‘Sovereign Citizen’ Sues Prosecutors For Grammar-Based Conspiracy

(Katherine Welles / Shutterstock)
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

A so-called sovereign citizen in Washington, recently sentenced to three years for threatening to “arrest” a local mayor, is now suing federal prosecutors for conspiring against him using poor grammar, or as he calls it, “backwards-correct-syntaxing-modification fraud.”

David Russell Myrland filed a (virtually incomprehensible) lawsuit in federal court in Washington in late January, accusing federal prosecutors and Department of Homeland Security officials of violating his civil rights through “babbling-collusion-threats” and “grammar-second-grade-writing-level-fraud.”

From the filing:

For this federal-judge: David-Wynn: Miller’s-correction of the vassalees-fiction-syntax-grammar-pleadings is with the correction-participation-claim of this babble-indictment-evidence and: bad-probation-syntax=grammar-evidence. (Why did the vassalees do this case with a void-communications?) For the void-drogue-law, void-oath of an office, void-judge’s-oath, void-docking-court-house-vessel in the Washington-state-dry-dock and: void-original-lodial-land-title.

In an attachment to the filing, which looks almost as bizarre at it reads, Myrland added footnotes to each word of the prosecutors’ indictment that correspond to a “syntax-word-key-meaning” — the word’s form of speech.

The lawsuit was filed with the help of David Wynn Miller, who, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is another “sovereign citizen” who calls himself the “king of Hawaii” and claims the government uses grammar to enslave people. Miller was also an apparent influence of Jared Lee Loughner, the attempted assassin of Gabrielle Giffords, who wrote in one of his videos that “the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar.”

William McCool, the district court executive, wrote a letter to Miller and Myrland telling them that their case has a number of “deficiencies,” including that they had not submitted the proper filing fees, or the In Forma Pauperis form to exempt them from the fee. They have until February 23 to submit the proper forms or their case can be dismissed.

In December, Myrland was sentenced to three years after he admitted to threatening the Mayor of Kirkland, Washington, and sending a series of threatening letters to various other public officials in the city.

He had previously been pulled over in August, 2010 for driving without a license plate, and explained to the police officer that it was because he is “not subject to Washington State Laws,” adding that the officer did not have the legal authority to stop him. The police officer also observed a gun in Myrland’s car, and during a search of Myrland found that he was wearing a shoulder holster for a semiautomatic pistol under his jacket, with two magazines in the holster. Myrland explained it was to “shoot pitbulls.”

Myrland has been linked to a group of Washington-area sovereign citizens who call themselves “County Rangers,” that have recently been facing a slew of various charges for tax fraud, among other things. They have also been linked to Alaska Peacemaker Militia leader Schaeffer Cox.

h/t Seattle Weekly.

Latest Muckraker
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: