Imoore v. Gasbarro

• Decision Date: 25 May 2012
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 12-2605 (RBK)
• Parties: DEYRAHEL IMOORE, Plaintiff, v. WILLIAM GASBARRO at el., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey

DEYRAHEL IMOORE, Plaintiff,

v.WILLIAM GASBARRO at el., Defendants.

Civil Action No. 12-2605 (RBK)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF NEW JERSEY

Dated: May 25, 2012

NOT FOR PUBLICATION

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

This matter comes before the Court upon Plaintiff's submission of three documents, one being titled "Affidavit of Fact / In the Nature of a Complaint [A]batement Notice [o]f Quo Warranto," see Docket Entry No. 1 at 2, another being titled "Writ of Discovery," see id. at 12, third one being titled "Affidavit of Fact Order to Abate in the Nature of Mandatory Injunction," see Docket Entry No. 2, and numerous other documents attached by Plaintiff to the aforesaid three submissions as exhibits, see, generally, Docket Entries Nos. 1 and 2, and it appearing that:

1. All Plaintiff's submissions are executed in the style and utilized the argot common to legal submissions made by persons who qualify themselves as "Moorish," "Marrakush," "Murakush" or akin, which terms are often used to indicate "redempotionist" and/or "sovereign citizen" socio-political position. See Bey v. Stumpf, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 120076, at *2-13 (D.N.J. Oct. 17, 2011) (detailing various aspects of said position).

Moorish and Redemptionist Movements. Two concepts, which may or may not operate as interrelated, color the issues at hand. One of these concepts underlies ethnic/religious identification movement of certain groups of individuals who refer to themselves as "Moors," while the other concept provides the basis for another movement of certain groups of individuals, which frequently producesthese individuals' denouncement of United States citizenship, self-declaration of other, imaginary "citizenship" and accompanying self-declaration of equally imaginary "diplomatic immunity."

[a]. Moorish Movement

In 1998, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit - being one of the first courts to detail the concept of Moorish movement, observed as follows:

[The Moorish Science Temple of America is a] black Islamic sect . . . . [T]hree-fourths of its temples (congregations) are inside prisons. The Moors, as adherents to the Moorish Science Temple are called, have their own version of the Koran and a list of prophets that includes, in addition to the prophets recognized by orthodox Islam, Buddha, Confucius, and the founder . . . of the Moorish Science Temple . . . . Two groups vie for leadership of the sect: one in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, headed by [someone referred to as] Grand Sheik/Moderator Brother R. Love-El, and one in St. Louis headed by [someone referred to as] Grand Sheik Jerry Lewis-Bey. (The suffixes "El" and "Bey" refer to the African tribes from which the Moors believe black people are descended.)

Johnson-Bey v. Lane, 863 F.2d 1308, 1309 (7th Cir. 1998).¹

[b] . "Redemptionism," "Paper Terrorism" and Related Concepts

Shortly after the concept of Moorish movement was outlined by the Seventh Circuit, discussions of another movement appeared on the pages of legal opinions issued by the federal judiciary; that other movement was dubbed as "sovereign citizenship" movement. This movement was fostered by

a loosely organized collection of groups and individuals who have adopted a right-wing anarchist ideology originating in the theories of a group called the Posse Comitatus in the 1970s. Its adherents believe that virtually all existing government in the United States is illegitimate . . . . [Therefore, such] "sovereign citizens" wage war against the government and other forms of authority using "paper terrorism" harassment and intimidation tactics, and occasionally resorting to [physical] violence.

Sovereign Citizen Movement, Anti-Defamation League, at us/SCM.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism& LEARN_SubC at=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=4&ite m=sov >> (visited on Mar. 31, 2011).² Consequently, a decade after the Seventh Circuit's issuance of Bey v. Lane, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit noted a stream of government actions aimed at controlling the "paper terrorism" activities of sovereign citizens, which - by then - matured into a wide-spread criminal scheme, where the scheme participants' "self-legitimized" their names for the purposes of initiating fraudulent legal transactions. The Court of Appeals explained:

Evidently, [adherents of this scheme have been] filing [fraudulent] financing statements under Article 9 of the UCC, which sets forth a process for perfecting security interests in property. These liens and judgments, accessible on financing statement forms, are easyto file. Once registered, however, the fraudulent liens are very burdensome to remove. For example, in a New Jersey incident, [one group] registered a fraudulent $ 14.5 million lien with the New Jersey Department of Revenue against a federal prosecutor and a $ 3.5 million lien against a federal judge for using [the group participants'] "copyrighted" names in court papers and hearings . . . . [Adherents of this scheme] have filed these commercial liens with state departments of revenue, departments of state, or other the state agencies responsible for receiving and recording these financial instruments. Further investigation revealed that various publications were advocating the exploitation of the UCC filing process and provided explicit instructions on how to perfect these fraudulent security interests, including sample financing statements forms. [These publications built on] the "Redemptionist" theory, which propounds that a person has a split personality: a real person and a fictional person called the "strawman." . . . Redemptionists claim that government has power only over the strawman and not over the live person, who remains free [and, thus,] individuals can free themselves by filing UCC financing statements, thereby acquiring an interest in their strawman. Thereafter, [pursuant to this "theory,"] the real person can demand that government officials pay enormous sums of money to use the strawman's name or, in the case of prisoners, to keep him in custody. If government officials refuse, [adherents of this scheme] file liens against [government officials] . Adherents of this scheme also advocate that [they] copyright their names to justify filing liens against officials using their names in public records such as indictments or court papers.

Monroe v. Beard, 536 F.3d 198, 203 and nn. 3 and 4 (3d Cir. 2008); accord Roche, 420 Fed. App'x 124, 2011 U.S. App. LEXIS 5773, at 2 (noting that the "sovereign citizen" litigant elected to present the district court's dismissal of his petition as a "contract" between the court and the litigant).

The "strawman" concept is, occasionally, presented/exploited somewhat differently by those redemptionists who claim that - at the moment of their denouncement of United States citizenship and/or their accompanying self-grant of imaginary alternative citizenship - their "strawman" incarnation became "deceased," and their live persons quasi-expatriated from the U.S. (while continuing their actual physical residence in the United States). In connection with this odd quasi-expatriation scheme, such redemptionists often claim that their live persons: (a) hold "estates" in the form of actual physical bodies of theirrespective "quasi-deceased" strawmen;³ and (b) reside in geographic locales "self-claimed away" from the United States.

[c]. Interplay Between Moorish and Sovereign Citizenship Movements

It does not appear that one's Moorish ethnic roots (or Moorish religious convictions, or both) have any reason to go hand-in-hand with one's adhesion to the sovereign citizenship movement (or with one's professing the theory of redemptionism, or with one's practice of "paper terrorism," claims of self- granted "diplomatic immunity," etc.). However, and unfortunately enough, certain groups of individuals began merging these concepts by building on their alleged ancestry in ancient Moors (and/or on their alleged or actual adhesion to Moorish religious convictions) for the purposes of committing criminal offenses and/or initiating frivolous legal actions on the grounds of their self-granted "diplomatic immunity," which these individuals deduce either from their self-granted "Moorish citizenship" and from their correspondingly-produced homemade "Moorish" documents (or from correspondingly-obtained "world passports") or from a multitude of other, equally non-cognizable under the law, bases, which these individuals keep creating in order to support their allegations of "diplomatic immunity."⁴

Murakush-Amexem, 790 F. Supp. 2d 241, 2452-12 (footnotes in original).

2. To the degree Plaintiff wishes to utilize this legal proceeding in order to express his socio-political beliefs, Plaintiff's submissions are facially frivolous. Socio-political rhetoric has no place in legal disputes, since this Court's Article III, § 2, cl. 1, mandate is limited to resolution of legal cases and controversies.

3. However, taking notice of Plaintiff's prepayment of the applicable filing fee, the Court cannot rule out the possibility that Plaintiff has bona fide intent to litigate this matter, and Plaintiff's submissions made thus far were merely a result of Plaintiff's confusion caused by massive public dissemination of hoax "Moorish/Marrakush" forms, available online and even in hard copy, and often utilized by pro se litigants lacking legal savvy. See, e.g., Bey v. Stumpf, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 120076, at *28-36 (detailing the nature of this ill and providing examples of such hoax forms). Therefore, being mindful of Plaintiff's pro se litigant status and, hence, Plaintiff's susceptibility to confusion by such sources that might appear legitimate regardless of the hoax products these sources disseminate, this Court finds it warranted to allow Plaintiff an opportunity to litigate his legal claims ingood faith, by submitting a valid amended complaint. The Court stresses that Plaintiff's amended complaint, if submitted, should be void of any "Moorish/Marrak

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