Sovereign Citizens and Competency to Stand Trial

Urban and African-American sovereign citizens represent an underappreciated population of the sovereign citizen movement, who have adapted sovereign citizen beliefs to their own circumstances, overlooking the white supremacist origins of the sovereign citizen movement. The number of African-American sovereign citizens is not known, but though they appear to represent a very small percentage of criminal defendants referred for evaluation of competence to stand trial, they have a disproportionate impact on the court system because of their efforts to stymie the proceedings by asserting sovereign citizen beliefs. As a result, judges are often familiar with sovereign citizen beliefs and have adopted strategies to thwart the impact of sovereign citizens on their courts. Quantitative research on forensic evaluations of sovereign citizens, from all demographic groups, represents a challenge, given the low number of defendants referred for evaluation, but qualitative research on how they came to adopt sovereign citizen beliefs could be fruitful.