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The former officer, Raymond McLaughlin, is known locally as a supporter of so-called sovereign citizen ideology, which holds that the government is illegitimate and its laws aren’t binding.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected McLaughlin’s appeal of his sentence. In an unsigned decision, the court wrote that McLaughlin’s “sovereign citizen” argument “goes to the very heart of our authority to hear Federal criminal cases… It raises an issue that warrants a clear statement from this court, to deter future litigants from making similar claims.”
McLaughlin’s attempt to implicate Superior Court Judge Robert F. Vacchelli in a $300,000 payoff allegedly took place in April 2014. That, prosecutors said, was the sixth year of a “scheme” by McLaughlin to take out a $233,000 mortgage loan and “then live in the house for years without paying a dime on the mortgage.”
