Whichman v Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections

[2024] NZHC 902

IN THE HIGH COURT OF NEW ZEALAND AUCKLAND REGISTRY

I TE KŌTI MATUA O AOTEAROA TĀMAKI MAKAURAU ROHE

CIV-2024-404-000892

[2024] NZHC 902

IN THE MATTER

of an application for a Writ of Habeas Corpus

BETWEEN

GEORGE THE SOVEREIGN BEING

(HOUSE OF WHICHMAN) also known as GEORGE WHICHMAN)

Applicant

AND

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

Respondent

Hearing:	23 April 2024
Appearances:	The Applicant in person via VMR H T Reid for the Respondent
Judgment:	23 April 2024

JUDGMENT OF ANDERSON J

This judgment was delivered by me on 23 April 2024 at 5.00 pm pursuant to Rule 11.5 of the High Court Rules 2016.

………………………………

Registrar/Deputy Registrar

Solicitors:

Meredith Connell, Auckland

WHICHMAN v CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS [2024] NZHC 902

[23 April 2024]

[1]                 George the Sovereign Being (House of Whichman), otherwise known as George Whichman, applied on Friday, 19 April 2014 for a writ of habeas corpus with an accompanying affidavit. The Crown filed its notice of opposition yesterday. The application was heard today.

[2]                 An application for a writ of habeas corpus must be founded on an unlawful detention.1 The applicant is currently detained and Mt Eden Correction Facility. The onus is on the respondent, here the Department of Corrections, to establish that the detention is lawful. If it is not, the Court must order his release.2

[3]                 The respondent has provided the Court with copies of five warrants to detain the applicant dated 19 April 2024 issued by Judge NR Webby in the Manukau District Court. The warrants to detain record the hearing of the applicant’s active charges have been adjourned to Auckland District Court on 23 April 2024, Manukau District Court on 8 May 2024, 5 June 2024 and 13 June 2024. They direct the manager of Mount Eden Corrections Facility to receive the applicant and detain him for the period of the adjournments.

[4]                 The warrants are associated with the applicant’s remand in custody on a range of charges. These include serious charges such as aggravated assault with a weapon, kidnapping, threatening to kill, offences under the passport act and personating police. Without intending to be exhaustive, there are also charges for breaching release conditions.

[5]                 On enquiry of Ms Reid for the respondent, I was advised that at call-over today in the Auckland District Court a further warrant was issued to expire at a jury trial on 10 July 2025 in respect to the charges to which the 23 April warrant relates. That document was not yet available, but in any event the last of the remaining warrants that I have sighted expire on 13 June 2024.

1      Habeas Corpus Act 2001, s 6

2      Habeas Corpus Act, s 14(1).

[6]                 Once a prison superintendent or other official produces a committal warrant or other authorisation, the applicant for a writ of habeas corpus must show why the warrants are not a sufficient answer to his application.3

[7]                 The applicant challenges the jurisdiction of the Court over him on the basis that government agents of New Zealand have no jurisdiction or sovereignty over him. He says he is being held against his will, and that a “warrant to detain” is not sufficient enough to detain “the Sovereign and Man George”. In his oral argument he also says that under the Contract and Commercial Law Act 2017 his charging documents ought to have been signed and he says his birth certificate is a fiction of law.

[8]                 Nothing in the applicant’s written or oral material provides any legitimate challenge to the warrants under which he is detained.4

(a)The Courts have consistently held that arguments based on the concept of the “sovereign citizen” have no legal basis and cannot succeed. 5 All persons in New Zealand are subject to the laws made by New Zealand Parliament and to the authority of the courts in enforcing those laws; and

(b)To the extent that the applicant challenges the legality of his detention because his charging documents are not signed, rule 2.2 of the Criminal Procedure Rules 2012 requires that the authentication of documents can be by signing and dating the document, or in the case of any document in an electronic form, by any electronic means that adequately identifies the person and the date of authentication. The applicant’s charging documents, filed electronically, contain particulars identifying the officer who laid the charge, and a date on which each charging document was filed. They are suitably authenticated.

3      Bennett v Superintendent, Rimutaka Prison (No 2) [2002] 1 NZLR 616 (CA) at [70] .

4      Warren v Department of Corrections [[2017] NZSC 20; Warahi v Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections [2022] NZCA 105 at [10]-[11]

5      See for example Warahi v Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections [2022] NZCA 105 at [10]-[11]; Warren v Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections [2017] NZSC 20; Rangitaawa v Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections [2013] NZCA 2 at [5]; Martin v Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections [2016] NZHC 2811 at [20]; Wallace v Chief Executive of the Department of Corrections [2017] NZSC 1 at [4]-[5].

(c)In any case, the writ of habeas corpus, as its name suggests, is directed to the “corpus” that is the individual or person concerned, and it is not an order appropriately made in relation to possibly technical omissions in a charging document.

(d)I do not have a copy of the applicant’s birth certificate but it is irrelevant to the present application.

[9]I refuse the application for issue of a writ of habeas corpus.

Anderson J