Arrested Nov. 22, 2023, without a warrant and with no respect to my right have relief under the exhaustion of administrative remedies doctrine, I sit handcuffed in a cruiser run by Hamilton County sheriff Austin Garrett and his deputy Brandon Bennett. (Photo HCSO)
Austin Garrett, sheriff of Hamilton County, runs a general warrants scheme and imposes the state trucking law on nontruckers. (Photo HCSO)
The judges of the 6th circuit court of appeals meet here in Cincinnati. I ask for oral arguments in the unprecedented case. (Photo U.S. courts system)
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn., Monday, Sept. 1, 2025 — Sheriff Austin Garrett and radio journalist David Tulis have taken their dispute over arrest powers before federal appeals court judges in Cincinnati.
Garrett says Tulis’ arrest and jailing in a traffic stop Nov. 22, 2023, was legal because deputy Brandon Bennett had probable cause because he saw a damaged taillight on Tulis’ green 1999 Honda RAV4. Tulis says he has a right to an administrative hearing in the department of safety and homeland security prior to any officer’s exercising criminal police arrest powers in a dispute involving the motor vehicle law in title 55 of the state code.
Tulis says the arrest was unconstitutional and an overthrow of privilege law and violated his due process rights under well known legal doctrines. Hamilton County and the sheriff knew they could not use criminal authority to administer motor vehicle regulations and did so in bad faith.
The reporter at Eagle Radio, the rock hits network at FM 107.5 and FM 106.1, is demanding $25 million dollars in aggravated damages because the county ignored two administrative notices, one March 1, 2018, regarding the transportation law and a second April 15th, 2020, on warrantless arrest powers. In the suit filed Nov. 19, 2024, Tulis demands injunction upon “redcoat warrants.”
“Not only did probable cause exist in this case,” Garrett tells the 6th circuit court of appeals in Cincinnati, “the appellant acknowledges such probable cause. He admitted his taillight was damaged, and video footage confirmed it,” Garrett’s brief says “there is not support for ‘sovereign citizen’ style arguments that driving without a license is lawful if not done for profit.”
A sheriff’s deputy says “driving is privilege” and his job is to protect constitutional liberties. My court proceedings in the 6th federal appellate court seeks to verify whether he is telling the truth, especially since my argument is “driving and operating a motor vehicle constitute a privilege.” (Photo David Tulis)
This is Page 1 of my reply to Sheriff Garrett’s response to my appellate court brief.
Tulis says “the ‘sov cit’ allegation is a smear and “a poor substitute for argument. This case is one of first impression. Every time state of Tennessee is aggrieved by a motor vehicle infraction it cannot legally prosecute criminally without following its procedures under the law. It must sue the alleged violator in the department of safety. It must exhaust its administrative remedies. This is well known law. Exhaust remedies in agency under the uniform administrative procedures act.”
Says Tulis, who lives in Soddy-Daisy, “Tennessee privilege law controls how the state seeks redress against people who are alleged to violate their privilege. It’s true for plumbing, barbering, embalming. Driving a motor vehicle is a privileged calling and occupation. Proceedings are under the uniform administrative procedures act. The law requires the state to move against the motor vehicle licensee in the licensing agency first, and then judicially in court, and then finally under criminal prosecution if the state can’t obtain satisfaction under the exhaustion rule.”
Tulis says as a Christian ministry he’s suing to “decriminalize traffic stops, the biggest oozing tumor left over from Jim Crow, eating out the people, especially the black, the weak and the poor.”
SERVICE COPY Doc. 8 Tulis taillight reply brief
I am reporter with Eagle Radio Network — marvelously playing rock hits in Chattanooga, and online at https://www.eagleradionetwork.com/
