Top judge warns 'sovereign citizen' movement is overwhelming Australian courts

Courts are struggling to handle a surge in 'unmitigated nonsense' legal cases as sovereign citizens exploit the justice system.

Retired Supreme Court judge Paul Tottle and alleged police shooter Dezi Freeman who described himself as a sovereign citizen.

The continued growth of the so-called “sovereign citizen” movement is increasingly sucking up court resources and contributing to a backlog in legal cases that is being felt across the country.

Paul Tottle, who retired from his role as a judge in Western Australia’s Supreme Court in September, cited the rise of sovereign citizens as a key factor in driving ongoing lengthy wait times in the state’s legal system.

At a Piddington Society event in Perth on Wednesday night, Mr Tottle said sovereign citizen cases coming before the courts was a growing problem for the legal system. “It’s a really thorny problem, and I think greater minds than mine are working on it because the disruption that is caused by sovereign citizens and those who follow very similar lines of argument is so considerable that I can’t overestimate just how disruptive it is,” he said.

Sovereign citizens broadly believe they are not subject to Australian law based on a combin­ation of pseudo-law and con­spiracy theories.

Alleged police shooter Dezi Freeman described himself as a sovereign citizen, and courts across Australia have heard ­sovereign citizen-inspired legal arguments put forward to challenge everything from speeding tickets and council rates to foreclosure notices.

New footage of cop killer Dezi Freeman has surfaced on TikTok.

Mr Tottle said legal arguments put forward by sovereign citizens were typically “unmitigated nonsense” and judges needed to be prepared to deal with hopeless ­arguments more swiftly.

“Whether it’s a single judge appeal or in the criminal sphere, courts across the nation are going to have to be more robust and say ‘This is nonsense’, and say it early, and then rely on the appeal courts to back those decisions,” he said.

There was also a case to be made to legislate away sovereign citizen legal arguments through amendments to the Vexatious Litigants Act, but he said care needed to be taken to ensure legitimate cases were not thrown out simply because they were brought by sovereign citizens.

“I suspect that trying to get any legislative change through is a long-term solution. Judges are going to have to be, and I think increasingly are, more robust in the way they deal with (sovereign citizen) cases and cut them off at an earlier stage. The difficulty, of course, is making sure somebody who has been sucked into the sovereign citizen movement or situation but has a genuine case and is just using the language … isn’t excluded,” he said.

“We’re extraordinarily conscious of procedural fairness, so you just don’t want to risk throwing out somebody’s good case because it has some of the hallmarks of sovereign citizens.”

The rise of sovereign citizen cases has added to pressures felt in courts around the country.

In WA, for example, it takes on average 64 weeks for a criminal matter to get to trial – double the court’s target of 32 weeks. ­Supreme Court matters average 58 weeks v a 39-week target

Shortages of experienced counsel, judges and facilities have all been cited as factors behind the delay. Senior lawyers also noted that many younger lawyers were no longer comfortable taking on sexual assault cases.

Another former Supreme Court judge, Ken Martin, told The Australian he had started to see the emergence of sovereign citizen cases shortly before his 2023 retirement, and it had become an increasingly common phenomenon since then. He said typically, those using sovereign citizen legal arguments had exhausted other options and were desperate and vulnerable.

Former justice of the WA Supreme Court Kenneth Martin.

“I saw a couple of instances of people who had taken out loans (and) fallen into default; the bank eventually sues them and they’re desperate for anything they can grasp to actually put up a defence,” he said. “As a matter of desperation, they are drawn to the attraction of salvation through this sort of repudiation of authority and essentially convince themselves because of their vulnerability.”

He said while judges would always give people a fair hearing, it was also reasonable for courts to curtail lengthy legal arguments that were little more than “ranting and nonsense”.

“Everyone’s got a right to be heard within reason. But in terms of bogging down the court for days by handing up copies of Magna Carta and that sort of thing, that’s where case management has to come in,” he said.

“Essentially, trial judges need to be supported in terms of drawing to a conclusion long-winded resource-consuming, delaying tactics.”