No. 23-1547 ___________________________

United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllllPlaintiff - Appellee

v.

Anthony Willis

lllllllllllllllllllllDefendant - Appellant ____________

Appeal from United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis ____________

Submitted: January 10, 2024 Filed: May 13, 2024 ____________ Before LOKEN, KELLY, and STRAS, Circuit Judges. ____________ LOKEN, Circuit Judge.

In Faretta v. California, the Supreme Court held that a criminal defendant has a Sixth Amendment right “to conduct his own defense” without the assistance of counsel if the defendant “knowingly and intelligently” waives the right to counsel after being “made aware of the dangers and disadvantages of self-representation.” 422 U.S. 806, 835-36 (1975). This right, however, is not absolute. If granted, it may be revoked by the trial court if the defendant “engages in serious and obstructionist misconduct.” Id. at 834 n.46, citing Illinois v. Allen, 397 U.S. 337 (1970).

Charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, Anthony Willis filed a letter that the magistrate judge construed as a motion to remove his appointed counsel and to proceed pro se. After a Faretta hearing, the magistrate judge concluded that Willis was competent to represent himself and had knowingly and voluntarily waived his right to counsel. The magistrate judge granted Willis’s request to represent himself, appointed standby counsel, and warned Willis that his right to self- representation could be revoked if he conducted himself in an obstructive or disruptive manner. Months later, after extensive pretrial proceedings dominated by Willis’s repeated assertion of “sovereign citizen” arguments and defenses, the parties appeared for a final pretrial conference the morning of trial. When Willis ignored a warning and again asserted his sovereign citizen theories and defenses,1 the district court ruled, “You have forfeited your right to represent yourself” -- standby counsel “is going to represent you now.” A jury convicted Willis, and the district court sentenced him to 228 months imprisonment.

Still represented by standby counsel, Willis appeals his conviction and sentence, arguing the district court erred by revoking his right to represent himself on the morning of trial and raising two other issues.2 We review the district court’s decision to revoke Willis’s right of self-representation de novo. United States v. Mabie, 663 F.3d 322, 328 (8th Cir. 2011), cert. denied, 528 U.S. 829 (2012). We

1 “Sovereign citizens are a loosely-affiliated group who believe government in the United States operates illegitimately and outside the bounds of its jurisdiction. . . . The FBI has labeled the sovereign citizens a domestic terrorist group.” Waters v. Madson, 921 F.3d 725, 732 n.4 (8th Cir. 2019) (citations omitted). 2 At Willis’s request, we granted him leave to file a pro se supplemental brief in which he raises additional issues not addressed by counsel’s brief, some relating to the trial and others pursuing his sovereign citizen theories.

-2- conclude that the record at the time the district court revoked Willis’s right to represent himself does not reflect that he had engaged or would engage in the “serious and obstructionist misconduct” that Faretta and our controlling precedents require. We therefore reverse the judgment of conviction and remand for further proceedings.

I