The first thing you need to know about
Timothy Spencer Darnell is that he's not a U.S. citizen. Or at least not when it suits him.
In 2001, three months after a former client sued Darnell, Darnell filed an affidavit in Dallas County Court claiming that he's not a citizen, that the Dallas County Court-at-Law #3 is "an underling corporate fiction of the State of Texas, a corporation and a fiction," and that the court has no jurisdiction over him. Darnell's renunciation of the United States of America was supplemented by supporting affidavits by other Dallas-area noncitizens who claimed that Darnell "cannot receive a fair and impartial trial by jury of his peers by law in County Court-at-Law #3." When contacted by the
Houston Press, affiant Mary Lou Starnater declined to say why she filed that affidavit, then hung up. (Darnell's wife's maiden name is Starnater.)
Brett Flagg, the Dallas attorney who represented Darnell's disgruntled client, said his client invested several thousand dollars in a company Darnell ran called Tru Dynamics. Flagg said the affidavit signaled a hard row ahead for his client, who decided to just call it a loss and move on.
Darnell has an entirely different recollection. He says he did not file the affidavit in response to a suit, but as a response to an affidavit filed by someone else that included Darnell's name in all upper-case letters.
Maybe it's best to let Darnell explain in his own words:
"The use of my name in upper-case letters...What that does, when you use uppercase letters, it signifies that you are a state-created entity. In other words...you're not a living human being, you're a corporation. And I was disputing that fact by this affidavit."
Uh, okay. And that stuff about not being a U.S. citizen?
Darnell offers this clear, riddle-free response:
"There is a definition of the United States...the specific definition of that is Washington, D.C. and
Guam and some of the holdings of the United States -- I think it's a 17-mile radius, if I remember correctly, around the capital: there's a definition that says that that's what the United States is, and I am clarifying that that is not the case. I do not live there."
Bookmarks