DOJ deems Dallas dentist demented

[Demosthenes]

Dallas tax protester needs a mental exam, prosecutors say

6:02 PM Thu, Aug 28, 2008
Jason Trahan

Dallas dentist Dr. Wesley Bowden and the authorities who prosecuted him last month for dodging a massive tax bill have at least one thing in common: both think the other side is crazy.

Federal prosecutor Katherine Miller wrote U.S. District Judge David Godbey on Aug. 15 that Dr. Bowden may be "suffering from a mental disease or defect" leaving him unable to understand his legal situation.

Since his conviction in late July for waving off $327,000 in income taxes over a 16-year period, the tooth doc apparently has been freaking out the guards at the Seagoville federal prison, where he awaits his Oct. 20 sentencing.

"In particular, prison officials have observed the defendants failure to dress appropriately," Miller wrote to the judge. Sadly, she did not elaborate. Dr. Bowden also has "periods of incoherence," she said.

In sum, prison officials tell the U.S. Attorney's office, the doctor's "mental condition has seriously deteriorated."

Three days after Miller filed her request, Judge Godbey authorized a mental exam.

Meanwhile, Dr. Bowden, who represented himself at trial, has launched a dead-tree jihad against court officials, protesting his conviction.

He's filed nearly 70 pages of motions, all basically arguing that the U.S. government ("a fictitious foreign state," he writes) has no claim over him because Texas is its own nation. Besides, paying taxes isn't required by law, he argues.

He marvels that the "lazy" jury took less than two hours to convict him, when it's taken him 15 years to "to finally decipher the codes, regulations, and rules for learning the truth."

"They should have been in the jury room for months trying to determine how many different ways the prosecution was lying to them or how much magik to which they had been subjected," he writes.

A motion he filed on Monday begins: "Comes now, Wesley David Bowden... a non-corporate, natural born, living breathing being, a flesh and blood man, born alive, on the soil, in the third dimension and beyond the sea..."

Two weeks after his conviction, his wife wrote a magistrate judge informing him that she had "found" the "papers relating to the land in Tennessee" that she says her and her husband own that they can post as collateral for a bond to free the doctor while he awaits sentencing. Its worth? "At least a million dollars," she writes.

She said that it's absurd to think her husband is a flight risk. She says they're both digging in for a "5 or 6 year campaign," i.e., the appeal, which she says "will probably require ... the brilliant minds of the justices of the Supreme Court" to decipher.

[Famspear]

He's filed nearly 70 pages of motions, all basically arguing that the U.S. government ("a fictitious foreign state," he writes) has no claim over him because Texas is its own nation. Besides, paying taxes isn't required by law, he argues.

Well, we do have a saying down here that Texas "is like a whole 'nother country." But it sounds like this guy is on a whole 'nother planet.

[RyanMcC]

Meanwhile, Dr. Bowden, who represented himself at trial, has launched a dead-tree jihad against court officials, protesting his conviction.

New term for the tax protester dictionary.

[Dr. Caligari]

a non-corporate, natural born, living breathing being, a flesh and blood man, born alive, on the soil, in the third dimension and beyond the sea.

Oy vey!

[grixit]

Somewhere
Beyond the sea
Somewhere
Waiting for me
My strawman stands
In Satan's hands
But i've got the writs
That will free us!