Friday, July 23, 1999
Common-law activist ruled fit for trial in Warren
BY TOM McCANN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
LEBANON — Common-law activist Larry Roten was declared mentally fit Thursday to stand trial for allegedly trying to clog the Warren County court system with “sham” legal papers. His trial begins Aug. 9.
It will be the first test for a 1996 Ohio law enacted to fight anti-government groups that have overloaded state courts with piles of illegitimate legal complaints since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Girded with a stun belt and watched closely by guards at the hearing, Mr. Roten refused to talk to his court-appointed attorney or touch any papers written for the court.
He filed two pretrial motions at the hearing, one claiming he is being indicted under an imaginary law, and the other demanding he get paid for the dozens of liens he has filed against county figures. Both of his motions were denied.
Mr. Roten will face 18 charges of intimidation, retaliation and using a sham legal process to fight the officials he thinks are responsible for putting his father in a nursing home in 1998.
Mr. Roten used an Arkansas common-law court to put a $5 million lien on County Prosecutor Tim Oliver's property and file legal papers against police officers, judges, the county clerk of courts and his own grand jury foreman.
Special prosecutor Mark Piepmeier will not pursue any more charges in the case. But Mr. Roten continues to file documents from his jail cell, refusing to succumb to a legal system to which he doesn't subscribe.
“I looked at my law book, and it's not there,” Mr. Roten said at the hearing. “You people are conducting a scam against me, and you know it.”
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