Queensland’s highest court has tossed out an appeal by a convicted unlicensed driver claiming he was a “citizen sovereign” and that Queensland laws did not apply to him.
The Court of Appeal in Brisbane, in a decision published today, described his arguments as “nonsense” and “gobbledygook”, and dismissed Ross James Bradley’s appeal against the conviction and $150 fine he received from a magistrate for an offence of unlicensed driving.
Court of Appeal President Walter Sofronoff QC, in a brief two-page ruling, noted Bradley had initially mounted a failed defence by asking a magistrate to dismiss the charge against him on the basis and for “reasons that are not clear” that a police officer had no power to charge him.
“The argument was obvious nonsense and the magistrate rightly rejected it,” Justice Sofronoff said. “After hearing the evidence led by the prosecution, the magistrate found (Bradley) guilty as charged.
“Not satisfied with this outcome, (Bradley) appealed to the District Court and argued that he was something which he called a citizen sovereign and that the laws of Queensland did not apply to him.”
Justice Sofronoff said that, if Bradley’s reasoning was correct, then it was hard to understand why the convicted unlicensed driver was agitating his complaint before a court established under laws that he claimed did not apply to him.
“This paradox did not trouble (Bradley) and he has now applied for leave to appeal against Judge (Tony) Moynihan QC’s order dismissing his appeal,” he said.
“That (Bradley) is merely persisting in putting forward a jumble of gobbledygook to support his application in this court can be seen at once if one reads only the two opening sentences of his purported outline of argument.”
Those two sentences, Justice Sofronoff revealed, were: “My BRADLEY person (conjoined with the BRADLEY ‘spiritual’ family body-politic) is my own “body politic” by succession, at Law. It is my natural body incorporated at the supreme Christian Law and is my own jurisdiction.”
President Sofronoff, in response, said: “This application is an abuse of the court’s process and should be dismissed.”
Justices Debra Mullins AO and David Boddice QC agreed.
Read the decision.
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