Judge denies pot dealer’s release

A Yorkton Court of Queen’s Bench justice has dismissed an application by a convicted cannabis grower to be released from prison.

In January, Patrick Koskie, a Yorkton provincial court judge, sentenced Luc Bernard d’Abadie to 18 months in prison. D’Abadie was originally arrested in 2010 trying to enter the United States at a Manitoba border crossing with a small amount of marijuana, which led to the discovery of a large grow-op in a commercial building in Broadview, Saskatchewan.

After pleading guilty to possession of marijuana for the purposes of trafficking in 2012, d’Abadie disappeared until RCMP in Alberta picked him up in late 2015 on unrelated charges. The Saskatchewan Crown had him returned to face his Saskatchewan charges. During proceedings here, D’Abadie refused to recognize the authority of the court.

Following his committal to prison, d’Abadie submitted a “Notice” to the clerk of the court that contained an accusation Koskie had “obstructed justice by denying the common law – in direct contradiction to his duty.”

Attached to the “Notice” was a “Claim” accusing both Koskie and prosecutor Shane Wagner of trespassing upon d’Abadie’s property “by way of extortion” and demanding compensation of $384,000.

What followed was a series of correspondence between d’Abadie and the court and later between another individual identifying himself as “a man, Adam” and “the next friend of Luc” and the court that culminated with a habeas corpus application.

Habeas corpus is a legal recourse against unlawful confinement. A person has the right to appear before the court to argue illegal incarceration.

Adam—whom the Court identified as Adam Gauthier—filed the habeas corpus application with the Court of Queen’s Bench and appeared before Regina Justice J.D. Kalmakoff on March 7 via telephone.

He outlined d’Abadie’s position that, according to common law, d’Abadie had not committed a crime because no man or woman had made a claim against him. In essence, the argument is that statutory law, i.e., the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, does not apply because d’Abadie had not entered into an explicit contract with the Crown to be governed by statutory law, therefore his conviction and subsequent confinement was unlawful.

“[D’Abadie] has made it clear he is a man who does not wish to hold a title and currently does not,” Gauthier explained in a brief of law. “He stands in his inherent jurisdiction at all times and was acting in a private capacity at the time of the alleged offence. As such he does not fall under the authority of the Charter or its subsequent enactments which it governs.”

Kalmakoff granted a hearing adjourning the application to March 14 and directing Gauthier to serve notice on the Crown and Provincial Correctional Centre where d’Abadie is incarcerated. The judge did not give d’Abadie leave to press his claim against Koskie and Wagner. He also advised Gauthier the “appropriate route to address concerns over validity of a plea and sentence maybe [sic] by way of appeal of conviction and sentence rather than habeas corpus.”

Justice Donald Layh presided over the March 14 hearing with Gauthier appearing by telephone for d’Abadie and Wagner appearing for the Crown in person at Court of Queen’s Bench in Yorkton.

In a written decision released last week, Layh said he had both procedural and substantive problems with the application.

Setting aside the procedural issues, Layh called the application “substantively meritless.” He said the application relied on “misguided interpretations of certain supposed legal principles.”

The judge referenced the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench decision in Meads v. Meads in which Dennis Meads of Edmonton, Alberta attempted to get out of obligations related to his divorce case by advancing similar pseudolegal arguments to those that have characterized the d’Abadie case since it returned to Saskatchewan.

In the Meads case, Associate Chief Justice John D. Rooke set out to produce a definitive judgment intended to “uncover, expose, collate, and publish the tactics employed by the OPCA (Organized Pseudolegal Commercial Argument litigants) community as part of a process to eradicate the growing abuse these litigants direct towards the justice and legal system.”

Rooke identified these litigants as “Detaxers; Freemen or Freemen on the Land; Sovereign Men or Sovereign Citizens; Church of the Ecumenical Redemption International; Moorish Law; and other labels…” and was scathing in his assessment.

“The bluntly idiotic substance of Mr. Mead’s argument explains the unnecessarily complicated manner in which it was presented,” Rooke wrote in his 185-page comprehensive decision. “OPCA arguments are never sold to their customers as simple ideas, but instead are byzantine schemes which more closely resemble the plot of a dark fantasy novel than anything else.”

Wagner’s only contribution to the March 14 proceeding was to produce a copy of the d’Abadie’s warrant of committal to custody and submitting case law in R. v. Sands, in which the Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench denied a habeas corpus application under similar circumstances.

“Just as Justice Konkin found in Sands, I, too, find that Mr. D’Abadie is subject to a valid and existing exercise of judicial authority,” Layh wrote. “In this application a warrant of committal has been entered and no appeal has been taken. The application for habeas corpus is without merit. It is dismissed.”