2022 IL App (2d) 210077-U
No. 2-21-0077
Order filed July 26, 2022
NOTICE: This order was filed under Supreme Court Rule 23(b) and is not precedent
except in the limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1).
______________________________________________________________________________
IN THE
APPELLATE COURT OF ILLINOIS
SECOND DISTRICT
______________________________________________________________________________
THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE ) Appeal from the Circuit Court
OF ILLINOIS, ) of Winnebago County.
)
Plaintiff-Appellee, )
)
v. ) Nos. 13-CF-1228
) 13-CF-1229
)
CORTEZ JERMAIN BROWN, ) Honorable
) Joseph G. McGraw,
Defendant-Appellant. ) Judge, Presiding.
______________________________________________________________________________
PRESIDING JUSTICE BRIDGES delivered the judgment of the court.
Justices Hudson and Birkett concurred in the judgment.
ORDER
¶1 Held: Where defendant’s postconviction petition was 166 pages long with a 343-page
appendix, yet the greater share of the petition espoused meritless legal theories, we
cannot say that the trial court could not have adequately considered the entire
petition in the two days between its filing and the trial court’s summary dismissal.
¶2 Defendant, Cortez Jermain Brown, appeals from the first-stage summary dismissal of his
postconviction petition brought under the Post-Conviction Hearing Act (Act) (725 ILCS 5/122-1
et seq. (West 2020)). The petition, which was 166 pages long and had 323 pages of attachments,
was file-stamped on January 19, 2021, and dismissed two days later on January 21, 2021. In its
2022 IL App (2d) 210077-U
dismissal order, the trial court stated only that it found the petition to be frivolous and patently
without merit. On appeal, defendant does not argue that any of his claims were meritorious. Rather,
he contends that the trial court’s dismissal of his voluminous petition just two days after its filing,
in an order giving no specific reasons for the dismissal, rebuts the presumption that the court
properly considered the petition. Defendant implicitly asks us to apply a standard under which the
time necessary to review a petition is directly related to the sheer length of the petition. We
conclude that such a standard would be inappropriate. We also disagree with defendant that the
court’s dismissal of the petition two days after its filing was by itself enough to show that the court
did not consider it properly. Further, under People v. Porter, 122 Ill. 2d 64 (1988), the court’s
failure to include in the dismissal order its reasons for deeming the claims frivolous is not a basis
for reversal. Therefore, we affirm.
¶3 I. BACKGROUND
¶4 In November 2016, defendant entered negotiated guilty pleas to various offenses in case
Nos. 13-CF-1228 and 13-CF-1129. In exchange for the pleas, the State agreed to an aggregate
sentencing cap of 50 years’ imprisonment in the two cases. In February 2017, the court sentenced
defendant to an aggregate 42 years’ imprisonment in the two cases. The court denied defendant’s
motion for reconsideration of the sentence. Defendant did not file a direct appeal.
¶5 Between September 2017 and February 2018, defendant filed three petitions for relief
under section 2-1401 of the Code of Civil Procedure (Code) (735 ILCS 5/2-1401 (West 2016)). In
all three petitions, he claimed that his convictions were void because the legislature violated the
single-subject rule when it amended the applicable criminal provisions. The State responded to
each petition with a motion to dismiss or quash service. Defendant did not respond to these
motions, and the court dismissed all three petitions.
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2022 IL App (2d) 210077-U
¶6 Later, defendant filed his postconviction petition, which the trial court file-stamped on
January 19, 2021. In the 166-page petition, defendant asserted eight claims.
¶7 The first claim, spanning 58 pages, was essentially that the trial court lacked personal
jurisdiction over defendant because, since the dissolution of the original United States, courts have
had jurisdiction over corporate persons only. Such a claim is of the type associated with “Sovereign
Citizens” and similar groups. See Francis X. Sullivan, Comment, The ‘Usurping Octopus of
Jurisdictional/Authority’: The Legal Theories of the Sovereign Citizen Movement, 1999 Wis. L.
Rev. 785, 795-96 (1999) (The “Usurping Octopus”) (explaining the characteristics of such
claims).
¶8 The second, third, and fourth claims likewise advanced unconventional legal theories, but
these were not strictly Sovereign Citizen theories.
¶9 The second claim (48 pages) advanced a theory that a criminal conviction based on a charge
citing the Illinois Compiled Statues is void because that compilation does include the enacting
clauses required by the Illinois Constitution of 1970. The third claim (29 pages) was based on a
theory that the statutory provisions conferring the prosecutorial powers of State’s Attorneys are
not in accord with the Illinois Constitution of 1970 and, thus, all criminal convictions obtained by
State’s Attorneys are void. The fourth claim (4 pages) was based on a theory that all felony
convictions in cases over which associate judges presided are void.
¶ 10 The fifth through eighth claims (16 pages collectively) asserted more conventional legal
positions. The fifth claim implied that, in case No. 13-CF-1228, defendant’s convictions of
attempted murder (720 ILCS 5/8-4(a), (c)(1)(B) (West 2012)) and aggravated unlawful restraint
(720 ILCS 5/10-3.1(a) (West 2012)) violated the one-act, one-crime rule, despite involving
separate victims, because the offenses were part of the same course of conduct. Claims six through
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2022 IL App (2d) 210077-U
eight were based on the principles of Alleyne v. United States, 570 U.S. 99 (2013), and Apprendi
v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000). Both the sixth and seventh claims made the same basic
assertion that the trial court unconstitutionally limited defendant’s good time credit based on its
finding at sentencing that defendant inflicted great bodily harm (see 730 ILCS 5/3-6-3(a)(2)(iii)
(West 2016)). The eighth claim was that the trial court’s finding of severe bodily injury as a
predicate for consecutive sentencing (see 730 ILCS 5/5-8-4(d)(1) (West 2016)) was
unconstitutional because the charging instrument did not allege severe bodily injury.
¶ 11 The petition had a 323-page appendix. The first page listed 62 “exhibits.” These identified
exhibits were documents from the record in case No. 13-CF-1228, Illinois statutory and
constitutional provisions, and transcripts from 1970 Illinois Constitutional Convention. Following
the identified exhibits were 71 pages of material obviously inspired by the Sovereign Citizen
movement or related ideologies. The initial page of these 71 pages was captioned:
“[Public Notice]
EXPLICIT RESERVATION OF RIGHTS FOR:
:Cortez-Jermaine: of the House of :Brown” (Brackets in original.)
The 71-page tome largely defied summarization. The material included copies of the written oaths
of office of various officials and an “Asservation of Sovereign Status by Foreign Neutral under
the Absolute Laws of the Living Father.”
¶ 12 On January 21, 2021—two days after the petition was file-stamped—the court addressed
the petition on the record:
“THE COURT: All right.
The defendant has caused to be filed a first stage post conviction [sic] petition.
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2022 IL App (2d) 210077-U
The Court has reviewed the first stage post-conviction petition advised [sic] to be
patently frivolous. It not [sic] state the gist of a constitutional claim; therefore, it is
dismissed.
Please prepare an order.”
The court entered an order the same day. In full, it stated: “The Court finds the defendant’s
[p]etition is [p]atently frivolous & without merit & does not [s]tate the gist of a [c]onstitutional
[c]laim.”
¶ 13 Defendant filed a timely notice of appeal.
¶ 14 II. ANALYSIS
¶ 15 On appeal, defendant contends that the trial court erred in dismissing his petition. He does
not claim that the petition raised any issue of merit. Rather, he argues that the dismissal of his 489-
page petition (inclusive of exhibits) just two days after it was filed-stamped, in an order that did
not refer to the petition’s contents, rebuts the presumption that the court properly considered the
petition.
¶ 16 The State responds that defendant “has failed to rebut the presumption that the post-
conviction judge properly examined the contents of the petition prior to dismissing it.” The State
deems defendant’s argument simply “speculative” because he points to nothing in the record to
impugn the trial court’s assertion in open court that it reviewed the petition. The State suggests
that “[i]f defendant is unable to articulate even one potentially meritorious issue in the petition, a
two-day period of time was certainly sufficient for the post-conviction judge to arrive at the same
conclusion.” It further argues that, under Porter and its progeny, the court’s failure to provide
reasons in its dismissal order for deeming the claims frivolous is not a basis for reversal.
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2022 IL App (2d) 210077-U
¶ 17 In reply, defendant contends that the court’s “fail[ure] to adequately review the petition
*** [is] evidenced by [its] failure to reference any portion of the nearly 500-page document in
either [its] oral ruling or written pronouncement of dismissal.” He contends that “[t]he brevity” of
the court’s dismissal “would have been a more appropriate response to a petition that was only a
few pages long *** [and] that could be reviewed quickly, not one that has detailed arguments and
documentation amassing nearly 500 pages.”
¶ 18 By asking us to conclude that the court had insufficient time to adequately consider the
petition given its length, defendant implies that there is a direct correlation between the length of
a petition and the time needed to review it. We disagree. Defendant’s first claim perfectly
illustrates why we cannot assume a direct relationship between the mere length of a petition and
the time needed to review it.
¶ 19 In his petition, defendant summarizes his first claim as follows: 1
“Petitioner affirms that jurisdiction over his person/venue has been lacking since
the filing of the complaint(s), information(s), indictment(s), or warrant(s) (ab initio).
Petitioner avers that it cannot be assumed or presumed, by the courts or the State of Illinois
that he is a 14th amendment (corporate) citizen, in which government(s) can seize
jurisdiction over his persona as if he was a fictional dummy corporation (artificial
person/entity) with his ‘name’ spelled in (idem sonans) all capital letters; and, because of
these facts, his conviction, judgement [sic], and incarceration under same is… not only
illegal, but void ab initio for issues of falsification of the record, failure to provide ‘full
disclosure’, and fraud by, through, and under (corporate) State of Illinois ‘privately’ owned
1
We have reformatted this passage without making any substantive changes.
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2022 IL App (2d) 210077-U
‘statutes’ as intellectual property and, where petitioner is not an ‘accommodation party’
nor ‘surety’ for said all capital letter ‘name’, jurisdiction/venue has been lacking, ab initio.”
(Emphases in original.)
¶ 20 Defendant’s summary makes clear that this claim is based on the patently false legal
theories of the “Sovereign Citizen” movement and related groups.
“At the heart of Sovereign Citizen legal theory is the belief that the government has
created two forms of citizenship: sovereign (or de jure) citizenship and federal (or
Fourteenth Amendment) citizenship. Sovereign Citizens are state citizens. Their
‘inalienable natural rights are recognized, secured, and protected by [the] state Constitution
against State actions and against federal intrusion by the Constitution for the United States
of America.’ Terminology is important: A ‘state is not the State of Wisconsin, which
Sovereign Citizens argue is a ‘fictional federal “State within a state;” ’ Sovereign Citizen
‘states’ have identical borders, but they exist independently of the federal government and
draw their sovereignty directly from their citizens. Sovereign Citizens are United States
citizens only in the sense originally intended by the Constitution, which is that the citizen
of one state is to be considered and treated as a citizen of every other state.
In contrast to Sovereign Citizenship, federal citizenship is much more limited.
Federal citizenship was created by the Fourteenth Amendment, which, according to the
Sovereign Citizens, created ‘a citizenship of the United States as distinct from that of the
states.’ Fourteenth Amendment citizenship is not based on race; rather, it is a class of
persons who are ‘enfranchised to the federal government.’ This class includes all federal
employees and residents of the District of Columbia, Guam, and other areas of the United
States that have not attained statehood. More importantly, it includes those who have
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renounced their birthright of sovereign citizenship by entering into contracts with the
government, receiving benefits from it, and thereby becoming subject to its jurisdiction.
Because federal citizens have negotiated away *** their sovereign rights, the
federal government can regulate and tax the privileges they receive, such as the privilege
of driving or the privilege of owning property. Federal citizens are not protected by the Bill
of Rights, although the Fourteenth Amendment itself grants them certain privileges and
immunities ***. Currently, federal citizens possess many of the same civil rights as
Sovereign Citizens because Congress has granted them, but Congress can rescind them at
any time.” Francis X. Sullivan, The “Usurping Octopus”, 1999 Wis. L. Rev. at 797-98
(1999).
¶ 21 Defendant’s assertion that he cannot be treated as “a 14th amendment (corporate) citizen”
clearly indicates that his first claim is based on Sovereign Citizen legal theory or a close relative.
Intuitively, these theories are completely inconsistent with the realities of federal and state law.
Indeed, they are so far removed from ordinary legal argument that courts may struggle to articulate
the theories’ flaws in normal legal terms. We will not attempt to do so, nor would we expect the
trial court to do so. Secondary sources, such as Caesar Kalinowski IV, A Legal Response to the
Sovereign Citizen Movement, 80 Mont. L. Rev. 153, 171-92 (2019), take on that task.
¶ 22 Filings based on Sovereign Citizen legal theory are typically marked by exceptional length
and quantity of citations; they thus tax the resources of courts:
“Sovereign Citizens *** present a serious problem for overburdened courts
responsible for giving a fair hearing to all claimants. *** Sovereign Citizen legal theorists
appear to have studied the law in great detail. *** Pleadings filed in Sovereign Citizen
litigation cite a staggering range of case law: A downloadable Sovereign Citizen brief
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addressing the right to drive without a state-issued driver’s license takes up thirty-four
printed pages and cites eighty cases as well as the Yale Law Journal, Blackstone's
Commentaries, and the Corpus Juris Secundum. The author of the on-line Dixieland Law
Journal, a Sovereign Citizen adherent, exhaustively analyzes the history of Norman and
pre-Conquest England to refute the proposition that Sovereign Citizens must present their
names in a certain format to retain personal sovereignty. Analyses of other issues are
similarly detailed, even if the writing is ungrammatical, the style overexcited, and the logic
presented in a confusingly non-linear pattern.
The resulting pleadings are dense, complex, and virtually unreadable.” Francis X.
Sullivan, The “Usurping Octopus”, 1999 Wis. L. Rev. at 795-96.
As The “Usurping Octopus” indicates, there are multiple sources of model arguments for litigants
to use in pressing Sovereign Citizen claims. Thus, such claims often have a close resemblance to
one another.
¶ 23 What we have explained so far establishes that, despite their length, such claims as
defendant’s first claim are quickly recognizable as part of a family of claims sharing a meritless
legal theory. The time it takes to assess such claims bears no direct relationship to their length, the
number of citations, or the degree of detail in the argument.
¶ 24 Further, although claims based on Sovereign Citizen theories are perhaps the most familiar,
there may be other theories with similar features. An example is defendant’s second claim, which
asserts the invalidity of the Illinois Compiled Statutes. The first and second claims comprise the
great majority of the petition. We decline to say how many minutes or hours it should have taken
the court to review those claims. Thus, we cannot conclude that the trial court did not adequately
consider the petition before dismissing it.
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¶ 25 Notably, defendant does not—and, really, cannot—claim that the trial court could not have
reviewed the petition at all, but only that it could not have reviewed all claims in sufficient depth.
Provided that some review was possible, we deem it inappropriate to decide what amount of time
would be necessary for a sufficiently complete review. Any such attempt on our part would
unreasonably limit the flexibility of trial courts in dealing with lengthy but clearly nonmeritorious
claims.
¶ 26 For these reasons, we decline to infer from the timing of the dismissal that the court
inadequately considered defendant’s postconviction claims.
¶ 27 We turn to defendant’s argument that we must reverse the dismissal because the court did
not specify the basis for dismissal as the Act requires. Whether the court complied with applicable
procedural requirements is a question of law that we review de novo. See, e.g., People v. Space,
2018 IL App (1st) 150922, ¶ 62 (whether a court complied with rules governing voir dire was a
question of law and reviewed de novo). The court’s failure to explain its ruling is not a basis for
reversal.
¶ 28 Section 122-2.1(a)(2) (725 ILCS 5/122-2.1(a)(2) (West 2020)) of the Act provides that,
when a court determines that a petition is frivolous or patently without merit, the court “shall
dismiss the petition in a written order, specifying the findings of fact and conclusions of law it
made in reaching its decision.” But that provision is merely directory (Porter, 122 Ill. 2d at 81-
82):
“[I]f the petition is found to be frivolous and patently without merit, the court shall dismiss
the petition. *** It is not mandatory, however, that the order dismissing the petition be
written, or that it specify findings of fact and conclusions of law.” (Emphasis in original.)
Porter, 122 Ill. 2d at 84.
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Indeed, if section 122-2.1(a)(2) were read as a legislative mandate for a written order containing
findings of fact and conclusions of law, that mandate would violate the separation-of-powers
doctrine. Porter, 122 Ill. 2d at 82. (Although Porter is decades old, the supreme court has never
abrogated that decision (see People v. Robinson, 217 Ill. 2d 43, 55 (2005) (citing Porter with
approval)) and the appellate court continues to apply Porter. See, e.g., People v. Cooper, 2015 IL
App (1st) 132971, ¶ 9-10.) Given the rule in Porter, the absence of findings of fact and conclusions
of law in the dismissal order cannot by itself be a basis for reversal.
¶ 29 We recognize that, although Porter regarded section 122-2.1(a)(2)’s specificity
requirement as directory, not mandatory, the court deemed it “advisable that the trial court state its
reasons for dismissal.” Porter, 122 Ill. 2d at 81. Cooper—on which defendant relies—noted that
a dismissal order lacking specific reasons can make it more difficult for a petitioner to know what
issues he or she should raise on review. Cooper, 2015 IL App (1st) 132971, ¶ 10. Nevertheless,
here we do not see how the lack of specificity impeded defendant’s ability to assert on appeal that
the trial court erred in ruling that all his claims lacked merit. “It is a fundamental principle of
appellate law that when an appeal is taken from a judgment of a lower court, ‘[t]he question before
[the] reviewing court is the correctness of the result reached by the lower court and not the
correctness of the reasoning upon which that result was reached.’ ” People v. Johnson, 208 Ill. 2d
118, 128 (2003) (quoting People v. Novak, 163 Ill. 2d 93, 101 (1994)). This is particularly true
here, where we apply the de novo standard of review for summary dismissals. See People v. Niffen,
2018 IL App (4th) 150881, ¶ 20. Defendant had the assistance of appellate counsel. Appellate
counsel presumably reviewed all of defendant’s claims; if counsel deemed that any were of
arguable merit, counsel could have so argued.
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2022 IL App (2d) 210077-U
¶ 30 In his reply brief, defendant argues that even if the dismissal order’s lack of specific reasons
does not by itself require that we reverse the dismissal, the timing of the dismissal combined with
the lack of specific reasons, or indeed any mention of the petition’s contents, indicates that the trial
court did not adequately review the petition. We disagree. A reviewing court presumes that the
trial court “knows and follows the law unless the record demonstrates otherwise.” People v. Blair,
215 Ill. 2d 427, 449, (2005). Since the trial court stated that it reviewed the petition and the record
does not rebut that statement, we must accept it.
¶ 31 III. CONCLUSION
¶ 32 For the reasons stated, we affirm the judgment of the circuit court of Winnebago County.
¶ 33 Affirmed.
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