Posts Tagged ‘anti-government’
 
March 28, 2012 2

Alleged Cop-Killer May Be Anti-Government Extremist

Source: Ogden Standard-Examiner
In the lat­est twist to a deadly shootout that stunned the res­i­dents of Ogden, Utah, a recently revealed search war­rant affi­davit pro­vides evi­dence that sug­gests the defen­dant, Matthew David Stew­art, 37, may have been an anti-government extremist.
The shootout began on Jan­u­ary 4, 2012, after police launched a raid on Stewart’s res­i­dence to exe­cute a search warrant—an infor­mant had alleged he was grow­ing mar­i­juana (16 plants were report­edly later found).  Accord­ing to police, Stew­art hid, open­ing fire on offi­cers as they searched his res­i­dence.  Six offi­cers were hit, some more than once, and Ogden police offi­cer Jared Fran­com was wounded fatally.  Stew­art allegedly con­tin­ued fir­ing as the offi­cers fled the res­i­dence.  Police even­tu­ally wounded and sub­dued him in a back­yard shed. 
Stew­art was charged with aggra­vated mur­der, seven counts of attempted aggra­vated mur­der, and pro­duc­tion of a con­trolled sub­stance in a “drug free zone,” along with a dan­ger­ous weapons enhancement.
In March, author­i­ties released an affi­davit explain­ing the results of the search.  Accord­ing to the affi­davit, Stewart’s for­mer girl­friend said that Stew­art was “into” con­spir­acy the­o­ries and that he believed the fed­eral gov­ern­ment had no right to col­lect taxes (the pri­mary belief of the anti-government extrem­ist tax protest move­ment).  She claimed that he had not paid his own fed­eral or state taxes since 2005 and that, if he were “forced” to pay taxes, he would “kill IRS employ­ees.”  Accord­ing to the girl­friend, Stew­art claimed that Okla­homa City bomber Tim­o­thy McVeigh was “misunderstood.”
The affi­davit fur­ther claimed that police recov­ered “computer-generated doc­u­ments” related to anti-government extrem­ism, anti-police Web sites, Okla­homa City bomb­ing Web sites, instruc­tions for mak­ing potas­sium chlo­ride (used in explo­sives), and a map to the clos­est IRS build­ing (where Stew­art once worked as a secu­rity guard), among other items.  Accord­ing to the affi­davit, police also dis­cov­ered “what appeared to be the mak­ings of a bomb,” which were later removed and det­o­nated by the bomb squad. 
Last sum­mer, accord­ing to police, Stew­art had allegedly told some­one that if police ever raided him, he would “go out in a blaze of glory and shoot to kill.”  After the release of the affi­davit, a neigh­bor of Stewart’s told a local tele­vi­sion sta­tion that Stew­art had allegedly talked about mov­ing to Mon­tana and “get[ting] myself a compound.”
Offi­cer Fran­com was the first police offi­cer to have been killed by a sus­pected domes­tic extrem­ist since May 2010, when two West Mem­phis, Arkansas, offi­cers were killed by anti-government “sov­er­eign cit­i­zens.”  Since 2000, 27 police offi­cers have been killed in the United States by domes­tic extremists. 

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February 13, 2012 0

Triple Murder Suspect Uses Sovereign Citizen Arguments in Court Hearing

Source: Mari­copa County Sheriff’s Office
Phoenix res­i­dent Michael Lee Crane, 31, charged with the mur­ders of an elderly cou­ple from Par­adise Val­ley, Ari­zona, and a sus­pect in a third mur­der, recently used argu­ments from the anti-government extrem­ist “sov­er­eign cit­i­zen” move­ment when appear­ing in court fol­low­ing his arrest. 
On Jan­u­ary 26, 2012, after being called to a fire at a res­i­dence, Phoenix police dis­cov­ered the body of a cigar sales­man, Bruce Gaudet, who had been shot to death. Sev­eral days later, police in Par­adise Val­ley, after find­ing a burn­ing car on Jan­u­ary 30 that belonged to Lawrence and Glenna Shapiro, went to their home to dis­cover it too was on fire. They also found the burned and bound bod­ies of the elderly Shapiros, who had been shot to death.   Pre­lim­i­nary bal­lis­tic reports sug­gest a match between the bul­let cas­ings in each incident.
Crane has been charged with two counts of first-degree mur­der (he has not yet been charged in con­nec­tion with the Gaudet mur­der), two counts of kid­nap­ping, two counts of armed rob­bery, one count of bur­glary, and one count of arson. Five other peo­ple have also been charged in con­nec­tion with the case, pri­mar­ily on charges of theft or traf­fick­ing in stolen prop­erty. 
On Feb­ru­ary 10, Crane and two other defen­dants appeared in a Mari­copa County court to deter­mine their bonds. Court­room video reveals that Crane attempted to use “sov­er­eign cit­i­zen” argu­ments in his appear­ance before the mag­is­trate. The sov­er­eign cit­i­zen move­ment is an extreme right-wing anti-government move­ment that believes that the legit­i­mate gov­ern­ment was long ago infil­trated by a con­spir­acy and changed into an ille­git­i­mate, tyran­ni­cal gov­ern­ment. Con­se­quently, sov­er­eign cit­i­zens believe that this “ille­git­i­mate” gov­ern­ment has no author­ity or juris­dic­tion over them. In the past sev­eral years, the sov­er­eign cit­i­zen move­ment has been expe­ri­enc­ing a sig­nif­i­cant resur­gence of adher­ents and activ­ity, includ­ing crim­i­nal activ­ity. 
Asked by the judge for his name, Crane spelled his entire name out, spec­i­fy­ing upper and lower case letters—sovereign cit­i­zens believe that if their name is writ­ten in all upper case let­ters, it is actu­ally not refer­ring to their “flesh and blood” per­son. Crane also declined to have an attor­ney appointed for him, which is com­mon within the sov­er­eign cit­i­zen move­ment. 
At the end of the pro­ceed­ing, the judge asked Crane if he had any ques­tions. Crane replied no, but that “I have a state­ment I’d like to make.”  He announced that he wanted to “reserve my right to Uni­form Com­mer­cial Code 1–207 and the Uni­form Com­mer­cial Code 1–103.”  Sov­er­eign cit­i­zens believe that the “con­spir­acy” replaced con­sti­tu­tional law with com­mer­cial law and that there­fore the Uni­form Com­mer­cial Code (UCC) gov­erns all legal mat­ters.  Many believe that all legal pro­ceed­ings are also com­mer­cial trans­ac­tions.  Almost all sov­er­eign cit­i­zens believe that they can avoid enter­ing into “com­merce” with the ille­git­i­mate gov­ern­ment by reserv­ing their rights under UCC 1–207 (now renum­bered to UCC1-308). 
The judge did not seem to rec­og­nize this com­mon sov­er­eign cit­i­zen ref­er­ence and merely informed Crane that the UCC did not apply.  Crane tried to get the judge to con­firm that his appear­ance was a “com­mer­cial affair,” but the judge reit­er­ated that it was actu­ally a crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ing. “Mmm, okay,” Crane replied doubt­fully. “That’s what you say.”
It is pos­si­ble that Crane, who has a past crim­i­nal his­tory, became exposed to the argu­ments of the move­ment while incar­cer­ated, as the move­ment has been spread­ing rapidly in pris­ons and jails across the coun­try over the past decade.

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