The Misbegotten Fruits of the Internet

[Burnaby49]

The topic title is a quote from a wordy judicial opinion, decision linked below. As with many sovereign confrontations it started out trivial (not signaling a turn) and ended with a tasering. When pulled over our nascent sovereign had a red binder on hand over full of documents showing that he was not subject to the laws of Canada. Maybe he's right! The judge let him off, purportedly because the case was too trivial to bother (but not too trivial to write a 4,300 word opinion). But we, and the perp, know the real reason. The judge's secret masters know that our courageous sovereign has exposed the whole rotten edifice of lies and are futilely trying to cover it up. The judge put up a bold front saying:

5. At heart, Mr. Duncan’s case was unremarkable. A minor alleged Highway Traffic Act offence led to a police-citizen interaction in the parking lot of Mr. Duncan’s apartment building in the wee hours of the morning. A request that Mr. Duncan produce his licence led to an alleged refusal, which led to an attempt to arrest him, which led to a struggle, which was captured on a very poor quality video taken on a mobile phone, at the end of which Mr. Duncan found himself being placed under arrest for allegedly assaulting a police officer. Nothing unusual in all that. The bread and butter of provincial court.

6. Of course, I hadn’t counted on the freemen on the land.

7. Mr. Duncan was self-represented. Other than a mildly annoying disinclination on his part to stand when addressing the court (although he did stand when questioning witnesses), he was a rather pleasant young man. Unfortunately, he was a rather pleasant young man whose mind was filled with what my late father would have called “notions”.[1]

8. It has been said that, given enough time, ten thousand monkeys with typewriters[2] would probably eventually replicate the collected works of William Shakespeare.[3] Sadly, when human beings are let loose with computers and internet[4] access, their work product does not necessarily compare favourably to the aforementioned monkeys with typewriters.[5]

9. Thus it was that the trial began with Mr. Duncan objecting to us proceeding on the basis that I had no jurisdiction over him. Mr. Duncan provided me with an “affidavit of truth”, a rather substantial volume that appeared to me to be the result of somebody doing a Google search for terms like “jurisdiction” and the like and then cobbling them together in such a way that it makes James Joyce’s Ulysses look like an easy read. This hodgepodge of irrelevancies relied upon by Mr. Duncan was one of the misbegotten fruits of the internet. Finding it was a waste of Mr. Duncan’s time; printing it was a waste of trees and my reading it was a waste of my time and public money. With that volume as his starting point, Mr. Duncan spent some time explaining to me that I had no jurisdiction to try him, that he was not a citizen of the province or the country, that he was not a person as defined by my definitions, that there was no contract between him and me to give me status to sit in judgment over him and so on. As I have said, Mr. Duncan struck me as a perfectly pleasant young man, but on this issue he seemed a bit obtuse. I suppose that if perfectly pleasant young men weren’t led astray from time to time by drugs, alcohol, broken hearts or rubbish on the internet, then the dockets of provincial court wouldn’t be quite as plump as they usually are.

10. After much to-ing and fro-ing about jurisdiction, either Mr. Duncan or Matthew or his administrator (I never was quite sure which, they were all talking through the same corporeal form) entered a plea of “not guilty” on Mr. Duncan’s behalf and we proceeded to the evidence.

I expect great things from this guy in the future.


http://www.canlii.org/en/on/oncj/doc/20 ... cj160.html

[Gregg]

8. It has been said that, given enough time, ten thousand monkeys with typewriters[2] would probably eventually replicate the collected works of William Shakespeare.[3] Sadly, when human beings are let loose with computers and internet[4] access, their work product does not necessarily compare favourably to the aforementioned monkeys with typewriters.[5]

That's very good.

[morrand]

Not half as good as what shows up in the referenced footnotes:

[2] For readers under the age of thirty or so, the “typewriter” was a mechanical device used for creating documents that pre-dated the computer and lacked some of the computer’s more annoying characteristics, in particular the computer’s facilitation of “cutting and pasting”, which is undoubtedly one of the four horsemen of the modern apocalypse and which has cost many trees their lives and many lawyers and judges their eyesight.

[Chados]

I totally love the way Canadian judges write. Such well-chosen, erudite sarcasm. Well played, my lord.

[Burnaby49]

Mr. Duncan has received at least some degree of internet recognition. Lowering the Bar has written him up. A touch late however.

http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/10/w ... e-mad.html

[PeanutGallery]

That Judge would fit right in here.

[bmxninja357]

Judicial Follies - Canadian holiday

http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/column ... an-holiday

interesting. for a few reasons i think...
peace,
ninj