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Pseudo-legality

By Steven R. Minor

From the Court's opinion in U.S. v. Phillips:

"Phillips filed this § 2255 motion on or about December 22, 2008, alleging that his conviction is illegal based on various and frivolous and pseudo-legal arguments. The 44-page motion argues, among other things, that key provisions of Titles 18 and 21 of the United States Code were not properly enacted and published and, as such, are not valid criminal statutes; that the government is not a legal 'person' for purposes of the Civil Rights Act and so his plea agreement cannot be a valid contract between two persons; that he is not guilty of a federal criminal offense because his criminal conduct occurred in the Commonwealth of Virginia, not on federal territory; that the United States Code has been copyrighted as the private international law applicable only in the District of Columbia; and that counsel was ineffective for failing to raise these arguments before advising him to plead guilty."

I kept a straight face until the last of these particulars.

Full post as published by Southwest Virginia Law Blog on December 02, 2009 (boomark / email).