It might feel quite superfluous to say that believing in a conspiracy theory is detrimental to the believers themselves, but when it comes to American "sovereign citizens", it almost feels like the entire conspiracy theory has been almost purposefully built to get its own believers into as much legal trouble as possible.
And it's not just so when it comes to driving cars and traffic stops (the sovcit conspiracy theory is directly claiming to the believers that traffic cops cannot legally arrest them, completely ignoring the overwhelming evidence of the contrary) but especially in the court of law.
The American "sovereign citizen" conspiracy theory consists of an astonishing amount of made-up "facts" which have been extrapolated from just a small handful of individual sentences and even words isolated from their context, in legal and non-legal texts. Indeed, from just a half dozen or so very short sentences and words they have built this phone-book-sized conspiracy theory full of completely spurious unjustified claims and meaningless pseudolegalese that has absolutely and categorically no basis on any law or legislation or the Constitution.
And pretty much everything in there is almost like deliberately designed to get their believers into trouble with the law.
As a good example, the sovcit conspiracy theory strongly advises against getting a lawyer when going to court, and to always represent yourself. It particularly strongly advises against getting a government-provided free lawyer (although, of course, according to them, all lawyers are part of the hidden conspiracy and thus are not to be trusted.)
The reason for this is two-fold. One reason is, unsurprisingly, that they believe that lawyers are part of the behind-the-scenes conspiracy and thus will not defend the sovcit properly, using the "secret code".
However, that's only the minor reason. The main reason is that they have concocted this idea that the United States government is a "private corporation" (even though that's a complete oxymoron) and that whenever citizens form "contracts" with said corporation, it gives the government jurisdiction over them, and thus if a citizen completely avoids making such a contract, the government will have no jurisdiction. And you don't need to sign an explicit such "contract" that clearly delineates and states this: It's enough to sign any governmental paper, such as when getting a driver's license or, in this case, signing up for a free lawyer. (Indeed, according to the sovcit conspiracy theory, the paper doesn't need to mention anything about jurisdiction, or corporations, or anything at all about it being some kind of "contract", or that the citizen agrees to any stipulations regarding this. According to them, it's just enough to sign your name on any governmental paper, and that's it: You have now "contracted" with the government and they have "jurisdiction" over you, regardless of what the document is about.)
The funny thing is that they base all of this on one single word isolated from its context from some foundational document.
Of course the main problem with people like this representing themselves is that not only have they absolutely no idea about the actual law and proper court procedure, but the little they think they know is completely asinine pseudolegal conspiracy theory that's not based in any sort of reality.
There are lots of videos out there showing how badly they fare in court trials because they are representing themselves and have absolutely no idea how the entire thing works, how the court system works, or what is proper legal procedure.
They have no idea nor knowledge about the different types of court proceedings, nor what kinds of things are discussed there.
For example, all court cases start with a so-called arraignment, which is effectively an introduction to the case and setting practical matters: The formal charges are read, the defense is asked if they understand them, the defense is asked for a plea ("guilty", "not guilty", "no contest" and not saying anything, which defaults to "not guilty"), to set the next court dates, and set any bail if applicable.
An arraignment is not for discussing the case itself, for presenting arguments or anything of the sort. But, of course, sovcits defending themselves have absolutely no idea about this and will invariably start making arguments and defending themselves and asking the case to be dismissed, to the frustration of the judge who will just have to keep repeating over and over that "this is an arraignment, we are not presenting any arguments at this point. An arraignment is not for that."
Or take jury selection, for example: This is an event prior to a jury trial (either separately held, or held just before the actual trial commences) where both the prosecution and the defense can ask questions to the jury members and ask them to be dismissed from the jury if they can present a good reason for that. Once again, this is not for discussing the case or presenting arguments. But, once again, a typical sovcit will have no idea what's going on and start presenting arguments rather than what the process is actually for. For his own detriment, of course, because he will essentially have no say on who gets into the jury, with the prosecutor being the only one who does so. (There are hilarious videos of this happening in practice.)
Sovcits just end up undermining their own cases because they are strongly advised by their "gurus" to represent themselves even though they have absolutely no idea how to do that properly and they do everything wrong. (Of course not that it helps a lot because even if they did all court procedure properly, their actual arguments are pretty much always completely asinine and have absolutely nothing to do with actual law.)
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