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The unfortunate side-effect of law enforcement leniency towards sovereign citizens

American "sovereign citizenship" is a full-on conspiracy theory in the United States (and lately in a few other countries). I have a more detailed description of this here.

Needless to say, these people are completely deluded and delusional. They have swallowed an absolutely bonkers conspiracy theory that makes them believe they don't need to follow laws, especially any traffic laws, and they believe that their sovcit rhetoric is actually a kind of "secret code" that law enforcement officers and judges secretly understand and obey. The deeper someone has gotten into the sovcit conspiracy theory, the more strongly they believe that when they use these secret code words, expressions and sentences, they can game the system and get away with not having to follow the law. They believe that they have gotten into the huge secret conspiracy behind the government of the country, and can play it to their advantage.

They often get stopped and sometimes arrested and put on trial for all kinds of crimes, although traffic violations are by far the most common (because traffic laws are the one thing that they most commonly have all kinds of incorrect beliefs and conspiracy theories about).

Regardless of what it might often look like from the outside, American law enforcement and, especially, courts of law, can be surprisingly lenient when it comes to misdemeanors and things like minor traffic law violations (such as having invalid plates on a car, or driving without a valid license, or driving in a manner that's an infraction but didn't put anybody in danger.)

Traffic cops have leeway to make their own decisions whether they will arrest someone who has committed a traffic violation, or simply issue a ticket right there and let the person go, or simply giving a verbal warning. Sometimes a cop might be in a good mood, or just not in the mood of going through the trouble of arresting someone, or even go through the trouble of writing a citation, and let the driver go with a warning. Maybe it was a very minor thing, or maybe the cop just tells the driver that he needs to put on valid plates on the car as soon as possible, or maybe the cop is in a hurry to go somewhere else, or whatever of a myriad of reasons an arrest might not be made, or even a ticket given.

Whenever a ticket is given, or the driver even outright arrested, sovcits will almost invariably want to fight it in court rather than just pay the fine outright. They have the right to do that, so the justice system obliges.

And American courts can sometimes be even more lenient than traffic cops, and just dismiss minor violations for a multitude of reasons. Maybe the police officer didn't show up for the trial to testify and the case is just dismissed because of that (perhaps the most common situation where such a case is dismissed), or perhaps the judge just happens to be in a good mood and doesn't want to punish a first-time offender with an extremely minor traffic code violation and decides to be merciful. Or a myriad of other reasons.

When the accused is a sovcit, who's spouting all the typical sovcit rhetoric, this kind of leniency has a rather unfortunate side-effect: It reinforces and strengthens the beliefs of the sovcit.

Most sovereign citizens who find themselves in this situation, where they eg. were summoned to court, they spouted their sovcit pseudolegal nonsense, and their cases were subsequently dismissed for some reason, end up believing that the pseudolegal nonsense actually worked, that the conspiracy theory is all true. They genuinely believe that they uttered the "secret code", the secret keywords, and this made the judge dismiss the case using some excuse.

Or, sometimes, the sovcit will just outright ignore the actual reason why the case was dismissed and fully believe that it was dismissed because of his rhetoric, believing that it actually worked, that it's actually legit and valid legal argumentation.

This is not just hypothetical, as it happens all the time. There are many videos showing the interaction between a sovcit and a traffic cop, where the sovcit argues that he had just been in court for the same kind of violation and that the judge ruled that it wasn't a violation and that his sovcit arguments were correct. However, when the author of the video has then dug up the actual court ruling (which is usually public record so it can be requested) it turns out that the case was just dismissed usually because of a technicality (such as the police officer not showing up to the trial.)

The unfortunate side-effect of these technical dismissals or leniency is that it just bolsters their beliefs, and causes them to continue breaking the law, fully believing that they can do that with impunity.

I think it would actually be better for their own good if such leniency was not shown to them, so that they could perhaps learn in practice that their rhetoric does not work, that it's completely invalid and nonsensical, and it has nothing to do with law nor how the government and the legal system work. In the short run it might put them in jail (or cause them to have to pay hefty fines), but in the long run perhaps they will learn and become smarter.

Every sovcit that is allowed to go free without punishment is a sovcit that will continue to break the law. And next time it might not be just a minor traffic violation that didn't endanger anybody.

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