“And when we came to Rome, the centurion delivered the prisoners to the captain of the guard: but Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with a soldier that kept him.”

–Acts 28:16 (KJV)

24 CRS 927 | 24 CRS 238680 | 24 CRS 262474

STATE of NORTH CAROLINA
COUNTY of NEW HANOVER

in the GENERAL COURT of JUSTICE  | SUPERIOR COURT DIVISION

STATE of NORTH CAROLINA
[ plaintiff ]

v.

WILLIAM DAWSON GAGE
defendant

 PETITION
for WRIT of
HABEAS CORPUS
and INQUIRY
into RESTRAINT
on LIBERTY

---

In the above-captioned matter(s) in the jurisdiction here named, defendant William Dawson Gage, pro se, in his own voice and person as author of this application, does hereby petition this court for the writ of habeas corpus and inquiry into restraint on liberty, pursuant to Article I, Sec. 21 of the Constitution of North Carolina and Chapter 17 of the NC General Statutes.
In support of this petition, wherein defendant challenges the imposition of “house arrest” (empowered by the regime of so-called “electronic monitoring”) by the State of North Carolina as unlawful, unconstitutional, and intolerable to civilized people, defendant Mr. Gage contends as follows:

PART A: GENERAL RECITATION of the ARGUMENT

1) That the North Carolina General Assembly does not have the authority to enact and provide for the “punishment of the innocent”.

2) That the closely-related (if they are separate at all) practices of so-called “house arrest” and “electronic monitoring”, which are the subject of this petition and disputation, are unlawful in all cases whatsoever, which is to say “unconstitutional”.

3) That the distinction between the “facial” and “as-applied” modes of constitutional challenge is difficult to maintain with respect to “house arrest with electronic monitoring”, since in practice the “GPS ankle monitor regime” operates as an integrated system or machine which is operated by one or more organs of the North Carolina police state. The unspoken presumption in this distinction between “as-applied” and “on its face” is that when the constitution has (apparently) been
transgressed in “just one case”, this not only affects the “interpretation” of the statute by the judicial branch, but its enforcement by officers of the executive, since both are supposed to adjust their practices to comply with the dictates of the latest jurisprudence. But in practice this zone of coordination between executive and judicial powers is precisely the site or origin of unconstitutional practices, since violations of rights emerge in this space of impunity and hidden wrong that is created when the executive and judicial have been integrated both in form and substance. Such it is with the “GPS ankle monitor regime”, which is only made possible because of the mighty apparatus of oppression and control which is the integrated “criminal justice system”. This is to say that because the challenges (multiple “separate” as-applied challenges) all pertain to the self-same integrated police state, and because thetruth of this infernal machine is too complicated and (deliberately) obscure to function as evidence in the Courts, it is exceedingly difficult to contemplate an as-applied challenge to the “GPS ankle monitor regime”. This is because its acolytes are consciously waging war on the body politic, and will treat even “as-applied challenges” as threats to the underlying regime, which they would probably not dismantle even if the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of a “successful facial challenge”. The separation of powers does not consist in mere “apportionment of
authority” within the structure of the government, but is rather a guarantee that the State will not be empowered (or not forever) with prerogatives which tend against the rights of the people as enumerated in the Declaration of Rights. To repeat this necessary lesson: “facial” and “as-applied” challenges are both affronts to the system which invents unconstitutional practices in the first place, and the State that begot these practices guards them ruthlessly, precisely in opposition to the spirit of constitutional law, and does not permit the system to reform in response to successful “as-applied challenges”.

4) That the “facial constitutional challenge” has been, in recent years, effectively hijacked and subverted through the cunning operations of State government.

5) That governmental measures which employ surveillance or coercive force by “law enforcement” may not be disguised as mere “administrative practices”, and that the proper application of the term “law enforcement” is limited to the valid criminal enactments which pass muster under the existing constitution.

6) That the conduct of “law enforcement operations” for statutory criminal offenses must nevertheless conform with principles of constitutional law, and the serious question of “unconstitutional criminal laws” is necessarily of the deepest significance at all levels of government policy and for the interests of civil society (such as they are.)

7) That the rightful monopoly on the use of violence by the State of North Carolina within its jurisdiction, otherwise known as the police power, inclusive of all means by which persons are arrested, detained, and made to submit to and obey the dictates of the Courts and/or their armed “enforcers”, is limited by the state constitution.

8) That if a certain practice by employees of the State looks like a punishment (to members of the public) feels like a punishment (to those who are subject to the measure, or are secondarily injured or oppressed by it) and is readily confused with punishment (by the officials who oversee and effect it) then there is no longer any such thing as punishment, and the distinction between citizens and criminals has been effaced.

9) That the “presumption of innocence” is a basic tenet of United States and North Carolina constitutional law as well as the immemorial common law of England, and that protection from arbitrary arrest and detention is one of the main ends and features of our rightful “form of government” under this constitution.

10) That furthermore the presumption of innocence has been established and recognized in the canons1 of international law.

11) That the use of “house arrest” as a punishment for offenses of a political or religious nature, and as a convenient means for those in power to control and constrain their enemies (2) has been a characteristic feature of tyrannies for approximately 2000 years.

12) That the distinction between the “facial” and “as-applied” standard involves fundamental problems in our legal institutions as well as unusual conundrums of philosophy and moral reasoning.

13) That the phrase “electronic monitoring” is given a statutory definition3 of sorts in NCGS 15A-101.1(3a)4, but that this attempt to ground the “GPS ankle monitor regime” in lawful legislative authority not only fails as a matter of law, but illustrates just how far we have fallen in terms of “politics and the English language” in 2024.

14) That the severely restrictive, invasive, degrading, and confounding properties of “house arrest with electronic monitoring” have nevertheless become so ingrained and fortified in our contemporary system that there is no possibility that the State will reform, and that therefore the only remedy at hand in these cases lies in the canons of international law.

15) That any change in the technology5 used in the implementation of a statute by the State of North Carolina can drastically alter the true character of its governmental programs, and thus completely untether the State from any legitimate basis in the
legislative power. Thus from year to year (or even month to month and decade to decade) do the self-same statutes purport to provide for technological systems which are constantly changing, in fact expanding and intensifying, growing in scale and scope, and thus the rift between enactment and reality is torn ever-larger. Thus do such technologically-centric6 or technophilic modes of legislation inevitably offend against constitutional law, because the “system” has a logic and a power which bears no relation to the words of the legislator, and in fact cannot be easily described in the English language at all.

16) That enactments of the General Assembly which pertain to this controversy do not properly provide for the gigantic technological and bureaucratic machine which is the “Pretrial Release Coordinator”, but that the “pertinent statutes” are meant only to provide a patina of lawfulness to already-established features of the post- constitutional regime. Thus does the General Assembly not exert its authority in this matter, but abnegate this authority through enactments whose language tends unto
soulless administrative diction, contains grammatical and syntactic defects, and collapses into the nested void of undefinable terms which eventually mean only that “the State may do as it will”. While it is conceivable that this “sinister vagueness”
could be remedied by amendment, thus bringing the “ankle monitor” into constitutional compliance—(this assuming minor changes were possible)—the legislative history8 of recent years shows that the General Assembly does not pay heed to the sound jurisprudence (an uncommon but real phenomenon) of the Courts of North Carolina—designated by Article I, Sec. 6 as the “supreme” branch of governmental power, in that it has priority in moments of constitutional crisis, and that the executive must not exceed the boundaries in law which the courts prescribe and mandate: the essence of jurisprudence, it is here revealed, is in limitation.

17) That if we accept the logic of the “house arrest with electronic monitoring” imposed as a “condition of pretrial release” by the State, then the presumption of innocence has been deliberately negated, and the rule of law as we know it been thrown away.

18) That to challenge the lawfulness and legitimacy of the “GPS ankle monitoring regime”, and of the “pretrial release order” which purports to justify it, we need only recur to the fundamental principles9 of North Carolina law, and scrutinize the practice of “house arrest with electronic monitoring” through constitutional lenses.

19) That the term or figure of speech “restraints on liberty” appears three times in the text of the Constitution of North Carolina, and that any correct interpretation of this concept must take all of these into account.

20) That our understanding of “restraints on liberty” in North Carolina law must therefore draw the dotted lines between/among the provisions of Article I, Secs. 14 & 21, and Article XI, Sec. 1 of the Constitution of North Carolina, so as to discern how its methods of punishment may not be lawfully adapted to purposes other than punishment.

21) That Article I, Sec. 14 of our state constitution provides that the freedoms of speech and press “shall never be restrained”10
.
22) That Article I, Sec. 21 of this same constitution provides for “a remedy of an inquiry into the lawfulness” of “restraints on liberty”, and declares that all persons “restrained of [their] liberty” are entitled to such a remedy, which “shall not be denied, nor delayed”.

23) That Article I, Sec. 21 provides for a remedy of inquiry into the lawfulness of a person’s detention, in some cases known as the writ of habeas corpus, and this remedy is available to all persons “restrained of their liberty”, and that the so-called
“GPS ankle monitor device” is indeed such a “restraint on liberty”. This development of the concept of “habeas corpus” in the 21st century—the era of the “ankle monitor regime”—so as to encompass new technological conditions, demonstrates that
“constitutional language” has different properties from “statutory language” which may be discerned in the strange dynamics of “habeas corpus proceedings”.

24) That the proper reckoning of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of a certain restraint upon a person’s liberty must take into account not only the enactments of the General Assembly, nor merely formal procedural correctness, but must consider such principles of higher law and civil government as may usefully clarify and strengthen the laws generally, and as may dismantle tyrannies when they should emerge; though without philosophical coherence and structure, totalitarian governments in the 21st century have nevertheless gained their supremacy over nations, peoples, cities, companies, families, political parties, and news media. In such conditions, it is not surprising that the preponderance of the “leadership class” in New Hanover County have tolerated (and in some cases actively supported) the practice of “electronic monitoring”. In particular the ideological wing of the judicial branch as well as “law enforcement commissars” have gone to remarkable lengths to propagandize on behalf of the “ankle monitor regime”, and while their arguments are not without force as weapons of political science, this does not change the fact that the “ankle monitoring regime” is unconstitutional and in violation of international law.

25) That the neither the courts nor the legislature of North Carolina are possessed of the prerogative to empower the executive to treat citizens of North Carolina like animals, slaves, or machines.

26) That the correct sense of the phrase “cruel and unusual punishment” involves an “absolute standard” of what is “cruel and unusual”, with mind to some concept of human nature and human dignity which transcends time, place, language, and culture, and which does not drift and vary according to historical circumstances. Thus the word “unusual” should not be understood in relativistic or historicist terms, such that anything which is commonplace or conventional is therefore “not unusual”.

27) That as to the word “cruel”, while conventional interpretations imagine “cruelty” in terms of physical assault and wanton infliction of bodily harm, or which only includes the most obvious acts of governmental sadism, or which only takes issue with practices which are clearly at variance with accepted law, to properly construe the concept of “cruelty” in constitutional law means recognizing that deprivations and violations of rights, especially “under color of law”, are the cruelest wrongs which human beings can inflict upon their kind. Thus the criticism of existing law and practices per the “cruel and unusual punishment clause” is applicable to any treatment at the hands of the government which offends against human nature and infringes upon or abridges inalienable rights.

28) That the signature feature of the most recent “version” of our North Carolina constitution is the replacement of every “ought” with a “shall”. This change should be understood to dramatize the gap between constitutional law and governmental
practice, to make clear that the state constitution must be interpreted rigorously and consistently, and that the realization of the vision found in the “declaration of rights” has yet to come to pass.

29) That it is not “law”, but “violence”, “power”, and “prejudice”, that is the basis for the physical and metaphysical restraint on liberty which the GPS ankle monitor regime has inflicted upon the sovereign people of North Carolina, in their countless numbers as isolated souls, and as a great man-swarm cloud wherein one sees the body-politic enveloped in the matrices of absolute surveillance, and held captive upon the surface of the earth through the invisible system which the powers-that-be in Raleigh, in their boundless yearning for coercive control, have imposed upon these 100 counties.

30) That the GPS ankle monitor regime is unconstitutional on its face according to the reasoning of the Supreme Court of the United States in Grady v. North Carolina, where the right of the state to impose “electronic monitoring” on the most regulated
cohort of offenders—those guilty of “registerable sex offenses”—must be judged on a case-by-case basis according to an (admittedly somewhat arbitrary) rubric of “reasonableness”. Even the new and harrowing procedure known as the “Grady
hearing” does not address the more fundamental lesson of the “Grady case”, which is that the different “registerable offenses” have different characters and cannot be said to involve the same “governmental interest” or “legislative purpose”, and that this indicates that for categories of offense other than serious sex crimes the “electronic monitoring” might not be so “reasonable”, or might be altogether insane, and this should figure into our analysis as to both the 4th amendment issue (as to “search” and “seizure” of the human person by the monitoring device and its apparatus of computer enforcement) and the 8th amendment issue (as to the cruel and unususal character of the device). While the State has sought to obscure the issue in the case of the “sex offender surveillance regime” with such sophistries as “the SBM device is not a punishment” and “SBM for sex offenders is civil, not criminal”, one should bear in mind that this is but one (especially glaring) instance of North Carolina “pseudo-jurisprudence” that has taken hold in the 21st century, where the elected judges and justices are swayed by these “State-apologetic sophistries”, or else bring them into being of their own accord (though not exactly “sua sponte”.) The existing jurisprudence on this area suggests a fundamental defect and confusion in the enactments themselves which purport to provide for this regime, as well as in the implementation thereof, and unlike the statute, which while written in confusing language is at least open for the public to read, in the case of the “actual computer systems” and the “reality of the surveillance operation” there is no real way to know what the Government of our State is doing with this technology. Thus do arguments per “governmental interest” and “legislative purpose” fail to justify the multifarious shadow-software-gang-stalking-superweapon which is the GPS ankle monitor regime.

31) That reasoning from “Grady”, paying heed to the fact that the presumption of innocence cannot be undone by legislative fiat, and construing “reasonableness” in view of the principle that only by due process of law can punishments ever be made
reasonable, one may conclude that “pretrial electronic monitoring” cannot possibly be reconciled with constitutional law.

32) That “the law of the land” which is enshrined in Article I, Sec. 19 of the North Carolina Constitution is meant to encompass the full history of Carolina, even prior to its settlement and plantation, but especially from the promulgation of the Charter of
the Province of Carolina and John Locke’s Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina. In light of the history of our State, which was founded as a place where men and women could move freely without restraints throughout and across the entire territory of the State, subject only to the law concerning property rights, one can only conclude that contrary to the prevailing conceits about progress and the noble lie of a present which congratulates itself for being so much better than the past, while carefully effacing the reality, which is that the near death of civil and political liberties in North Carolina and in these United States cancels out and renders pointless any claims of “improvement” or “success” in government, institutions, or society that the likes of Mr. Stein put forward as their “political program”.

33) That the “GPS ankle monitor” also offends against other principles of North Carolina which were enacted some time previously, and which cannot be negated or displaced by a statute which does not explicitly provide for such (as if it could). These
constitutional criticisms are stated in a subsequent section of this motion.

34) That this older and permanent law, however neglected or suppressed, can never be negated, for it lies beneath the earth, and in the sky above, and in that firmament
which holds together these two extremes of this portion of the universe, this singular
tract upon the planet, “the goodly land”, which cannot be violated any further by the
psychopathic technology which is urged on us by the forces of totalitarian politics
which plague our State, the most dangerous and demented of these being the aspiring dictator and fascist lawyer-politician, Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Joshua Harold Stein.

35) That the restraint of the defendant-petitioner Dawson Gage by this unspeakably evil contraption has no other purpose than to obstruct public justice, both by frustrating and interfering with defendant in his self-defensive practice of law as well as generally thwarting his free associations and afflicting his bodily and spiritual person with the demonic telecommunication-curse which the State of North Carolina must lift and dispel, or permit the people to so do. The only method, the only remedy,
which will accomplish this purpose and do justice in this matter is for the “Pretrial
Release Coordinator” to be disbanded, and all persons subject to this unconstitutional regime be set free before the bodies, minds, and souls of the sovereign people are turned to dust and stone by the all-seeing eye of the predatory State.

————————————————————–

1 Article 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights reads:
“Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.”

3 NCGS 15A-101.1(3a) reads in whole:
“Electronic monitoring” or “electronically monitor” or “satellite-based monitoring” means monitoring with an electronic monitoring device that is not removed from a person’s body, that is utilized by the supervising agency in conjunction with a Web-based computer system that actively monitors, identifies, tracks, and records a
person’s location at least once every minute 24 hours a day, that has a battery life of at least 48 hours without being recharged, that timely records and reports or records the person’s presence near or within a crime scene or prohibited area or the person’s departure from a specified geographic location, and that has incorporated into the software the ability to automatically compare crime scene data with locations of all persons being electronically monitored so as to provide any correlation daily or in real time. In areas of the State where lack of cellular coverage requires the use of an alternative device, the supervising agency shall use an alternative device that works in concert with the software and records location and tracking data for later download and crime scene comparison.”

5 “Technology discloses man’s active relation to nature, and the mental conceptions and social relations which flow
therefrom.” –Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1, Chapter 15, Footnote 4

6 “Technology is almost magical.” –Bill Clinton, “First Inaugural Address”, January 1993

7 “Political language is designed to make lies seem true and murder respectable”. –George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”

8 This tendency of “legislative hypertrophy and aggrandizement” is evidenced in “the changes to the NC stalking law” in 2008, or the “overruling of “Ex Parte Byrd” by the NCGA in 2011 to guarantee the emergency ex parte domestic violence protective order”. It might not be obvious, but is clearly the case, that both the Democratic and
Republican parties in the General Assembly have been guilty of this willful disregard for judicial authority and constitutional law as well as contempt for popular opinion.

9 Article I, Sec. 35 of the North Carolina Constitution reads:
“A frequent recurrence to fundamental principles is absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty”.

10 The proviso which is added—“but all shall be held responsible for their abuse”—has traditionally been thought to refer to the law of “character defamation”, where since the trial of Peter Zenger in New York, prior to the establishment of the existing constitutions, “(the) truth may be given in defense”.

 

=====================================

笔女开林， 北卡自由， 威明顿自由。

Respectfully submitted this day of 21 October 2024.
William Dawson Gage | defendant/petitioner
513 Orange Street
Wilmington, NC 28401-4609
910-322-5853

dawson@orangestreetlawschool.org | dawsongage@gmail.com
orangestreetlawschool.org
freestyleking.info
radiofreewilmington.org
soundcloud.com/dawson-gage

———————————————————-
“31 May 2019: Orchids (for Alexandria Palombo)”
courthouse buzzing
lazily approaching
the stroke of noon
on this Friday, behold
the chasms
beginning to yawn
as if the edifice
were full of its own
type of desire, like
a dream of orchids, given
by me, they are bursting, laughing
behind the desks
could it be
that it all depends
upon what you do?
the ankle-monitor
vibrates, my skin
looks funny, I could get
used to this
coming here
to see and be seen
but I’d rather not
feel like an imposter, then
again, it does distract
from my work
as a spy
for the public
=========
–Dawson Gage
@ 316 Princess Street, Wilmington, NC (Clerk’s Office)