Murakush Caliphate of Amexem Inc. v. State , Civil Action No. 11–1317 (RBK).

• Decision Date: 13 May 2011
• Docket Number: Civil Action No. 11–1317 (RBK).
• Citation: 790 F.Supp.2d 241
• Parties: MURAKUSH CALIPHATE OF AMEXEM INC., d/b/a Murakush Imperial Temple of Amexem, Plaintiff,v.State of NEW JERSEY et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey

790 F.Supp.2d 241

MURAKUSH CALIPHATE OF AMEXEM INC., d/b/a Murakush Imperial Temple of Amexem, Plaintiff,

v.State of NEW JERSEY et al., Defendants.

Civil Action No. 11–1317 (RBK).

United States District Court, D. New Jersey.

May 13, 2011.

OPINION

ROBERT B. KUGLER, District Judge.

This matter comes before this Court upon the Clerk's receipt of two groups of submissions; both submissions were made on behalf of the same entity named as the plaintiff. See Murakush Caliphates of Amexem v. State of New Jersey ( “Instant Matter” ), Civ. Action No. 11–1317, and Murakush Caliphate of Amexem Inc. v. Simandle ( “Caliphate” ), Civ. Action No. 11–1316(MLC). The Instant Matter was assigned to the undersigned. The initial submissions made in the Instant Matter consisted of six documents, see Instant Matter, Docket Entries Nos. 1, 1–1 to 1–4, and 2, with the document titled “Complaint” being the first in the package, see Docket Entry No. 1; these submissions were followed by a letter and prepayment of a filing fee. See Docket Entry No. 3 and Docket Entry of May 12, 2011. For the reasons expressed below: (a) the Complaint will be dismissed; and (b) limited orders of preclusion will be entered against the natural persons who executed the submissions in the Instant Matter and Caliphate, their associates and juridical entities actually registered or fathomed by these persons.

I. BACKGROUND

Since neither the content of the submissions at bar nor this Court's decision to issue limited orders of preclusion could be duly appreciated without a careful discussion of background of the Instant Matter and Caliphate, the Court finds it warranted to begin this Opinion with an outline of pertinent umbrella issues and specific facts implicated in this case.

A. MOORISH AND REDEMPTIONIST MOVEMENTS

Two concepts, which may or may not operate as interrelated, color the issues at hand. One of these concepts underlies the 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 produces these individuals' denouncement of United States citizenship, self-declaration of other, imaginary “citizenship” and accompanying self-declaration of equally imaginary “diplomatic immunity.”

1. 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

2. “Redemptionism,” “Paper Terrorism” and Related Concepts

Shortly after the concept of the 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 a “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 «http:// www. adl. org/ Learn/ ext_ us/ SCM. asp? LEARN_ Cat= Extremism& LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_ America&xpicked=4&item=sov» (visited on Mar. 31, 2011).²

Consequently, a decade after the Seventh Circuit's issuance of Johnson–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 easy to 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, 2011 WL 956068, at *1, 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 (self-)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 quasi-deceased/expatriation scheme, such redemptionists claim that their live persons: (a) hold “estates” in the form of actual physical bodies of their respective “quasi-deceased” strawmen; ³ and (b) reside in geographic locales they “self-claimed away” from the United States to “self-declare” them territories of the ancient Sultanate of Morocco (or territories over which the ancient Sultanate of Morocco should have control roughly similar to that of suzerainty).

3. 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

B. PRIOR “MARRAKUSH” LITIGATIONS IN THIS AND OTHER COURTS

1. Marrakush Society Cases and Other Courts' Actions Detected in 2009

During May, June and July of 2009, nineteen actions (hereinafter, collectively, “Marrakush Society Cases”) were initiated in this District, all naming as the plaintiff—or implicating, directly or indirectly—a certain entity designated as the “Marrakush Society.” See Marrakush Society v. Township of Newfield, Civil Action No. 09–3591 (D.N.J.) (initiated on July 20, 2009); Marrakush Society v. Township of New Jersey State Police, Civil Action No. 09–3590 (D.N.J.) (initiated on July 20 2009); Marrakush Society v. Township of Vineland, Civil...