If you go to YouTube, you can find several videos of SovCits and their encounters with both law enforcement and judges. Maybe I’m just a bleeding heart, but sometimes I can’t help but sympathize with a bunch of people tripping over their own dicks. Many of these people have relatively minor problems, but they just make it worse for themselves even in the many situations where the judge or law enforcement gives them ample opportunity to get with the program.
But you’re right, they can be dangerous. A little over a decade ago, the SovCits had a happy of filing liens on property causing confusion, stress, and financial harm. It’s not that hard to file a lien, and the SovCit would file them against public officials they didn’t like. There are also other scams, including identity theft, pyramid schemes, defrauding the government, etc., etc. And let’s not forget the threat of violence which is usually directed at government officials and law enforcement.
Like I said, I do sympathize with them sometimes, and I will admit to being entertained by their antics, but they’re dangerous.
Nowhere did I say I approve of their tactics or their underlying assumptions that they are special or enlightened or that they have no obligations to society at large. I am saying that I can understand feeling that the government is illegitimate, corrupt and acting outside its authority because we are now watching it in real time.
You got it all wrong. It needed to gave gold fringe around it.
As I’ve said before, they want to live outside the law? Let them be outlaws in the original sense of the word. Anybody who wants to can steal or break their stuff, injure or even kill them with no response whatsoever from the police who have no jurisdiction over them or the admiralty courts they hold in disdain. The magic words have no effect on a gang of thugs.
I refuse to have any sympathy for SovCits because thet refuse to even read their own sources and just blindly echo the script. Here just one example: when demanding to know jurisdiction, SovCits claim that under the 6th Amendment there are two jurisdictions - common and maritime/admiralty.
Here is the 6th Amendment
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Please tell me how you can make your “There are two types of jurisdiction.” argument if you have actually read the amendment.
They’re talking about the secret 6th amendment that no one can see with mortal eyes, but which every police officer will follow if someone refers to it, while crossing their toes and blinking in Morse code
What we’re watching in real time was supported by other people feeling the government was illegitimate, corrupt, and acting outside its authority. And those same people turned right around and said it was ok when they did it.
It’s a common feeling for various reasons. The SovCits take it to another level of batshittery and assholery.
Has any court ever ruled on just what “speedy” means? Can someone petition to have charges dropped because the system failed to set a trial date within a certain limit? A year and a day maybe?
The SovCit types are in your government now. They’re in the Trump administration. Project 2025 is very evocative of SovCit thought. The “alternate slate of electors” shit they tried to pull back in 2020 was like SovCit magical thinking. DOGE trying to destroy the government are the ones acting with the belief that the government and its employees are illegitimate.
If you feel a kinship with them you might as well be a Trump supporter.
There is a right to have a case dismissed for failure to comply with speedy trial deadlines. This can be with or without prejudice. With prejudice means it’s over and done; the person can’t be prosecuted for the conduct charged. Without means that person can be charged in a new case for the same matters.
I proofread for the court reporters a fair amount of pretrial hearings in the Federal District Court and one thing that’s always addressed is whether there should be an extension of the Speedy Trial deadline. Normally both sides agree to it since they need to do further pretrial prepataion.
Unfortunately, there is one set of rules for people with money and another for those without. Fulton County (Atlanta, GA) has a huge problem with overcrowded jails and people locked up more months and months, sometimes over a year, without being indicted.
You had me worried there for a second. At first I thought that it might be one of those right wing Indie movies, like “God’s not Dead”. In which the sovereign Citizen is the hero, who wins in the end. Instead its seems they make it pretty clear that the soverign citizens are dangerously deluded.
An interesting SovCit, as SovCits go, was on “On Patrol: Live” this past weekend. Hit all the high points: Florida (IIRC) woman – excuse me, “entity” – “traveling”, “maritime law”, employed as a “trustee”, arrested for a traffic violation. None of the officers present could make head or tails of what she was saying.
It was the result of a cult following, similar to the process whereby loons decided that Romana Didulo is the Queen of Canada, only on a larger scale..
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