Isenglaas v Shiyaad[2025] QDC 20

DISTRICT COURT OF QUEENSLAND

1. [1]
   On 20 August 2024, the appellant, Mr Bo Isenglaas was convicted after trial in the Magistrates Court at Pine Rivers of disobeying the speed limit. A fine plus costs were imposed by way of sentence, totalling $538.50. Mr Isenglaas appealed to this court. His notice of appeal stated as the grounds, first, the respondent did not have locus standi, and second, “[h]is Honour violated my common law rights.” The respondent to the appeal was identified as Mr Shiyaad.

2. [2]
   Office Shiyaad was a legal officer with the Queensland Police Service (the QPS), prosecuting the offence.  The fact that he was identified by Mr Isenglaas as a party to the trial, and again as a party to the appeal, is indicative of the misunderstanding Mr Isenglaas laboured under before his Honour, and again on appeal, as to who the complainant was and the nature of the proof of the offence. 

3. [3]
   It is convenient briefly to say a little about the trial. The trial occurred on a single day. It began with Mr Shiyaad announcing his appearance as legal officer for Queensland Police Prosecutions. Mr Isenglaas began by immediately raising the standing of the prosecutor, and in particular, his mistaken belief that Officer Shiyaad was representing the QPS. (I note immediately that Officer Shiyaad did not say he was representing the QPS. Rather, he said he was a legal officer for Queensland Police Prosecutions.)

4. [4]
   Mr Isenglaas was prepared for this argument. Referring to the Supreme Court decision of Markan v Queensland Police Service [2015] QCA 22 he asserted that the QPS did not exist. Mr Shiyaad answered that proposition by pointing out that the QPS might not exist as a legal entity, but the Commissioner of the Police did, and that in broad terms, as an officer of Police Prosecutions, he could represent the Commissioner.  The learned Magistrate agreed.

5. [5]
   The next point that Mr Isenglaas raised was the question of whether the court (note the trial still had not started at this stage) was “a court of common law jurisdiction”. His Honour pointed out that the court had jurisdiction to hear the complaint under section 19 of the Justices Act 1886 (the Justices Act).  Mr Isenglaas asked if his common law rights would be protected in the court, and his Honour replied that he would receive a fair trial.  What was evident then, and again now, is that Mr Isenglaas firmly believes that he has common law rights, identified, quaintly, as arising from the Bill of Rights (Act) 1689 (Eng.) (the Bill of Rights) to confront, and cross-examine, his accuser and to be informed of the identity of the injured party in the matter.  His Honour explained that that was not the way prosecution of the particular offence occurred. 

6. [6]
   Speeding offences are able to be prosecuted under the Transport Operations (Road Use Management) Act 1995 (TORUM Act).  His Honour explained, briefly but accurately, the gravamen of the case to be put by the prosecution, which was the tender of various certificates which, in the absence of some challenge to the certificate as provided in the statute, were evidence of the various elements required to prove the commission of the offence beyond reasonable doubt. 

7. [7]
   His Honour then proceeded to hear the trial with Officer Shiyaad explaining the various certificates and then tendering them. At various points in the trial, Mr Isenglaas sought to object to the admissibility of the certificates because, in Mr Isenglaas’ view, while they might be admissible under statutory law, his Honour was “ignoring his duty under common law”. I have read through the transcript of the hearing and can see no error in the process of proving the offence, although I note, on appeal, Mr Isenglaas did not raise that. His Honour found Mr Isenglaas guilty and imposed a fine of $431 and costs.

8. [8]
   Mr Isenglaas appealed. It is evident from his notice of appeal that he sought to raise, again, the two points dealt with by his Honour at the start of the trial. I had before me, on the appeal, the complaint and summons, his Honour’s reasons, the transcript, and the various certificates, along with outlines. Ms Kerr of the DPP filed an outline on behalf of the respondent who, as I said, was identified as Officer Shiyaad. Mr Isenglaas filed three documents that were in the nature of outlines of arguments, including one filed on the 31^st of January, and rather esoterically entitled a Notice of Abatement which referred to, amongst other things, the Pharisaic Codes.

9. [9]
   It is unclear to me what the Pharisaic Codes are, although one might infer they have something to do with the religious or secular laws of various kingdoms established in the area that is now modern Israel and Palestine. I only mention it to indicate that Mr Isenglaas holds very firmly to propositions which not only have no merit as a matter of law but have not been thought through by reference to any objective fact. In any event, before me, he raised the following grounds.

10. [10]
    The first was an argument that he did not understand Ms Kerr’s submissions.

11. [11]
    Somewhat to my surprise, when I asked him to particularise the parts of the submissions he did not understand, he identified the use of capitals in the court heading for his name rather than upper and lower case letters, which he submitted involved a breach of the rules of English grammar. I asked him if he would understand the meaning of the court heading if it was read as if all but the first letters of his first and second name were lower case. He agreed he would then understand what the court heading meant, and Ms Kerr was kind enough to concede that it could be read that way.

12. [12]
    Apart from that argument, Mr Isenglaas repeated his two submissions before his Honour, that Mr Shiyaad did not have locus standi and that he had common law rights which answered his conviction for an offence created by statute and provable by facilitative evidentiary provisions in the statute. 

13. [13]
    As to the first matter, he wrongly interpreted Officer Shiyaad as his “accuser”. In fact, if there is an accuser to be named, it will be the named complainant in the complaint. The complaint was filed by Officer Laura Jane Dutton of the QPS on the 14^th of September 2023.  She was the complainant.

14. [14]
    Mr Isenglaas was shown the complaint. He agreed that the document I gave him was the complaint, and that means, of course, that the complainant in the case was Ms Dutton. There is no question that Ms Dutton had standing to pursue the proceedings. The particular offence was directed under the TORUM legislation read with the Justices Act to be conducted by complaint and summons, and I could identify no specific provision which narrowed the general law position that any person may be a complainant in respect of a summary offence.^[1] 

15. [15]
    There was then the question that confused Mr Isenglaas as to Mr Shiyaad’s role in the proceedings. He was, as he said himself, a legal officer of the QPS. Section 123A of the TORUM Act provides that for an offence against the transport Act, it is unnecessary to prove the appointment of a number of people, which would include Officer Shiyaad. Officer Shiyaad, of course, was able to represent Officer Dutton pursuant to section 10.24(2)(a) of the Police Service Administration Act 1990.  I went through those provisions to demonstrate that there was no gap in the legal authority for the proceedings to be brought or conducted by anyone.  The difficulty lay in the fact that Mr Isenglaas was determined to insist on a proposition of law which was wrong.

16. [16]
    Mr Isenglaas advanced a related proposition which was to the effect that the statute laws did not apply to him because there was a freestanding alternative system of law that applied to natural persons, which was the common law. That, as a proposition of law, is wrong. I will say no more about it in these reasons, despite the fact that I spent some time trying to explain to Mr Isenglaas why his proposition was wrong. That fundamental, but wrong, position led to his belief that he was entitled to confront his accuser, and by that method, we ended up back at the Bill of Rights. The fact is that the way Parliament has set up the elements and proof of the particular offence with which he was charged, there was no accuser for him to cross-examine.

17. [17]
    It is worth noting that at common law, there is no absolute right to cross examine. What there is, is a right to a fair trial.^[2]  That ordinarily carries with it, as an incident, a right to cross-examine. So even if one did live in this fantasy world of a benign alternative common law legal system, it would also not give you an absolute right to cross-examine. 

18. [18]
    Mr Isenglaas, undeterred, contended that his conviction should be set aside because it was not a trial by jury, and he referred to section 80 and to section 109 of the Commonwealth Constitution, or at least those were the provisions he obviously had in mind. It is obvious that that provision only applies to prosecutions for offences against the laws of the Commonwealth. These were State offences.

19. [19]
    For all those reasons, the appeal is dismissed.