Justice Militia Style

It was a frigid spring day when the militia-minded Montana Freemen barricaded themselves and began their 81-day standoff with the FBI. The siege outside Jordan, Montana came as no surprise to a group of people who had convened in an old garage in Lithopolis, Ohio shordy before the Montana confrontation reached the point of no return. The garage was 1000 miles away, but the people who gathered there shared many of the beliefs of the Montana Freemen and spoke the same political language.

There was a racket that night in Lithopolis, as nearly 60 people, mostly men and all white, milled around in a waxy yellow glow cast by fluorescent lights. There were suits and ties, jeans and boots, and a few men wore camouflage and Old Testament beards. Most were between 30 and 60 years old.

The atmosphere was that of a church social. White paper plates taped unevenly to the back wall offered a menu of sandwiches, sweets and drinks. A cook slapped bread and cheese on a hot plate, one sandwich at a time, as the crowd lingered at a table heaped with books and pamphlets such as The New World Order, The Coming Revolution, Employment Without a Social Security Number, Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, Brain Washing, Titles of Nobility, U.S. Militiaman's Handbook, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Trance: Transformation of America Through Mind Control (The True Life Story of a CIA Slave). The last accuses Ronald Reagan and Lamar Alexander of gross misconduct, and it was a big seller.

This was the regular Tuesday meeting of a local chapter of a common-law court. Its adherents renounced most established state and federal laws in favor of laws promulgated by their own courts. The chapter that met that night had first convened in a Columbus cafeteria in early 1995. Since then it had moved to a bingo hall, where as many as 250 people would show up. Some attendees, it turned out, were undercover police. The group had tried to evade them by coming to this sleepy village 20 miles southeast of Columbus.

Bill Ellwood, the chief justice of the court, banged his pistol-grip gavel and tried to quiet the crowd. An unemployed carpenter these days, Ellwood blames his hard times on the U.S. government. Until 1981 he ran a body shop that specialized in van conversions. The business folded, he said, because of the energy crisis. Ellwood came to believe the government orchestrated that crisis. "I busted my ass for 16 hours a day for nine years and just at the point I was at the pinnacle, I began losing the American dream.

"This isn't the land of the free and home of the brave," Ellwood went on, "it's the land of the fee and home of the slave. People saw that government was becoming a predator on the American people. I saw a lot of people wiped out. They lost everything they had. That's caused by the system, and that's how they maintain ultimate control."

Ellwood rejects established laws and embraces the common-law court system and all its tenets. In essence it claims, with references to the Bible, the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution (especially the Bill of Rights), that every American is a sovereign entity and that legal power derives from individuals. The theory stresses the primacy of localities and condemns most state and federal laws as attempts at usurping the "sovereignty" of individuals.

"Forget ever going into their courts," Ellwood told the crowd. "There's no justice there, no truth. They don't want the truth. If they ever summon me they'll have to come and get me, or my dead body." Ellwood then told his audience that it must challenge and educate judges about what he called Americans' God-given right to have their cases heard before courts of common law--such as the one convened that night in Lithopolis.

"You all have to start complaining," he went on. "You ain't complaining enough, OK? Go into the courtrooms and tell the judge, 'We're going to quiz you on this later, probably at your hanging.'"

Ellwood then moved to a fundamental part of the program that, with some variations, is practiced wherever common-law courts gather: the convening of a jury. There were plenty of volunteers. Twelve men quickly took their seats at a table in the back of the garage. There are three such courts in Ohio. Ellwood and other partisans say that more than 1000 adherents have declared their sovereignty before common-law juries in the state.

First, the jury members renewed their oaths of allegiance to the Constitution. Then they settled down to the business of the evening. A handful of people came before the jury to seek its approval to declare their sovereignty (and thus their immunity from the established legal system). By declaring themselves "Freemen," they, in effect, began their initiation into the common-law movement. They also filled out documents called "quiet titles," which, with plenty of references to weighty legal precedent, asserted that each person was free of most state and federal laws.

James Curtis George, a 60-year-old retired high school teacher from nearby Lancaster, Ohio, looked more like a suburban neighbor in the garage than he did a rebel who had renounced the authority of the U.S. legal system. Polite and soft-spoken, George wore a plaid shirt and jeans and had a benign expression on his face. He is a widower and something of a local celebrity for starting a soccer league.

But beneath the gentle exterior George was fighting mad and eager to tell his story.

His problems began a decade ago, he said, when the IRS ordered payment of taxes in connection with a business deal that had gone sour. George said the IRS also sought certain information about some of his former business partners and he refused to provide it.

In January 1989 the government began demanding money and filing a series of liens against him. The agency managed to extract approximately $8000 from his pension fund. In December 1992 George declared bankruptcy and then, by his account, began paying more attention over the next few years to so-called patriotic organizations.

In March 1995 he countered by suing seven IRS agents in the Ohio Supreme Court for unlawful seizure of his pension fund. He maintained the IRS had no jurisdiction to seize money from a "sovereign" citizen. His case was transferred to federal court two weeks later and was soon afterward rejected.

Early in 1996 George set about trying to ruin the credit of and otherwise intimidate two leading representatives of the legal system who had overseen his IRS case--Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moyer and U.S. District Judge John Holschuh.

First, George drew up $100 million liens against the judges and placed notices of them in the classified ads of a local newspaper. Then he notified Moyer and Holschuh by mail of his actions. Neither man responded.

When the Montana standoff began on March 25, George was poised to take the next step: delivering the paperwork to the county recorder where, without reference to the validity of his charges, the "liens" might officially be recorded. Even if his targets were to remain unaware of his action, the credit rating agencies would know all about it once the liens were on record.

"These liens will tie up everything they've got financially and shut down their credit so they won't be able to operate," George boasted. "They've been doing it to us for years, so we'll turn the tide and let them see how it feels."

The history of the common-law movement is relatively short but dramatic, quite apart from the events in Montana. The movement started in Tampa in 1992 when Emilio Ippolito and his daughter, Susan Mokdad, founded the Constitutional Court of We the People in and for the United States of America and started talking about it through their right-wing network. "This is not a game," Mokdad said recently. "It is serious. Public servants are committing treasonous acts of sedition against the people, who are trying to hold them accountable. We are not terrorists. But this is going to be so big it's not even funny. The government will not be able to stop this. The people are aware."

By January 1994 activists involved in the white supremacist movement in (continued on page 88) Justice Militia Style(continued from page 64) Montana and Oklahoma had set up common-law courts of their own. From these beginnings came an extremist right-wing group headquartered in Del City, Oklahoma called the United Sovereigns of America. United Sovereigns' leaders took to the road in various parts of the country to teach people the techniques of the common-law court system. In small towns and big cities they spread the word through three-day seminars, at $125 a person or $150 a couple. More courts sprouted up.

Judges were the earliest and favorite targets of common-law intimidation. In 1992 Jerry Patterson, a municipal judge in Marshall, Arkansas, began receiving threatening letters and phone calls from various points across the country. It turned out that Patterson had sentenced a man to jail who had refused to get a state license plate and instead used a homemade plate with a religious message.

"They threatened me with arrest and told me I would be taken before a common-law court. I got word I was on a purgatory list to be prayed into hell," Patterson said. "One caller said, 'I would repent if I were you, Jerry. Some very interesting judgments come from the court of divine justice.' It was unnerving."

Through 1993 and 1994 the movement grew quietly. In 1995 some advocates grew more aggressive.

That January Pete Miller walked into the courtroom of city judge Martha Bethel in Darby, Montana. Miller had several friends with him and told Judge Bethel that because he was a Freeman she had no power over him. He was thus ignoring the three traffic citations against him. Bethel cut off Miller as he tried to make a longer speech.

One month later the Common-Law Venue-Supreme Court of Ravalli County, Country of Montana ordered Bethel, through legal-looking documents, to dismiss the charges against Miller. The documents listed as justices Leroy Schweitzer and Daniel Petersen, both of whom were later arrested on a variety of fraud charges in Jordan at the beginning of the Montana showdown.

Bethel ignored the notification and soon began receiving threatening telephone calls and tips from concerned citizens. "Your house will be burned to the ground. Your house will be riddled with gunfire," she was warned. "You will be kidnapped and tried before a common-law court for treasonous acts."

After one late-night court session a car followed Bethel to her remote home. On two occasions she returned there to find the doors of her house wide open. In March 1995 the police warned her to take her three children and leave town immediately because they feared for her family's safety. "For three days I slept with a Mini-14 by my bed," Bethel said. In June 1995 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms informed her of a murder contract put out by the Aryan Brotherhood in Texas. "This has been very scary and very real. The whole thing has been a living nightmare."

On June 3, 1995 more than 600 people from 32 states showed up in Wichita, Kansas for a national Common-Law Grand Jury. The date was significant. It was the 12th anniversary of the death of Posse Comitatus martyr Gordon Kahl, a tax protester who was killed at the home of fellow extremist Leonard Ginter several months after Kahl had been involved in a North Dakota shootout during which two U.S. marshals were killed.

The Wichita "grand jury" made several rulings. One of them was to send common-law "marshals" to Arkansas to "arrest" municipal judge Larry Hayes, who was then presiding over the trespassing trial of Ginter, who had served five years in jail for harboring Kahl. The three marshals walked unchallenged into Judge Hayes' chambers. A local criminal investigator, Sam Spades, was in the room and recalled what happened. "These fellows in blue-jean overalls had them a nice little sheriff's-type star and said they was serving papers on him. They wanted him to appear before their Grand Wazoo meeting in Kansas." When Spades and others challenged them, the men in overalls fled.

The Wichita grand jury also adopted two other resolutions. One declared the U.S. government unconstitutional. The other directed President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno to revoke the 1933 War and Emergency Powers Act.

The common-law movement gained its own martyr in the summer of 1995. Michael Hill, 50, a former Canton, Ohio policeman, was an early member of the movement and the chief justice of Ohio's first common-law court. On June 28, 1995 police noticed his homemade license plate that read MILITIA 3-13 CHAPLAIN and pulled him over. After a short argument, Hill jumped back into his car and drove away. He was pulled over again about a half mile away from a roadblock. According to the police report, Hill leapt from his car brandishing a .45-caliber revolver. A police sergeant fired four times and hit Hill with three of the shots, killing him instantly.

After Hill's death local police received a deluge of threatening letters and phone calls from all over the country vowing revenge.

A week before Hill's death, he had attended a seminar on common law taught by Freemen leaders Schweitzer and Petersen in Roundup, Montana. When searching Hill's car police found three bogus checks and once again the signatures of Schweitzer and Petersen. This evidence (and other documents unearthed since the Jordan siege began in late March) reveals a popular scam for the movement. Bogus liens become more than attacks on someone's credit rating. They also are used as "assets," and collateral for checks and money orders. More than $10 million in such sham documents have surfaced in Ohio alone. Law enforcement authorities estimate that common-law groups may have generated as much as half a billion dollars in worthless documents nationwide. They used them to pay taxes, loans and bonds, to avoid foreclosure on property and for general purchases. Patrick Rudd, 57, was convicted in February of fraud for doling out sham money orders. Rudd convinced church members to donate money to his organizations in return for taking care of their debts. He then sent out bogus money orders to pay those debts.

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"It will be only a matter of time before some loose cannon decides to pull a judge off the street, put him in a car and drive him across a state line to try him for treason," said Mike Reynolds of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Meanwhile, the Montana Freemen remained the most conspicuous advocates of the common-law movement--as well as the most embarrassing. Retired Special Forces Colonel James "Bo" Gritz referred to their negotiating position as "legal mumbo jumbo." So-called patriot leader (and Colorado state senator) Charles Duke grew (concluded on page 154)Justice Militia Style(continued from page 88) exasperated with the Freemen in his role as mediator. Talks between the FBI and the Freemen often stalled when the fugitives demanded the right to a grand jury of their own to hear their case. Public opinion is also wary of the Freemen's avowed patriotism. Documents have surfaced (thanks to the FBI) which show that some of the purportedly individualistic Freemen received hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. government farm subsidies and spent considerable sums on expensive cars and vacations.

While more Americans have heard about the movement, there is also more urgency to fight it. Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Moyer, the target of several phony liens, dubbed the movement's actions "soft terrorism" and has no doubt about the gravity of the situation.

Moyer and some other public officials have fought back. In Wisconsin, for example, State Senator Joanne Huelsman introduced legislation late last year that makes some common-law tactics (such as filing phony liens) felony crimes. Her legislation would stiffen penalties for the existing crimes of criminal slander of title and impersonating a public officer and would essentially outlaw sham legal processes. The legislation also makes it easier for targets of common-law "paper terrorism" to remove bogus liens from the public record--and from their credit reports. The Ohio Assembly this year passed a law that allows public officials to sue anyone who attempts to intimidate them with these tactics.

Adam Chase Korbitz, the legal advisor for the Wisconsin Senate's Judiciary Committee, hopes his state's proposed legislation will serve as a model for other states that must confront common-law court decrees. "The people who establish these tribunals have a First Amendment right to assemble and to give themselves any label they choose, whether it be the Common Law Supreme Court of Wisconsin or the Bunch of Old Fools," Korbitz says. "But these groups do not have a right to attempt to exercise civil or criminal court jurisdiction over other citizens without their consent."

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As they pondered the next steps for their own court and for the movement as a whole, members of the common-law court of Lithopolis, Ohio watched the drama in Montana closely.

The court moved again, in April 1996, this time to a restaurant at Buckeye Lake, 35 miles to the east of Columbus. According to juryman James Curtis George, the court moved because it was intimidated by local police. "People are really confused by the news out of Montana and everywhere," he says. "They are afraid of the police."

George was not surprised that there had been trouble in Montana. "The Western states are way ahead of us as far as the movement is concerned."

The popularity of the courts reflects what is going on in our society, according to Brian Levin of the Southern Poverty Law Center. "Fifty percent of Americans have lost faith in the legal system," says Levin. "People are insecure about their future and the future of their children. The scapegoat is the federal government."

Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts had a similar explanation. "People gravitate toward conspiracy theories because the average person in America is getting screwed," he said.

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Whatever the future, there is no doubt that the appeal of common law can be very powerful. "My main draw here was constitutional studies," said gift shop owner Larry Kaczmarek, 54, from Medina, Ohio. "Moyer and them think we're nuts, anarchists. We're taking the Federalist Papers and studying while the rest of the nation is too busy earning a living and sitting in front of the TV, watching Roseanne. The country is in big trouble. People don't realize what's being done to them. It's like I'm going to college, and this is my education."

Authorities estimate the groups may have generated half a billion dollars in worthless documents.

Some of the purportedly individualistic Freemen received thousands in government farm subsidies.