United States v. Bates

P.K. HOLMES, III

The Court has received various mailings from the Defendant in this case, consisting of documents which the Court has determined are frivolous, without any legal merit, and irrelevant to any matter that may properly be raised in this closed case.

The mailings appear to be an attempt to file baseless and/or fraudulent documents based largely on the "sovereign citizen" or some related theory, which has been consistently rejected by federal courts. See, e.g., United States v. Hardin, 489 Fed. Appx. 984 (8th Cir. 2012) (upholding conviction of "sovereign citizen" on multiple counts of producing fictitious financial obligations and mail fraud and rejecting as meritless many of defendant's arguments) (citing to United States v. Schneider, 910 F.2d 1569, 1570 (7th Cir. 1990) (describing defendant's proposed "sovereign citizen" defense as having "no conceivable validity in American law") and United States v. Hart, 701 F.2d 749, 750 (8th Cir. 1983) (characterizing as frivolous an appeal challenging government's jurisdiction over "sovereign citizen")). Consideration of such documents is a waste of the Court's time and resources, and in any event, the mailings do not appear to request Court action as such, but rather appear to make individual demands and assertions against the undersigned as well as court staff and personnel of the United States Attorney's Office.

For the above reasons, the Clerk has been directed not to file such documents, and Defendant is advised that no future irrelevant and/or frivolous filings will be allowed in this case.

IT IS SO ORDERED this 31st day of October, 2013.

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P.K. HOLMES, III

CHIEF U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE