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2010-08-12 09:13:31
By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS, Associated Press Writer Andrew Welsh-huggins,
Associated Press Writer Thu Aug 12, 12:23 am ET
COLUMBUS, Ohio They call themselves sovereign citizens, U.S. residents who
declare themselves above state and federal laws. Many don't register children's
births, carry driver's licenses or recognize the court system.
Some peddle schemes that use fictional legal loopholes to eliminate debt and
avoid foreclosures.
A few such believers are violent: Two police officers in Arkansas died in a
shootout in May after stopping an Ohio sovereign citizen and his son.
As many as 300,000 people identify as sovereign citizens, the Southern Poverty
Law Center found in a study to be published Thursday that was obtained by The
Associated Press. Hate group monitors say their numbers have increased thanks
to the recession, the foreclosure crisis, the growth of the Internet and the
election of Barack Obama in 2008.
Adherents expect the current American system of government to end one way or
another.
"I'm the Patrick Henry of the 21st century. I'm here to regain our freedom,"
James McBride said in a jailhouse interview. "I'm going to, or die trying."
At the heart of their belief system: The government creates a secret identity
for each citizen at birth, a "straw man," that controls an account at the U.S.
Treasury used as collateral for foreign debt. File enough documents at the
right offices and the money in those accounts can be used to pay off debt or
make purchases worth thousands of dollars.
The movement is based on a form of "legal fundamentalism," said Michael Barkun,
a retired Syracuse University political science professor who researches
anti-government and hate groups.
"These people really seem to feel that filing certain kinds of legal papers
that are connected to their theories will somehow also magically have the power
to alter relationships and grant things that otherwise would be unobtainable,"
he said.
Experts say sovereign citizens are the latest manifestation of anti-government
activists going back to the Posse Comitatus movement of the 1970s, which
recognized only local governments and no law enforcement official with more
jurisdiction than a sheriff. In the 1980s, government protesters exploited the
farm crisis by selling fraudulent debt relief programs.
"In good times they focus on tax cheating, in bad times they focus on getting
out of debt," said JJ MacNab, an expert on tax and financial schemes and author
of the SPLC report.
Martin Smith of Carthage, Mo., lost $8,000 to a father-and-son company in
Columbus called Liberty Resources that pitched a method to eliminate credit
card debt based on a theory that national banks aren't authorized to issue
credit.
"We just became convinced that each of the parts of the puzzle that Liberty
Resources ... was telling us existed would work," said Smith, 48, a civil
engineer in Carthage, Mo.
Dan Wickline and his son, Chad, pleaded guilty in 2008 to conspiracy to commit
money laundering and are serving federal prison sentences.
In April, a group called the Guardians of the Free Republics sent letters to
governors demanding they leave office or be removed. The group's website calls
for the restoration of lawful government and an end to tax forms, vehicle
registrations and marriage licenses. An e-mail to the group was not returned.
Jim Jarvis is Ohio coordinator for the Restore America Plan, which shares
similar beliefs with the Guardians group. He maintains the country has lacked a
legitimate government since Congress failed to adjourn properly in 1861.
The people who are crazy, he says, are those who won't do the research to find
out what's really going on in the country.
The sovereign citizen movement has grown to about 100,000 hard-core believers,
the SPLC report estimates, and 200,000 people trying out the theories by
"resisting everything from speeding tickets to drug charges."
The report cites IRS figures that estimated as many as 250,000 tax protesters
in the mid-1990s, though not all of those were part of the sovereign citizen
movement. The 300,000 figure is the first calculation of the movement's numbers
separate from tax protesters.
In May, Jerry Kane, who pitched so-called redemption schemes for reducing debt,
died in a shootout with West Memphis, Ark., police after authorities said his
16-year-old son, Joe, fatally shot two officers during a traffic stop.
Kane's Florida widow, Donna Lee Wray, denies her husband and stepson were
sovereign citizens. She maintains a website that asserts they weren't involved
in the officers' deaths.
In a 2003 document Jerry Kane filed in a county recorder's office in Ohio, he
said he was not a "Fourteen Amendment Citizen." Many sovereign citizens believe
the 14th Amendment created a new class of citizens, people who had no
constitutional rights but were instead slaves to the government, according to
Mark Pitcavage, investigative researcher for the Anti-Defamation League.
McBride, the jailed sovereign citizen, came across anti-government beliefs
while in federal prison in Michigan on a 1992 cocaine importing conviction.
Over the years he developed his own tenets, including a revised history of the
United States that says the country was secretly organized as a general post
office in 1789.
He dismisses any accusation that the programs he pitched were fraud, arguing
he's not subject to the laws of the U.S., which he calls a corporation along
the lines of a car company.
"General Motor's laws don't affect me because I'm not an employee of them,"
McBride said. "Same with the state of Ohio and the United States."
Today, McBride is headed back to federal prison after prosecutors said he
cashed bogus checks and refused to cooperate with his parole officers following
a 2004 bankruptcy fraud conviction.
"I'm never going to have my grandchildren say, 'Grandpa, why didn't you do
something to protect my rights?'" McBride said.
"They may say, 'My grandpa died trying to protect my rights.'"