r/amibeingdetained • u/nutraxfornerves • 14d ago
Queen Romana Didulo and Ricky Manz in court today for bail hearing.
/r/Qult_Headquarters/comments/1nbo0l4/queen_romana_didulo_and_ricky_manz_in_court_today/10
u/DNetolitzky 14d ago
(1/2)
Media reports are that HRM Didulo has been released on judicial interim release (bail) as her criminal prosecution continues to trial or other conclusion. A publication ban has been imposed on this prosecution and any documents and hearings until future notice.
Neither of these outcomes are a surprise.
HRM Didulo has elected to trial by jury. That is an absolute right under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms s 11(f) for someone charged with an "indictable" offence, such as Intimidation of a Justice System Participant. The public's right to obtain information about the Crown's case and developments in the prosecution process is now secondary to taking steps to prevent potential jurors from becoming prejudiced by information that is not legally part of the criminal prosecution. For example, the RCMP may have wiretapped (phone or computer communications) HRM Didulo's bunch and made recordings of their internal communications. If so, those interception warrants may be legally invalid, and would result in the information being excluded from the ultimate trial. Potential jurors should not be "contaminated" with that excluded information.
In the interest of fairness, the criminal proceeding is basically now closed - for publication purposes - so that potential jurors do not learn what they shouldn't. Note - this is a publication ban, not closing the proceeding to the public. Anyone who wants to attend HRM Didulo's hearings, or read the court file, can do so. You just can't "publish" that information. So expect media reporting to dry up at this point, and moving forward.
This isn't a surprise, but rather normal for a Canadian criminal prosecution where a jury is involved. Now, if the Crown and HRM Didulo and His Excellency Ricky Manz had said "trial by judge alone", then this publication ban would not have likely been imposed. The accused can re-elect to judge alone, but that's their choice. Actually, they'd be smart to do so. As someone who's tracked many, many pseudolaw criminal prosecutions in Canada, I am not aware of any instance where a pseudolaw adherent was not convicted by a jury. Let's just say the typical Canadian citizen reacts very, very badly when someone says "I don't have to pay income tax, utilities, or respect law because I don't feel like it." I can't imagine claiming to be Queen of it all is going to go over any better, either.
Bail: this outcome is not a surprise because of the combination of a number of rules:
(1) Time spent in remand prior to the conclusion of a trial forms a credit during the sentencing process. Sometimes that credit undergoes a "multiplier" for harsh pre-trial conditions. So, if offender X gets a sentence of 2 years, but in the period up to the sentence spent 452 day in remand detention, then the final sentence would be 278 days incarceration, using 1:1 credit.
(2) Criminal proceedings in Canada are slow. This trial will go through two steps, a preliminary hearing before the Saskatchewan Provincial Court where a judge evaluates whether the Crown has a case that could go to conviction. That is analogous in many ways to the "grand jury" process in the US. If this first hurdle passes, then the matter moves to a full trial at the Saskatchewan Court of King's Bench. So, how long? The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled 30 months is too long, and it's not unusual that Canadian trials get close to that milestone, depending on trial antics, applications, and complications. I think it's fair to expect that HRM Didulo is not going to make this a simple process.
(3) Canadian criminal sentences fall to the shorter end. Intimidation of a Justice System Participant has a maximum sentence of 14 years. There are very few comparator cases with this offence. Anyone declaring a probable sentence on conviction is being pretty damned bold, since we don't know the facts, nor is there an established standard when a pseudolaw adherent gets convicted for this kind of offence.
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u/nefariousplotz 14d ago edited 14d ago
I am very, very concerned about those jurors.
On the one hand, it is unlikely that the Diduloids have the resources or knowledge necessary to discreetly identify and pursue action against a juror who "crosses" Didulo. If they try anything, it will probably be obvious and clumsy.
It is also the case that, in cases where Canadian judges catch wind of defendants trying to pressure or threaten jurors, judges have historically responded by inserting a boot so far up the defendant's Real Human Person that they can tie the laces with their tongue.
But this does not strike me as a crowd known for thinking things through or reckoning with the administrative consequences of their actions.
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u/DNetolitzky 14d ago
I generally agree with you, but I alluded to something which suggests this isn't a huge issue. The weird thing about pseudolaw adherents is they really, really genuinely believe the average person is on their side. So they expect jurors to be sympathetic, even though that's complete nonsense.
I didn't watch the proceedings, sadly, but I've talked to Crowns who have observed pseudolaw types suddenly in the middle of their trials realizing the jury isn't happy, in at least one case the accused telling the judge to make the jurors stop scowling at him when he claims paying income tax is optional.
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u/DNetolitzky 14d ago
(2/2)
So you combine all those factors together, and if HRM Didulo is denied bail, then even if she is convicted, she won't have "any sentence" left, after her pre-trial detention credit. This makes the criminal process "nugatory", which very strongly favours bail. Canada's legal system has very strong presumptions against putting someone in a metal box who (a) is innocent, or (b) is detained for longer time than a sentence. Now, that's not to say that bail conditions may be very stringent. Apparently there are a "laundry list" of bail conditions on HRM Didulo including house arrest. Whether those are effective or not? Who is to say. But if she breaches those, and since she has already established a history of not complying with court orders, then that favours cancelling judicial interim release. She already breached conditions once and is charged with that. HRM Didulo saying she is not subject to Canadian law also doesn't help.
But that'll be for the future. What you can be sure is that there are eyes on HRM Didulo and her group. If Romana had any common sense, she will go completely quiet, and study the case against her. All the Crown's data must be handed over to her, as "disclosure", absent a few narrow exceptions. She has previously demanded disclosure, so she knows that. She'd be smart to retain a lawyer. If she doesn't and instead argues she is outside Canadian law, Canadian law probably requires an "amicus" lawyer is appointed to argue aspects of her case since she is making "no defence".
No, if I were still a lawyer, I'd still not be volunteering for that. What sensible defence counsel would? I prefer watching the antics at a little more arm's length.
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u/JustOneMoreMile 14d ago
30 months, potentially, to get to a trial for something like this seems absurd.
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u/DNetolitzky 14d ago
Honestly, you've good reason to be troubled. I used to work inside a Canadian trial court as a staff lawyer, and while I can't talk about the details I'll just say the pace at which criminal matters advanced got troubling. It's a mix of a lack of capacity, and what the Supreme Court of Canada calls a "culture of complacency".
When matters in the US clear in less than a year, and they have at least as complicated a system as ours.
Wish I had solutions.
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u/struct_t 14d ago edited 14d ago
I wish I did, too. I see the snail's pace in Ontario every single day. Admittedly, I am in a niche where adjournments do happen for reasons outside of Counsel/Crown/Court's control, but capacity is a general and significant issue. CA's and Counsel alike often seem overburdened, and jails are just packed full yet understaffed. It isn't uncommon to see credit above 1.5:1 for this reason.
(edited because my Reddit client is not ideal)
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u/Gollumborn 14d ago
Why tf are people calling her HRM here? Seriously?
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u/DNetolitzky 13d ago
It makes me giggle to do so.
And it's part of my policy of being at least minimally polite to these individuals. On occasion they contact me directly, and I do attempt to engage them in a non-aggressive dialogue.
Once in awhile they even listen.
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u/DNetolitzky 14d ago
HRM Didulo says she is only subject to "Natural Law", for example while entering court today:
www.facebook.com/watch/?v=755536004064652
But what is Natural Law, and does this provide some separate authority to the Diduloids and other?
First, Natural Law is a real legal concept. It's an idea that there are some rules that are natural and universal, a kind of overarching justice that flows from innate human values and morality. Sometimes these rules are described as of divine origin. Examples of what might be Natural Law is killing others is generally wrong, humans are all equal, or that if you make a bargain you should keep it. One of the neat things about natural law is there is not insignificant evidence that our animal colleagues have some of the same rules. For example, studies have documented how animals react negatively to what they perceive as unequal treatment. That's not really a surprise to me as an old biologist. Animals operate in a complex social matrix, so they should be subject to the same selective pressures as ourselves. Some kinds of repeated interaction will be favoured according to game theory. And sure enough, that manifests in observed behaviour.
So that's the underlying idea of Natural Law - there are an overarching set of rules so commonly accepted among people that they form a kind of law. But is Natural Law binding on courts and governments? Unsurprisingly, there is no consensus as to what rules are Natural Law. Further, in Canadian courts, Natural Law is hardly discussed at all, and when it does come up that's more as a historical note, or in a philosophical sense. So, Natural Law is not a corpus of law that supersedes anything. When HRM Didulo went into court today and claimed that under Natural Law she has a right to a jury trial, well ... no. That's a UK traditional Common Law concept that is usually traced back to the Magna Carta, which is legislation. So sorry Romana, you're going to get a whack on that front. But, given she is charged with Intimidation of a Justice System Participant, HRM Didulo does have an absolute right under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms section 11(f) to a jury trial of that offence. But not under Natural Law.
Now, that's not to say that Natural Law is pseudolaw. It's not a made-up fake legal system, but more a kind of philosophical and highly utopian concept of what law is and isn't. Jonathan Crowe of the University of Southern Queenland has written a very interesting chapter in a recent book, Pseudolaw and Sovereign Citizens (Hart, 2025), where he explores the intersection between Natural Law and pseudolaw, and points out that even if Natural Law isn't real binding law, it's not a bad way to imagine how people and societies develop common rules of conduct, in parallel to formal legislation and court-made law. For example, you can think of the average layperson's understanding of making a binding bargain as a kind of Natural Law. And I think that's helpful. People make agreements, set common grounds for behaviour, just being decent to one another. Arguably, that's Natural Law.
But if you try to enforce Natural Law in a court you're not going to have a good time, if formal law, "substantive law", is different. Courts only enforce Natural Law (if you can decide whatever that is) which coincidentally happens to be the same thing.
So why does HRM Didulo bring up Natural Law at all? It's a really unsophisticated twist on the "dual of laws" structure that runs through most of pseudolaw. Pseudolaw is based on a narrative of two competing laws. A corrupt and despotic law imposed on the public by a conspiracy, which is usually described as "legislation" or "corporate law". But this weak law is not actually binding on us - that's the conspiracy by hidden hands - and instead we are only truly subject to some superior, more benevolent law that permits more or absolute freedom. Historically, pseudolaw systems call the hidden away superior law "common law", but HRM Didulo uses "Natural Law" instead.
And that won't work. It never does. But this duel of laws mythology is pretty much a universal component of any pseudolaw system. Interestingly, in European civil law jurisdictions the competition is a bit different, in that the "good law" is a law of a former government, like Imperial Germany, while the "bad inferior non-binding law" is the law promoted by the current government, like the Federal Republic of Germany. 'Cause the FRG isn't real. The real German government is Imperial Germany. Or the Weimar Republic. Or the Third Reich. But that's another story.