Tangapiri Teikamata was charged in 2018 with indecent assault with an offense that occured in 2015. He had four previous convictions for indecently assaulting two others back to 1998. He plead guilty but changed his mind.
He was trying out the sovereign citizen defense. “Teikamata had also filed a document claiming he was no longer called Tangapiri Teikamata, and that he was an “independent or sovereign person.”
The judge noted that his arguments were “untenable and without legal authority.”
Story here.