOA records, property-entry chronology, and alleged death-threat audio.
· Dinse’s city cellular and desk-phone logs, emails, texts, social-media exports, direct messages, group memberships, administrator records, relevant Nextdoor communications, and complaint logs for the period surrounding the charged incidents.
· The parking citation, citation metadata, assignment and location records, photographs, and communications preceding issuance.
· Any waiver or consultation concerning Amster’s handling of the appeal from his own trial performance.
Questions for Seymour Amster
7. What evidence did you receive from Perelman, and where is the complete inventory?
8. Which recordings did you personally review, and which did an investigator or staff member review?
9. Why was the Bernard 911 call and complete residence sequence not introduced?
10. Why were Counts 2 and 7 not fully included in the section 1118.1 challenge?
11. What investigation did you conduct into Dinse’s social-media contacts, telephone calls, field contacts, and geographically distant complainants?
12. Did you seek names, dates, logs, posts, messages, CAD entries, or a limiting instruction concerning anonymous community contacts?
13. What did you know about the Dinse parking citation and residence recording, and why were they not authenticated and used?
14. What competent diagnosis supported calling your client mentally ill and paranoid?
15. Did Perelman authorize a mental-illness defense and the Parkland and Columbine references?
16. Why did you tell jurors that restricting his passive conduct might cause him to pick up a gun?
17. How did that argument advance acquittal on a criminal-threat charge rather than dangerousness?
18. Why did you handle the appeal from your own trial without independent review of ineffective-assistance claims?
19. Why did the opening brief fail to develop the section 1118.1 issue and the reply appear to disavow it?
20. Why did the appeal repeat that Perelman was mentally ill without challenging the absence of a documented clinical foundation?
21. Did any third party communicate a desired psychiatric, treatment, probationary, or confinement outcome?
On Record Signs of Preparation and Performance Failure
The record contains several moments that must be preserved because they bear on preparation and candor. They do not amount, standing alone, to a formal confession of ineffective assistance. Together with the omissions and appellate forfeitures, however, they provide concrete points at which counsel acknowledged limitations or the record objectively documented failed performance.
· During trial proceedings the prosecutor stated that Amster had not been in a state of mind to address a matter the previous day, and Amster responded, “Yesterday, I was not.” The complete surrounding transcript must be reviewed before assigning meaning, but the admission belongs in the performance chronology.
· Amster apologized that he had been unable to obtain the full citation for City of San Clemente while litigating the speech and public-nuisance instructions. The court responded that work remained to be done. For an experienced appellate and criminal specialist, incomplete authority on the central First Amendment issue is relevant to preparation.
· The section 1118.1 record and appellate opinion supply an objective performance failure: the principal sufficiency issue was not developed in the opening brief, the reply appeared to disclaim it, and the reviewing court held it forfeited.
· The same attorney’s appellate role prevented an independent presentation of his own failure to investigate, authenticate evidence, challenge Dinse’s sources, move fully on Counts 2 and 7, or avoid a prejudicial psychiatric concession.
The phrase “self-admission to ineffective assistance” should therefore be used with precision. The existing record does not contain a statement by Amster saying, “I was ineffective.” It contains admissions and procedural outcomes that may serve as evidence of deficient preparation, together with his own words showing that he knew the relevant constitutional and factual theories. A complete dossier should preserve that distinction so an avoidable overstatement does not discredit the stronger documented evidence.
Jury Knowledge Voir Dire and the Appearance of a Predetermined Result
Perelman alleges that potential or seated jurors denied prior knowledge of him even though his name, website, cards, neighborhood controversy, and police-community circulation were allegedly widespread. That allegation cannot be resolved from the verdict alone. It requires the complete voir-dire transcript, juror questionnaires, hardship proceedings, cause and peremptory challenges, social-media preservation where lawful, and any record of juror recognition or discussion.
Amster’s obligation was not to accuse jurors without proof. It was to investigate whether the case’s unusual publicity and neighborhood circulation created a realistic contamination risk, ask sufficiently specific questions, preserve answers, seek individualized inquiry where appropriate, and move for cause or other relief when a juror’s response conflicted with known facts. The present record does not show a developed defense inquiry into whether any juror belonged to relevant neighborhood groups, had seen Dinse’s or community posts, had encountered the cards or website, or knew witnesses, officers, HOA participants, security personnel, or the locations involved.
The closing argument may itself have increased the risk of an adverse verdict. Rather than calming fear and demanding incident-specific proof, Amster told jurors to think about future gun violence and school massacres. If jurors already possessed undisclosed familiarity or community concern, those references could activate rather than neutralize prejudice. Perelman characterizes this as “scaring the jurors.” The documented fact is that defense counsel introduced fear-laden comparisons; whether he intended to produce conviction requires evidence of strategy and motive.
Judge Eric P Harmon and the Courtroom Framework
Judge Eric P. Harmon presided over the trial. The transcript shows active disputes over First Amendment instructions, public nuisance, littering, handbills, and the permissible use of expressive conduct. At one point the court used the hypothetical phrase “Harmon for Judge, 2024” while discussing political speech. Perelman views the proceeding as reflecting a political or institutional agenda and alleges that the verdict was not the result of a neutral presentation.
Amster’s performance must be evaluated within that environment. If he believed the court’s rulings improperly restricted the defense, he had to make complete offers of proof, cite controlling authority, preserve objections, request limiting instructions, seek reconsideration, and build an appellate record. If he believed judicial comments, juror contamination, or courtroom relationships created bias, he had to investigate and seek appropriate relief. A later broad accusation cannot replace a contemporaneous record, and counsel’s failure to create that record materially limited review.
The profile does not presently establish Judge Harmon’s subjective political motive or an agreement with Amster. It identifies a testable question: whether counsel repeatedly accepted a courtroom framework that treated cards, speech, psychiatric labels, anonymous reports, and predicted danger as more important than initiation, source, self-defense, and objective proof.
Court Reporters Record Continuity and Uninvestigated Integrity Questions
The 2017 clerk and transcript materials identify multiple reporters, including Ann Marie Cizin, Dominica Hotchkiss, Hilda Gutierrez, and Elsie Diwa Cervantes. The docket also contains a nunc pro tunc correction deleting Gutierrez and adding Cervantes for a May 21, 2018 proceeding. Dominica Hotchkiss appears on more than one proceeding in the assembled court packet. Perelman has separately raised whether Hotchkiss appears in another related case or proceeding. That cross-case overlap must be verified from certified title pages rather than assumed.
Multiple reporters and a corrected reporter assignment are not proof of transcript alteration. They do create concrete record-management questions: who reported each proceeding; which notes, roughs, audio, and certified transcripts exist; whether the correct reporter was identified; whether all requested volumes were designated on appeal; and whether any missing or disputed passage can be settled or reconstructed. Amster’s responsibility was to obtain and audit the complete record, correct errors, request augmentation, and preserve disputed statements.
The broader court-reporter concern also includes Debbie Wollman, whose alleged residential and court-connected role appears elsewhere in Perelman’s materials. Her property proximity and any court assignment must be established separately. The relevant criticism of Amster is not that he should have accused reporters of falsification without evidence. It is that he should have investigated reporter identity, continuity, assignments, conflicts, available audio, and transcript accuracy when those matters were material to appeal and credibility.
Dinse Complaints Pitchess and the Missed Misconduct Inquiry
Perelman repeatedly sought an inquiry into Dinse’s conduct, prior complaints, social-media activity, neighborhood relationships, recurring contacts, the citation, and the residence recording. A defense lawyer could not simply rely on public accusation. He could, however, investigate the factual predicate for Pitchess discovery, subpoena nonprivileged records, preserve social-media evidence, obtain assignments and CAD material, and request an in camera review where legally supported.
The later Schellenberg material demonstrates why such an inquiry was not frivolous. Public reporting and a federal complaint described Dinse using online groups, locations, psychiatric labels, and resident reports in connection with enforcement. Perelman also alleges that Dinse forged or caused a signature to be forged in an effort to confine Schellenberg. The presently reviewed public materials do not establish that signature allegation as a judicial finding. The dossier preserves it as a specific claim requiring the original document, known signature exemplars, authorship and metadata evidence, custodian testimony, and the complete Schellenberg case file.
Amster’s failure is not measured by whether every later allegation was already provable in 2018. It is measured by whether the 2017 testimony and evidence available then gave reasonable counsel a duty to investigate. Dinse himself described a broad network of calls, field contacts, and social-media interactions. That sworn testimony supplied the predicate to ask who the sources were, what was said, and whether the State was presenting coordinated repetition as independent corroboration.
Recurring Civilian Participants Amster Failed to Place in a Common Evidentiary Framework
Terrence Scroggins
Scroggins combined several features central to the wider pattern: HOA authority or influence, claimed property-value interests, repeated approaches despite asserted fear, letters and materials, psychiatric and institutionalization language, acknowledged PTSD and anger-management history, a criminal-threat accusation, and the alleged recorded statement, “That’s the man I want to kill.” Amster used fragments but did not present an integrated motive and credibility chronology. The prosecutor’s “brutally honest” praise consequently operated against a thin impeachment record.
Bailey Bernard
Bernard allegedly followed Perelman home from a park, approached the residential gate, interfered with his hand and camera, and then became the named victim in a battery count. The missing 911, CAD, residence, station, and original-report evidence could have shown initiation and reversal. Amster’s appellate description reduced the event to a general physical altercation rather than placing the alleged pursuit and gate conduct at the center.
Pedram Espinoza and shared residence context
Perelman describes Pedram Espinoza as another person who portrayed ordinary proximity as obsession while omitting that both lived in the same townhouse complex. That detail matters because repeated sightings near a shared residence do not independently prove stalking or fixation. Amster’s broader failure was to demand precise location, residence, approach, and initiation evidence before accepting psychiatric or obsession language.
Jason Ryan Fishman as later comparative evidence
Fishman entered the documented narrative after the 2017 case and therefore could not have been trial evidence available to Amster unless an earlier contact is established. He is relevant as later comparison, not retroactive proof of counsel’s knowledge. Perelman states that Fishman threatened, “If I see you again, you’re dead,” later approached on an electric scooter using red-and-blue lights or siren sounds, announced an arrest for trespass on a public street, followed Perelman toward Vanowen, made a police report alleging vehicle assault, pursued restraining-order allegations portraying Perelman as obsessed, and appeared anonymously in later probation material. Perelman also identifies corporate paperwork connecting Fishman to a security business.
The comparison matters because the alleged method resembles what Amster failed to expose in 2017: the accuser approaches, threatens, follows, or provokes; omits the initiating conduct; invokes police or security authority; files a one-sided report; and uses obsession or mental-illness language to reverse the roles. Fishman’s later conduct must be authenticated through videos, GPS or route evidence, calls, reports, pleadings, corporate filings, and probation-source identification. It cannot be used to prove that Amster knew of Fishman or intentionally assisted him.
Security personnel businesses and public-place exclusion
Perelman’s materials describe recurring security personnel, persons allegedly posing as guards, private security vehicles, business exclusions, park confrontations, and efforts to convert protected presence or distribution into trespass, nuisance, or dangerousness. The 2017 relevance was not to prove every later incident. It was to investigate whether security personnel, businesses, HOA actors, witnesses, and police shared photographs, cards, labels, and instructions, and whether claimed independent encounters originated through common channels.
Marketing Materials Website Photography and Defensive Documentation
The prosecution and appellate narrative repeatedly treated cards, flyers, photographs, signs, and the website as evidence of obsession, nuisance, or mental instability. Perelman’s explanation was the opposite: the materials were created because repeated encounters, threats, accusations, and police nonresponse made ordinary private reporting ineffective. He used public documentation to locate witnesses, preserve events, correct disinformation, and warn that encounters were not isolated.
Amster partially recognized the speech issue but did not establish the defensive chain. He needed to show what event preceded each item, where the disputed photograph originated, whether a flyer was displayed on Perelman’s own property, whether a card was handed to a willing recipient or deposited as alleged, and whether the website content documented recorded events. Without that foundation, defensive documentation could be reframed as the cause of the hostility rather than a response to it.
This circularity is central to the profile: community contacts and police activity produce documentation; the documentation is then cited as proof of obsession or instability; restrictions on documentation are justified by the label; and any continued attempt to explain becomes new evidence for the label. Amster’s psychiatric closing entrenched that cycle even while arguing that the passive expression should be tolerated.
The Rotating Counsel Pattern
Perelman places Amster within a longer sequence of counsel whose conduct allegedly moved in the same direction: Jonathan Franklin in 2013, Seymour Amster in the 2017 trial and appeal, Shep Zebberman in the 2023–2024 case, and Yisrael Gelb in later appellate work. The claimed common features are failure to investigate police and civilian misconduct, failure to organize supplied evidence, failure to challenge psychiatric labeling, pressure toward plea or treatment-oriented outcomes, omission of stronger innocence and constitutional issues, and protection of the existing official narrative.
The lawyers’ similar conduct does not by itself prove communication or a joint agreement. Each representation must be evaluated on its own record. The pattern is relevant to motive and transmission if records show shared sources, referrals, third-party payment, family influence, communications, repeated unexplained psychiatric strategies, or knowledge passed from one matter into another.
Jonathan Franklin
Franklin allegedly stated, “I’m not going to say anything bad about a police officer,” failed to investigate the 2013 charges, and presented C.A.M.P. or MEU involvement as police help rather than clearly disclosing its mental-health function. That earlier experience gave Amster a reason to investigate whether a psychiatric and police narrative already existed before 2017.
Shep Zebberman
Zebberman allegedly received a vast evidence archive in the later case but failed to convert representative materials into admissible proof, challenge the larger hostility, or prevent continued psychiatric characterization. The later similarity is not proof of Amster’s coordination; it strengthens the need to determine whether a common record or label moved from case to case.
Yisrael Gelb
Gelb allegedly declined to develop ineffective-assistance and extra-record issues capable of challenging trial counsel. The resulting concern mirrors Amster’s appellate conflict: appellate representation that leaves prior counsel’s omissions unexamined allows the same incomplete narrative to acquire finality and later governmental use.
Richard Barnwell
Barnwell allegedly told Perelman to wait outside a courtroom, failed to check him in, later said the matter had been dismissed although no judge had announced dismissal, and was followed by warrants and arrests. Those allegations require the minute order, appearance record, check-in procedure, communications, and warrant chronology. They are relevant to the rotating-counsel theme but do not presently establish a link to Amster.
Amster’s External Professional and Political Connections
Public sources show that Amster had a substantial professional life beyond this case. He handled prominent criminal cases, federal habeas litigation, disability and education litigation, and representation connected to politically active persons. He served or serves in nonprofit or advocacy roles involving students, veterans, disability, or mental-health support. Those associations establish experience and access; they do not establish that he imported a partisan agenda into Perelman’s trial.
The stronger political analysis arises from what Amster actually said and did in the courtroom. He converted a fact-specific criminal trial into a societal question about how to manage “the mentally ill,” whether institutions should again be used, whether passive conduct prevents future violence, and whether society should fear a person who might pick up a gun. This is political in the governance sense: it concerns who belongs in ordinary society, who should be monitored or confined, and whether predicted danger can substitute for adjudicated conduct.
The dossier should not infer motive merely because Amster represented controversial clients, belonged to a religious or cultural group, worked with mental-health organizations, or held political relationships. Association and identity are not proof. The probative facts are his words, omissions, conflicts, communications, financial arrangements, evidence decisions, and the parties who benefited from them.
Dinse’s Apparent Motive and the Benefit Produced by Amster’s Representation
Perelman’s theory is that Dinse favored aggressive community policing in which residents identify unwanted persons, circulate images and locations, repeat psychiatric or dangerousness labels, and generate police contacts until exclusion, treatment, arrest, towing, or confinement becomes easier. Public reporting on the Valley Facebook groups and the Schellenberg complaint supplies partial external support for the existence of such methods. It does not establish every element of Perelman’s account or a personal plan by Dinse to remove him.
Amster’s representation benefited that alleged objective in several ways. It left Dinse’s anonymous and geographically dispersed sources untested; left the citation and residence evidence undeveloped; failed to seek the complete misconduct and communication record; allowed psychiatric labels to replace source analysis; and gave the jury a defense-authored account of Perelman as paranoid, mentally ill, and potentially violent. The resulting conviction and treatment conditions could then be cited as institutional confirmation of the very narrative the defense should have challenged.
This is the clearest overlap between Amster and Dinse. It does not depend on proving a private meeting. The functional alignment is visible in the record: Dinse supplied the community concern, Amster failed to test its origin, and Amster supplied the psychiatric-dangerousness interpretation. Whether that alignment was accidental, incompetent, ideological, financially influenced, or coordinated remains the central motive question.
What the Dossier Can and Cannot Present as Established
Established or directly documented
· Amster represented Perelman at the 2017–2018 trial and on the direct appeal.
· He argued protected speech, provocation, and vigilante themes but did not present the full objective defense described by Perelman.
· He called the case a mental-health crisis and invoked institutionalization, paranoia, guns, Parkland, and Columbine in closing.
· Dinse testified to extensive social-media, field, and telephone contacts, including distant callers asking whether Perelman was a problem.
· The appellate court found the section 1118.1 argument forfeited or undeveloped and rejected the preserved appellate claims.
· Multiple court reporters appear in the proceedings, and the clerk record includes a reporter correction.
Supported allegations requiring adjudication
· Amster failed to review or use substantial evidence supplied by Perelman.
· The Bernard, Scroggins, citation, residence, HOA, and police-report materials would have materially altered the defense.
· Dinse or police-connected groups circulated information that influenced witnesses or enforcement.
· Jurors possessed undisclosed prior knowledge or answered voir-dire questions inaccurately.
· A signature associated with action against Schellenberg was forged or caused to be forged by Dinse.
Inferences not yet proved as direct facts
· Amster intentionally lost the case.
· Amster entered a secret agreement with Dinse, prosecutors, family, community groups, or later counsel.
· The reporter changes reflect alteration rather than ordinary staffing and correction.
· Every later civilian participant belonged to one centrally directed organization.
· A partisan, religious, racial, or financial affiliation explains Amster’s choices.
Preserving these categories does not weaken the dossier. It prevents documented facts from being dismissed because a still-unproved motive was stated too absolutely. The pattern can be presented in full while the missing communications and files are pursued.
Profile Conclusion
The record portrays a lawyer who understood the language of constitutional defense but did not build the factual structure necessary to make that defense work. Amster recognized protected expression, provocation, vigilante conduct, and the prosecution’s attempt to portray Perelman as dangerous. Yet he failed to test the police-centered information network that made multiple accusations appear independent; failed to organize representative objective evidence; failed to fully develop self-defense, report reversal, and witness motive; and affirmatively characterized his client through institutionalization, paranoia, firearms, Parkland, and Columbine.
His subsequent decision to handle the appeal magnified the problem. It placed him in the position of reviewing his own investigation, objections, concessions, and preservation failures. The appellate presentation continued the psychiatric premise, relied heavily on the prosecution’s factual frame, and forfeited or narrowed significant issues. The result was not simply a lost appeal; it was an appellate record that protected the incompleteness of the trial record.
The available evidence therefore supports a detailed investigation into whether Amster’s representation crossed from deficient performance into purposeful adverse representation or abandonment. It also supports examination of whether his trial and appellate choices functionally advanced Dinse’s police-community narrative and a preventive-control model in which psychiatric labeling and predicted future risk replace incident-specific proof. A direct agreement, political affiliation, or intentional plan to lose has not yet been proved. The pattern is sufficiently concrete, consistent, and consequential to require the files, communications, and sworn explanations that could resolve motive.
Source and Reliability Guide
Primary case materials reviewed
· 2017 reporter’s transcripts, including the trial testimony, instruction discussions, section 1118.1 proceedings, and defense closing at approximately RT 999–1005.
· Appellant’s opening brief and reply brief prepared in the appeal from the 2018 judgment.
· Respondent’s brief and the California Court of Appeal opinion, including the discussion of section 1118.1 forfeiture, vouching, instructional claims, sentencing, and the state and federal punishment provisions.
· Current seven-book master record used only as an index to issues and source locations, not as independent proof.
Independent public sources
· State Bar of California attorney search: Seymour I. Amster, State Bar No. 105308, active, admitted December 1982.
· Murdoch v. Castro, 365 F.3d 699 (9th Cir. 2004), and 489 F.3d 1063 (9th Cir. 2007), reflecting Amster’s federal habeas and confrontation-clause experience.
· Smith v. Los Angeles Unified School District, Ninth Circuit proceedings, reflecting federal appellate work involving disability and educational policy.
· Los Angeles Times, “Cop’s use of Facebook put ‘target on our back,’” reporting on Valley Facebook groups, LAPD participation, Dinse, and the Schellenberg allegations.
· Rex Schellenberg v. City of Los Angeles et al., C.D. Cal. Case No. 2:20-cv-01313, complaint and docket. Allegations are not treated as adjudicated findings.
· Separate Schellenberg property case, C.D. Cal. Case No. 2:18-cv-07670, distinguished from the Dinse-specific 2020 action.
Reliability categories used in this profile
· Documented: appears in a transcript, brief, opinion, docket, official profile, or authenticated record.
· Attributed allegation: asserted by Perelman, Schellenberg, or another identified speaker but not yet adjudicated.
· Inference: a conclusion drawn from the direction, sequence, or consistency of documented choices.
· Unproved proposition: secret agreement, intentional loss, political coordination, or instruction by Dinse remains a subject for investigation unless direct evidence is obtained.
