After police discovered an illegal marijuana farm in Australia, the marijuana farmer may have taken an episode of Family Guy a little out of context. Arnfried Duden declared he is exempt from the country’s laws as he is a “sovereign person” and his property a sovereign state “totally outside the territory of Australia”. Let’s see how well that worked for him.
Just because one claims themselves as a “sovereign person” does not actually make you one nor does it make you exempt from the law. A character of the television series Family Guy, Peter Griffin, had declared his home to be an independent nation but that did not work in his favor as the character ultimately encountered the consequences for breaking the law.
In 2015, when the police came to Duden’s property, he requested that they leave because his farm was a sovereign state and they did not possess the rights to enter. The police discovered that Duden was cultivating over one hundred marijuana plants as well as a shipping container that contained two hundred pounds of marijuana plants.
As the police continued their search, they uncovered $25,950 in cash along with four unregistered firearms, large amounts of bullets, and MDMA. This is when Duden decided to exempt himself from the local laws. He said, “I am not part of New South Wales; therefore, I do not comply (with) New South Wales regulations”.
Duden recently attended a court hearing to defend his “sovereign” self and property. So, what was the final verdict? The judge ultimately sentenced him to six years in jail, with a non-parole period in three years. May this be a lesson to those looking to exempt themselves from the law to grow and sell marijuana because of an idea from a television series. Why not just move somewhere that its legal?
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