Connecticut police responded to a grisly scene during which a landlord had been brutally decapitated with a samurai sword. Disturbingly, the suspected assassin refused to say something, pointing solely to a chunk of paper explaining why he shouldn’t be charged with any crime.
When involved mates of 64-year-old Victor King reported to Connecticut police that they couldn’t attain him at his house, officers headed over to the Hartford residence. Simply someday earlier, King had gone to the police station to report threats of violence from his roommate after a dispute over the person not paying hire.
Officers famous that the person had waved a sword at King. After arriving at King’s house, police and firefighters needed to pressure their manner into the residence. What they found inside was a ugly crime scene.
In response to the Hartford Courant, police found King’s decapitated and slashed corpse surrounded by blood and coated in bedding on the kitchen ground. Instantly treating the case as a murder, officers started searching for King’s roommate, pulling him over within the metropolis’s North Finish.
Police detained Jerry David Thompson, 42, for the homicide and took him in for questioning. Nonetheless, he refused to talk a phrase to detectives, solely responding to their questions by scribbling on a chunk of paper, “Paper in glove compart in Jeep is all you want,” in keeping with the report.
Within the car’s compartment was paperwork stating that Thompson thought of himself a sovereign citizen and isn’t topic to U.S. regulation. Investigators have since confiscated the letter with a purpose to determine find out how to construct a case in opposition to the alleged killer. They later discovered a signed lease with Thompson and King’s names in addition to a material sheath masking and a samurai sword sheath within the woods.
The Hartford Police Regional Dive group found a samurai sword within the close by river, WTIC experiences. Though Thompson’s paperwork insists he’s a sovereign citizen who can’t be tried underneath U.S. regulation, his historical past suggests in any other case. In response to information, Thompson has earlier convictions for assault and theft. On the time of his arrest, he selected to stay silent relating to King’s homicide.
In response to the FBI, sovereign residents usually use their declare of immunity to commit crimes with impunity.
“Sovereign residents are anti-government extremists who declare the federal authorities is working exterior its jurisdiction and they’re due to this fact not sure by authorities authority—together with the courts, taxing entities, motorized vehicle departments, and even regulation enforcement. Additionally they are susceptible to interact in quite a few kinds of monetary frauds and schemes, primarily based on their skewed interpretation of regulation.”
As for Thompson, it’s doable that he actually believes that he’s a sovereign citizen and that his paperwork will defend him from prosecution. The problem is whether or not the paperwork are professional or fraudulent.
“Most of those sovereign residents are extremists,” mentioned Particular Agent Walter Szpak, who investigated the case out of the FBI’s Philadelphia Area Workplace. “After they get arrested, they don’t imagine they’ve dedicated against the law, and so they imagine they’ve the appropriate to retaliate.”
Whereas it isn’t unlawful to file paperwork claiming to be a sovereign citizen, it could actually function an indicator to police that the person plans on committing against the law.
Sadly, those that declare to be sovereign residents usually use these paperwork for his or her benefit in prison circumstances. Such paperwork gums up the judicial course of with a number of courtroom filings in an effort to forestall justice.
