Dezi Fowl Freeman, 56, is the topic of a significant manhunt in Victoria, Australia, after allegedly killing two law enforcement officials and injuring a 3rd throughout a raid on his property. Born Desmond Christopher Filby, Freeman is a self-proclaimed “sovereign citizen” who rejects authorities authority and has an extended historical past of clashes with police and courts.
Freeman’s radicalization accelerated throughout Australia’s draconian Covid lockdowns. He refused to put on masks, rejected vaccinations, and railed towards authorities restrictions, calling police “terrorist thugs” and evaluating them to Nazis. Whereas Australian authorities noticed this defiance as harmful, many American conservatives would view such resistance as an affordable rejection of violations of fundamental freedoms and rights.
His historical past with the regulation is kind of colourful. Freeman as soon as tried to arrest a Justice of the Peace in courtroom and joined an effort to cost the state premier with treason, a case that was rapidly dismissed.
Courtroom data present repeated driving prices, frequent insults towards judges, and makes an attempt to assert authorized immunity as a “sovereign citizen.” Freeman is believed to be an skilled bushman, aware of native wilderness and caves, complicating the search. Police warn he’s “closely armed” and should have stolen the officers’ weapons.
Australian authorities stress that the sovereign citizen motion poses a danger of violence, having gained traction in the course of the nation’s Covid lockdowns. However the motion will not be distinctive to Australia. It additionally exists in the US.
The U.S. sovereign citizen motion is a loosely organized anti-government ideology that first emerged within the Nineteen Seventies and has since advanced over a number of many years. Its adherents consider the federal authorities is illegitimate and sometimes declare they will declare themselves “sovereign,” putting themselves outdoors the attain of most federal, state, and native legal guidelines.
They usually argue that the “actual” Structure ended with the unique 13 amendments, that later amendments such because the 14th or sixteenth are invalid, or that the federal authorities operates as a company fairly than a authentic authority.
The motion’s roots might be traced to earlier tax protest teams, conspiracy theories about banking and financial techniques, and misinterpretations of admiralty regulation and the Uniform Business Code.
In follow, sovereign residents regularly have interaction in what specialists name “paper terrorism,” submitting frivolous lawsuits, liens, and pseudo-legal paperwork to harass authorities officers, regulation enforcement, and personal residents. Different frequent techniques embody refusing to acquire driver’s licenses or car registrations, creating their very own identification papers, refusing to pay taxes, and claiming diplomatic immunity.
Some sovereign residents have rejected U.S. authorized tender and tried to create their very own types of cash or cost techniques, reflecting their broader rejection of federal authority and their perception that the present financial system is illegitimate. They’ve tried to bypass the usage of Federal Reserve notes by varied means, together with selling the usage of gold and silver cash, arguing that solely treasured metals represent “actual” cash underneath the Structure.
Others have advocated direct barter techniques as a approach to trade items and companies with out counting on official foreign money. A smaller quantity have gone additional by making an attempt to subject their very own non-public cash, certificates, or digital currencies, although these efforts have all the time failed to achieve widespread acceptance.
A number of notable instances have highlighted this pattern. The Liberty Greenback case, led by Bernard von NotHaus, concerned the creation of silver cash and warehouse receipts that have been marketed as a substitute for Federal Reserve notes. Different incidents have centered on “redemption” schemes, the place adherents claimed they might entry secret authorities accounts by complicated pseudo-legal monetary devices.
Sovereign residents usually face authorized penalties for his or her actions. Creating or circulating different foreign money can violate federal counterfeiting legal guidelines, whereas refusing to acknowledge official cash regularly results in tax evasion prices. Below the Structure, the federal authorities has unique authority over authorized tender.
Their rejection of official foreign money is rooted within the perception that the Federal Reserve system is unconstitutional, that Federal Reserve notes should not “actual” cash, and that the US ought to have remained on the gold customary. Others see paper cash itself as illegitimate authorities management. Though these concepts stay central to the motion, efforts to behave on them have constantly led to felony prices and failed experiments in different foreign money.
The FBI has recognized sovereign residents as a home terrorism risk as a result of some adherents have attacked police throughout visitors stops or courtroom proceedings. Nonetheless, most depend on bureaucratic techniques, comparable to clogging up courts with nuisance filings and counterfeit paperwork, fairly than violence. Courts at each stage have repeatedly dismissed their arguments as frivolous, noting that the motion’s theories don’t have any foundation in constitutional or statutory regulation.
Latest instances illustrate the sample. In Could 2025, 33-year-old Devonte Arthur was arrested in Richland County, South Carolina, for driving with a counterfeit license plate typical of sovereign citizen claims. That very same month in Richmond, police arrested one other self-proclaimed sovereign citizen who led officers on a slow-speed pursuit, refused to acknowledge their authority, and created a standoff on the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza that ended solely after chemical brokers have been deployed.
In keeping with the Southern Poverty Regulation Heart, 2024 noticed six violent incidents involving sovereign residents concentrating on native and state regulation enforcement, leaving one officer useless, three hospitalized with gunshot wounds, and 4 extra injured. Not one of the attackers survived.
Those that did, wound up in jail. Curtis Gregory Smith Jr. of Middletown, Pennsylvania, convicted and sentenced to 56 years for possessing firearms, physique armor, and hundreds of rounds of “NATO grade” ammunition, and Wayne R. Lund of Oak Park Heights, Minnesota, who was caught with pipe bombs throughout a visitors cease, claiming they have been for his “rocket interest.”
