SDM tries it on yet again

        On 4th September, responding to the US Govt Answering Brief that I covered in August, Sean Morton filed a five-page document with the Ninth Circuit titled INFORMAL APPEAL RESPONSE TO GOVERNMENT BRIEF. It was signed by SDM in his jail cell^{note 1} but served by someone called Scott Cartwright. Reading it through, I'm struck by the fact that it lacks SDM's style. For one thing, there are no spellling errors. And then there are no pompous self-justifications or absurd digressions, as for example in this extract from Morton's 2018 Expedited Motion for Summary Disposition:

"Sean has made a showing of exigency. A delay will substantially further harm Sean who claims he is entitled to have his life, property and rights restored. An expedited schedule for briefing an oral argument will be insufficient to prevent that harm. This is especially true because Sean's free speech, media, loss of life and property considerations are at stake. Sean's imprisonment causes an avalanche of irreparable injury including injuring the public right to have Sean be protected media. The longer the delay the more the public has cause to distrust the government and think the IRS targeting scandal is above reproach and the courts are not protecting the peoples rights to be free of oppression. Expediting remedy will restore trust in the courts and government after deep abuse and fractures in the system. "

        So I conclude that somebody else drafted this document. Perhaps Morton finally has the public defender he should have had right from the start of the legal process (and which he did not have, thanks to his own pig-headed stupidity). Or perhaps somebody found some $$$ to pay for a legal service.

        The document may not have SDM's stamp on it, but that does not stop it from advancing some utterly daft arguments. An example:

"The offense Mr. Morton is convicted of is in error because the statute expressly requires the conduct to be in the geographical location of the 10 square miles of United States. By the governments own admission the conduct falls well outside the scope of the statute because the indictment alleges all conduct was expressly in California, a separate sovereignty. Sean is convicted in error because his conduct was not in United States as required by the letter of the law. Statutory authority and Federal jurisdiction is exceeded because the conduct was purely intrastate California conduct and therefore outside the power of Congress to regulate."

I can't imagine that one succeeding.

        There are a few issues that might have a better chance, but since I'm not a legal scholar I can't say how much merit, if any, they have. For example:

• Should a Faretta hearing^{note 2} have been held before the court allowed Morton to act pro se?
• Did the government provide adequate discovery? (There is talk here of 55,000 pages of evidence that should have been provided on CD, but the CDs turned out to be blank)
• Document alleges that the jury instructions did not include willfulness or mens rea^{note 3} as required by common law.
• There's a repeat of the allegation that Sean and Melissa were selected for prosecution because of their political beliefs. The Govt. has already answered that one and it certainly won't fly.

        Nobody knows when the Ninth Circuit will issue a final judgement on appeal. They've certainly now got an avalanche of paperwork to pore over. Morton has served just over two years of his six-year sentence—if the appeal court manages to delay for another two years or so, its judgement may be moot.

Thanks again to AE for monitoring

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[1] Morton signed it "Dr Sean David Morton." His PhD (in therapeutic psychology) was purchased from the International Institute of Health and Spiritual Sciences in Montreal, Canada

[2] See this for an explanation. This might be his best point.

[3] Mens rea simply means the legal principle of a defendant knowing that his or her behavior is illegal. At least I know that much. I also know another fine latin phrase, Ignorantia legis neminem excusat  (Ignorance of the law excuses nobody).