Discuss the following questions on Sovereign citizens
Fully utilize the materials that have been provided to you in order to support your response. Responses should be a minimum of 250 words and include direct questions. You may challenge, support or supplement another student’s answer using the terms, concepts and theories from the required readings. Also, do not be afraid to respectfully disagree where you feel appropriate; as this should be part of your analysis process at this academic level.
Forum posts are graded on timeliness, relevance, knowledge of the weekly readings, and the quality of original ideas. Sources utilized to support answers are to be cited in accordance with the APA writing style by providing a general parenthetical citation (reference the author, year and page number) within your post, as well as an adjoining reference list. Refer to grading rubric for additional details concerning grading criteria.
Respond to James:
Is a Sovereign Citizen extremist who has renounced their citizenship entitled to the Due Process under the Bill of Rights protections? Why or why not?
This week’s forum topic has a mixture of personal experience and classes room context. Being in law enforcement, I have had several dealings with Sovereign Citizens. My most unforgettable interaction was on a traffic stop. During this traffic stop, I was told they are not citizens of the United States and therefore any laws do not apply to them. After several more officers arriving and playing tag for a brief few minutes up and down a few streets, four were arrested. Later, I was sued for false imprisonment because “the laws we broke do not apply to us” (as stated in their law suit and they were representing themselves by the way) In the end, the law suit was dropped and three are now serving time in prison on many weapons and other charges. In short, do I seem them as terrorists? Through my training, which included videos of these people shooting police officers among other things, YES, I do see them as domestic terrorists. Furthermore, these comments were made before reading this week’s lesson and in short, my thoughts and experiences are very much in line with the academic information.
Anyways, regardless if they like it or not Sovereign Citizens are living in the United States, are United States citizens, have laws to follow, and also have rights. Furthermore, regardless if any Sovereign Citizen claims to be not a part of the United States, they do have a right to Due Process under the Bill of Rights. Which under the Fifth Amendment, says the federal government will not deprived life, liberty or property without due process of the law. Moreover, the 14th Amendment uses a similar wording, obligating all states of the United States to operate with in the legality of the laws and due process also as does the Fifth Amendment applies to the federal government (Cornell Law School, N.D.). Sovereign Citizens fully believe that the United States government has zero power over them whether it is to help them or “attack” them. Furthermore, in their theories / ideology, along with their analyzing of the 14th Amendment, which virtually all Sovereign Citizens believes this allows them to become free from all United States laws, debit, and taxes. Even though they may believe this is their gateway to free from the United States, despite these seemingly odd interpretations of the law, however, the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence provide no support for Sovereign Citizens theories of being free from the federal government (Kalinowski, 2019).
Do you think a Sovereign Citizen who conducts a mass casualty attack should be considered a terrorist?
Besides my dealing with Sovereign Citizens, these individuals are dangerous to the public, they do not follow laws, assault, shoot at, and have killed police officers. They exploit the legal systems across the United States and harass and intimidate anyone that stands in their way (Mastrony, 2016). The Sovereign Citizen are not a mental illness or some delusional mental state these people have (Jenkins, 2019) They exploit laws, while refusing to follow other ones, kill as needed harass anyone that bothers them and commit acts of violence as needed. If this is not a terrorist, a domestic terrorist, the you are in for a rude awakening.
James
Cornell Law School (N.D.) Due Process. Legal Information Institute. Retrieved from https://www.law.cornell.
Jenkins, B. M. (2019) When Is a Terrorist Really A Terrorist? The RAND Blog. Retrieved from https://www.rand.org/
Kalinowski, C. (2019) A Legal Response to the Sovereign Citizen Movement. Montana Law Review. Volume 80 Issue 2. Retrieved from https://scholarship.law.
Mastrony, M (2016) Common-Sense Responses to Radical Practices: Stifling Sovereign Citizens in Connecticut. Connecticut Law Review, 48, 1013. Retrieved from https://advance-lexis-
Answer preview :
Word limit : 259