July 19, 2022 — A judge in Lawrence County, Tenn., convicts a traveling private businessman of three criminal counts in a bench trial that Indicates how firm the system intends to uphold an important legal fiction keeps the people under cops’ heel.
By David Tulis / NoogaRadio 96.9 FM
Judge David Allen finds Arthur J. Hirsch, 72, guilty in a nearly 5-year-old case arising from a slight accident in which a car sideswiped Mr. Hirsch’s car, during which investigation a trooper accused Mr. Hersch of the standard three. That is, the three charges commercial government routinely files against people on the public right of way as a matter of constitutionally protected right.
The trooper charged Mr. Hirsch, a legal scholar who lives off grid and is widely known in the county as “the Fiddle Man” for his ministry to the aged and the jailed, with driving on a suspended license, driving without proof of insurance, and lack of proof of registration of his car that is a proof of tax paid for him to use he car as an instrumentality in commerce, carrying goods or people for hire.
The trial lasts nearly 2 hours, according to Mr. Hirsch, who says he is able to testify at length under oath about the limits of Tennessee code’s 55th title, “motor and other vehicles.”
The trooper takes the stand and identities Mr. Hirsch as the man he arrested and charged. He indicates officers receive no training whatsoever in the distinction in the law between travelers and the subcategory of travelers — those involved in the shipping and hauling and passenger business. This smaller group is subject matter of their police powers, and yet they are effectively taught that all travel is commercial, and every user of the road subject to their powers. The trooper testifies he has “no idea” what line of work Mr. Hirsch is pursuing the day of his arrest along the public road near Hirsch property.
“The other judges ruined it for me,” Mr. Hirsch says, indicating that Judge Allen said he could not introduce his legal arguments or evidence, as they had been introduced to predecessors, and denied. Mr. Hirsch did not get a fair trial, with the judge predisposed by the others.
Did Mr. Hirsch interrogate the officer? “They wouldn’t let me.” He intended to ask the officer if he’d had training in what a privilege is.
The fraud of driver license prosecution in Tennessee is that lawyers, cops and courts pretend there is only one class of traveler on the road, and that is commercial. However, as Tennessee Transportation Administrative Notice and other materials indicate, two traveler categories exist. The main category is all users of the road. Those who use the roads for private profit and gain are subject to taxation and regulation under the privilege statute system in Tennessee. Privileges always apply to callings, occupations or trades forbidden without state consent. Transportation is one of them.
“The rules say that within 30 days after sentencing I can ask for a new trial. And I just realized, they never proved intent. Those are the two basic elements of any crime.”
The indictment says, Mr. Hirsch says, that “I knowingly and intentionally drove on a suspended license. They never proved intent. They only had the act, actus reus. The only show there was an act. They never showed the state of mind. This was not a strict liability case. In order to put down an indictment, they have to put down it was knowingly and intentionally, and they put it down, hoping that during the trial the defendant will bring it out, that I knew I was breaking the law, and was doing it arbitrarily and intentionally. So I get a new trial.”
Presumption operates in almost all traffic cases, as the law doesn’t apply to private users.
“I rebutted all those things, in the indictment. I rebutted those on the stand. I read that affidavit. Everything has been rebutted. A rebuttal always requires one asserting the presumption to come back with proof in support of this presumption. When challenged, under oath, the presumption doesn’t exist any more.”
The judge says, “‘because he is a credible witness, I find beyond a reasonable doubt that I committed these crimes, and I’m guilty. What about everything I said? He spoke for five minutes. I spoke 20 or 30 minutes. Specifics. And he totally discounted that. That’s bias. That’s prejudice. That’s favoritism. I have enough ground for a new trial. And it says, in most cases, a new trial requires a new judge.”
Are there any judges left in Lawrence County, as Mr. Hirsch has had already four on the case? “Oh, yeah. But not good ones. But nevertheless, I am going to take a different approach,” he says. “I am going to have the judge agree as to the two elements of a crime.”
Mr. Hirsch says he is going to insist on the intent element rather than a defense of travel by showing the limited subject matter of the state motor vehicle code at Tenn. Code Ann. § Title 55.
Challenging subject matter jurisdiction can be done at any time. But Mr. Hirsch says DAs and judges work together to rebuff the challenge. The court doesn’t have subject matter jurisdiction because the administrative law under which he is charged — Title 55 — applies to truckers and bus drivers and haulers, not private users.
No matter, the custom and usage in courts blows off the question that would save the trial from even being held, with the case being dismissed. The judge is supposed to command the prosecutor to prove subject matter jurisdiction, “but they never do. I’ve never heard it done. The judge says, ‘I got it. Let’s get going. I have it.’”
Jerry Howell is the “bagman” for Brent Cooper, the district attorney who says raising the distinction is a sign of mental illness. Mr. Howell “is very snarly. Just, always, constantly. Always trying to put something on my character, and everything else. He’s the one who’s just itching to put me in jail for a year and charge me F$2,500 and just put me out of life, out of business, out of everything.”
There is another class of people using the roads other than commercial users, he says, “using the roads constitutionally, biblically, and with their own right to travel. And none of [the officials] are even close to admitting it. Because once it’s admitted and it’s in the record, it will do major damage to the revenue flow. It’d be a mortal wound to the golden goose.”
Mr. Hirsch says he can’t go into details today. “I’m days behind in mowing. I’m running out of money. So, now, I’ve got four big yards lined up for today, and about four or five tomorrow, and if I don’t have that I can’t pay end-of-the-month bills.”
Mr. Hirsch can move for an arrest in judgment, for a new trial and one other step.
‘Condemning innocent people’
“What a racket! What a terrible piece of garbage they call the court,” explodes Levi Thurston, who often talks law with Mr. Hirsch. “That prosecutor, he needs to be put out there in the situations he is condemning these innocent people.”
Mr.Thurston, a Lawrence County-area laborer, is working as a field hand near Mertons, Texas, living in that state while attempting to get a driver’s license. He is planning a petition for writ of mandamus to force the issue. Mr. Thurston was instrumental in the Abigail Tulis reckless driving case that sought appeal to the court of criminal appeals in Richmond over the highwayman extortion racket.
“If he wanted to wash his hands of this,” Mr. Thurston says, prior to the trial, “he could dismiss and write things very favorable to Jay, and he could tell the prosecutor, ‘If you don’t like it, you bear the burden of an appeal. You do all the appeal work.’”
Mr. Levi says the bar and the courts run an extortion racket. “You pay me by the hour, and we’ll work a deal here, and you walk away thinking you’ve been satisfied.”
Defendants such as Mr. Hirsch are the rare one that raises proper points of law and jurisdiction.
‘Assigned’ driver license
The state prosecutes many poor people and the unwitting by “suspending” their driver licenses even though they did not apply for a number. The process involves “assigning” a driver license number, then suspending it.
Mr. Hirsch did not have a Tennessee driver license. But a “record” exists showing him having one, and it having been suspended.
No legal authority exists for the department of safety and homeland security to “assign” a driver license to someone without signature, application, eye color, hair color, residency and other information. The fraud has not been challenged, and it has been falsely described in testimony by attorney general Herbert Slatery III in testimony in the federal lawsuit overseen by U.S. district court Aleta Trauger dealing with the state’s abuse of revocations against people too poor to pay “court debt.”
This 20-page legal notice lets you fight back vs. illicit ‘traffic stops’ — sue for damages, have defense in your criminal case
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