David Stephan speaking to media outside the Lethbridge Courthouse. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

David Stephan claims prejudice at Alberta Children’s Hospital because they are “sovereign citizens”

Aug 29, 2019 | 1:47 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – UPDATE: Judge to make ruling on Stephan trial September 19th

David Stephan made his closing arguments in Lethbridge Court of Queen’s Bench Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning.

He and his wife Collet are each charged with one count of failing to provide the necessaries of life after their 19-month-old son Ezekiel died in March of 2012.

In his remarks, he claimed that the couple were victims of prejudice at the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary.

Lethbridge News Now asked Stephan about this during a break in the court proceedings.

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“When we got into the Alberta Children’s Hospital, there was warnings going out to the Child and Family Services Agents, to the doctors, to the police officers, anyone who was engaging with us, that we were sovereign citizens. It eventually grew into being fundamentalist mormons, they were concerned we were going to bury the body of Ezekiel in our property. There was just a lot of misconceptions about who we were that created a state of prejudice where people would have had more of a motive to engage in withholding the evidence or that would have tainted the evidence.”

The definition of sovereign citizen, according to Wiffen Litigation, reads as follows:

“While these sovereign citizen groups take many forms, a common thread is their refusal to accept the legitimacy of the government or the court systems. As some courts across Canada have seen, this is not a movement that is isolated to the US.”

Stephan, however, seemed to not be entirely sure of the phrase’s meaning.

“I’m not even sure what a sovereign citizen is, because, if I understand it somewhat correctly, somebody who has been labeled as that is saying that they are not even a citizen. The whole concept of a sovereign citizen is confusing to me at best, but anyways, I think many times the term is freeman as well.”

At the time, Stephan goes on to elaborate that people using the term sovereign citizen “were being classified alongside radical Islamic terrorists and stuff like that, so it was really an aggravating circumstance for all the police officers that showed up on scene.”

“That’s why there was six police officers that did show up from the Calgary Police Service is because they had been warned off and they were concerned about me being heavily armed and all that.”

Despite this, Stephan does not believe that the use of the term sovereign citizen both at the Children’s Hospital and in court will have any impact on the judge’s ruling.

Later Thursday afternoon, Crown Prosecutor Britta Kristensen is expected to make her closing arguments.

Justice Terry Clackson wants to see the trial wrap up at the end of Friday this week.