In the case of United States v. McQuarry, in the District of Minnesota, the trial court ordered a psychiatric evaluation of the defendant, finding that "even by tax-protester standards, McQuarry's arguments have been strange and seem to have become stranger." The opinion is worth reading in its entirety, but Prof. Townsend highlights this gem:
There's much more crunchy goodness in the opinion, which you can read here:For example, at a hearing on the morning of January 21, 2014, McQuarry displayed great emotion — indeed, started weeping — in frustration over the prosecutor's unwillingness to accept her offers to "settle" this case. These "settlement" offers appear to consist of McQuarry purporting to give the government permission to take money that does not really exist out of a trust account that does not really exist. Rather than take the advice of a respected and experienced defense attorney, McQuarry seems to troll the fever swamps of the Internet and to regard what she reads there not merely as presenting possible loopholes that she can exploit, but as presenting the Gospel truth — even in the absence of any evidence that these arguments have ever been accepted by a court or resulted in the acquittal of a defendant.
McQuarry's comments at the January 21 hearing — and, more importantly, her many pro se filings — cause the Court to question whether she understands the nature of the proceedings against her. The Court has explained on multiple occasions that this is a criminal case, in which the government is accusing McQuarry of violating a criminal statute. Yet no matter how many times this is explained to McQuarry, she persists in treating this case as a private dispute over an alleged debt — a dispute that could be "settled" if the government would just take the make-believe money out of the make-believe trust account. And, indeed, someone reading McQuarry's papers — with their repeated invocations of the ancient maxims of equity and citations to archaic sources — might think that this case was being tried in 1814 in the Court of Chancery.
McQuarry's demeanor before the Court has also become more erratic. As the Court has noted, McQuarry became highly emotional at the January 21 hearing, repeatedly interrupting the Court and weeping with frustration about the government's refusal to accept her offers to "settle." McQuarry has not before acted so emotionally during a hearing, but the government has informed the Court that McQuarry filed papers with the United States Supreme Court in which she threatened to commit suicide if she did not receive the relief she sought. Similarly, at the January 21 hearing, when the Court told McQuarry that it may have to order her detained because she rescinded her signatures on her appearance bond and on the order setting the conditions of her release [see ECF No. 144], McQuarry told the Court that it might as well "kill" her. These kind of statements are not typically made by competent litigants.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0SLTNW ... edit?pli=1