Surviving Your Next Sovereign Citizen

This scenario will sound familiar to many criminal attorneys:  you’re in court, the DA calls the next case, and the judge asks John Q. Defendant how he pleads? “Your Honor, I am not ‘JOHN Q. DEFENDANT,’ which is a fictional corporate entity. I am a natural living being, appearing pro per on behalf of John Q. Defendant, free citizen, for the limited purpose of challenging jurisdiction….” What follows next is a confusing series of questions to the judge about standing and injured parties, and quasi-legal arguments full of buzz words about the U.C.C., admiralty court, strawmen, right to travel, capital letters, red ink, fiduciaries, de facto government, accepted for value, etc. On and on and on it goes, for however long the court is willing to listen. Yep, you’ve got a “sovereign citizen” on your hands. Readers may have different opinions on the best way to handle these defendants in court (which I hope you will share in the comments), but I recommend taking the simplest approach of all: don’t play the game. Who are sovereign citizens? Retired SOG faculty member Michael Crowell wrote this helpful “Quick Quide” which summarizes the movement, and the Southern Poverty Law Center also has an informative write-up about them. In short, “sovereign citizen” is used as a catch-all term to describe a wide range of groups and organizations (Freemen on the Land, Washitaw Nation, Moorish Sovereign Movement, tax protesters, white supremacists, and others) who, for various reasons, claim they are exempt from the law and [...]