From: Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 1997 07:08:44 +0800
To: cypherpunks@ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: Defendants adopt Freemenspeak [CNN]
Message-ID: <199710252334.SAA31096@einstein.ssz.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Forwarded message:

>                      MORE DEFENDANTS ADOPT 'FREEMENSPEAK'
>                                        
>      Freemen in court
>      
>   It's gibberish to the judges
>   
>      October 25, 1997
>      Web posted at: 6:33 p.m. EDT (2233 GMT)
>      
>      BILLINGS, Montana (AP) -- Standing scornful and defiant, the
>      defendants shout their cases. They are sovereign citizens, not
>      subject to the court! The judges are unqualified! The lawyers are
>      illegal!
>      
>      "To hell with you and your kangaroo court!" one defendant bellows at
>      his sentencing for dealing drugs.
>      
>      The bizarre claims are trademarks of the Montana Freemen, the
>      militant anti-government zealots who have been jailed here, awaiting
>      trial, since their 81-day standoff ended 16 months ago.
>      
>      But the claims are now coming from garden-variety criminals, fellow
>      inmates in the Yellowstone County jail. These non-Freemen are
>      proving to be ardent students of the convoluted legal fantasies of
>      the jail's most famous residents.
>      
>      They are firing their lawyers, torpedoing their own plea agreements,
>      writing their own legal briefs, arguing -- and losing -- their own
>      cases. They are making life and work difficult, and often miserable,
>      for those who run the court system.
>      
>      Chief public defender Sandy Selvey calls the Freemen a plague. At
>      least seven clients of his office have tried "Freemenspeak" in state
>      court; others have tried it in federal court.
>      
>      "They're contaminating our good criminals," says District Judge
>      Diane Barz, who tangled with the Freemen as a federal prosecutor.
>      
>      About two dozen Freemen have been among the jail's 300 inmates since
>      June 13, 1996, when they surrendered after an armed, 81-day standoff
>      with FBI agents at their isolated farm compound in the remote
>      outback of eastern Montana's "Big Open." Three minor figures have
>      pleaded guilty, but trials for the rest won't begin until next
>      spring.
>      
>      The host of federal charges against them include wire and bank fraud
>      and threatening the life of a federal judge and other public
>      officials. The FBI says some 800 people from around the country
>      attended classes at the rural stronghold, learning to issue the
>      worthless liens and "warrants" that the Freemen claim are legal
>      tender.
>      
>      People in several states have been charged, and some convicted, of
>      trying to use such documents, often bearing the name of Freeman
>      leader Leroy Schweitzer. The Dallas Morning News reported that at
>      least 151 people in 23 states were under investigation for Freeman
>      connections.
>      
>      The Freemen's legal "philosophy" is a jumble of odds and ends from
>      the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, the Magna Carta and the Uniform
>      Commercial Code, the body of federal laws that govern interstate
>      financial transactions.
>      
>      They dress it up in pseudo-scholarly terms and meaningless Latin
>      phrases and claim, in essence, they are laws unto themselves -- and
>      over everyone else.
>      
>      "There are some real gaps in their education, and ... I think they
>      are darned close to acting like the mentally ill," Barz said.
>      
>      The Freemen commonly rant, belch, challenge the federal judges and
>      get banished from the courtroom to watch on closed-circuit TV as
>      appointed lawyers try to defend them. More conventional inmates soon
>      started imitating them.
>      
>      Their verbose legal filings, often prepared by Freemen, are so
>      peculiar that District Court Clerk Jean Thompson rejects many of
>      them.
>      
>      Accused wife-murderer Jerry Swinney filed a 25-page "Demand for Bill
>      of Particulars." Adopting the Freemen's name style -- Jerry period
>      comma Swinney -- it opens this way:
>      
>      "Jerry., Swinney, Affiant, hereinafter at all times relevant,
>      Demandant, a self-realized entity, a Man upon the free soil of the
>      several American independent and sovereign states, ..."
>      
>      Twenty-five eye-glazing pages later, this is how it closes:
>      
>      "NOTICE. This instrument comes under, and brings into the instant
>      action, the doctrines of res gestae, res ipsa loquitor, tacit
>      procuration, prior knowledge, willful intent, as against YOU and you
>      and your private characters. Further affiant sayeth not."
>      
>      County Attorney Dennis Paxinos, public defender Selvey and the
>      judges say the biggest problem the Freemen imitators have created is
>      how to protect themselves from themselves. It may be a bad idea for
>      them to act as their own lawyer -- but it's their legal right.
>      
>      "The judges and prosecutors seem to be as concerned with protecting
>      these Freeman-type people as their own attorneys are," says Deputy
>      County Attorney Joe Coble. "The only people who seem to want to run
>      roughshod over these people's rights are these people themselves."
>      
>      "The real concern I have is trying to figure out if, hidden among
>      the rubble of rhetoric, there's any viable complaint or issue we
>      really should consider," says District Judge G. Todd Baugh.
>      
>      As far as the judges can recall, that hasn't happened yet.
>      
>      "It's incredibly difficult to figure out what they're trying to
>      say," says District Judge Russell Fagg.
>      
>      Judges usually appoint a standby lawyer, often over the defendant's
>      protests.
>      
>      "Standby is the worst possible situation for a defense lawyer,"
>      Selvey said. "You have to know all the facts, all the witnesses and
>      what they'll testify to, all the forensic evidence, and the
>      authorities the guy's going to cite.
>      
>      "And then you have to stand there and watch while he goes down in
>      flames."
>      
>      Copyright 1997   The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
>      material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or
>      redistributed.