Couple Appealing Death Sentence Claim Cop-Killing Was Legal

Yes, say George Sibley and Linda Lyon: They did kill Oplika Police Sgt. Roger Motley. Chased him across a Wal-Mart parking lot, shot him again and again.

So what? It was legal.

Or so they say. Alabama begs to differ. And that is why Sibley and Lyon sit in cells 128 miles apart, awaiting electrocution.

They have confidence that they will be able to overturn their death sentences. They believe that their case will bring down the rotting framework of a system that is thick with thieves, conspirators and tyrants.

They have fired their lawyers and are pressing their own appeals. The weapon they say will topple the entire judiciary and set them free: a constitutional amendment, long suppressed by the government, outlawing “titles of nobility,” which they interpret to mean licenses such as those lawyers need to practice law.

Prosecutors scoff. But Lyon, a former model who favors dusty pink lipstick, says there is nothing crazy about their reasoning or their motives for killing the 38-year-old police officer.

“There has to be a point at which you decide I’m not going to take injustice anymore,” Lyon says. “The fact that he had a badge and a gun makes no difference to me.”

*

Oct. 4, 1993. Sibley, Lyon and her 9-year-old son Gordon have been on the road for nearly a month, running from felony assault charges in Orlando, Fla., where she had cut her ex-husband with a pocketknife while arguing over their house.

They were arrested, jailed and--they believe--railroaded into pleading “no contest” because of articles they published on the sheriff and local politicians.

It was another of the conspiracies that seem to trail behind Sibley and Lyon like a loyal dog.

They will tell you about the time federal agents threatened Lyon to protect a prison guard she’d accused of trying to rape her. And the time reporters and Indiana police conspired to cover up government culpability in an accident that left his sister hospitalized.

This time, it was the sheriff teaming up with the Florida Bar Assn. to have them killed. “They mean business,” is what Lyon says a friend in the Sheriff’s Department told her.

In Opelika, they stopped so Lyon could buy some vitamins and call a friend who was handling affairs for them in Orlando.

A woman passed by the couple’s Ford Mustang, piled high with pillows and other belongings. She said she saw Gordon mouth the words, “Help me.” She asked Motley for assistance.

Then Motley approached the car, and Sibley.

*

A shy loner who relied on his sister for protection from neighborhood bullies, George Sibley simmered privately for years.

The attraction to politics on the fringe had always been there, fed by mistrust and anxiety about gun laws, income taxes and welfare.

But it wasn’t until his 40s that George Sibley did something. Casually, he began attending meetings of the Libertarian Party.

He compares party members--and himself--to Revolutionary War heroes. “I knew I had fallen into the right group of people,” he says.

At a party meeting, he met Lynda Lyon, the rebellious daughter of an Orlando socialite who had toured the country by motorcycle and sailboat and now wanted to take a stab at journalism.

Within months, they were moving in a small circle of party activists and spending $20,000 of his inheritance on her fledgling newsletter.

“He just became totally involved in her way of thinking,” says Anne Holloway, Sibley’s sister.

They never got a marriage license--none of the state’s business, they felt--though they regard themselves as husband and wife.

They got rid of their driver’s licenses and car registrations, even their birth certificates, in the belief that state and federal law says people don’t really have to submit to such intrusions.

“It’s not a theory,” Sibley says, handcuffs chattering on a cold tabletop as he ticks off a list of constitutional provisions, arcane legal definitions and court decisions that he says prove him right.

They were trying to walk away from a system they didn’t believe in. They might have succeeded had Roger Motley not gotten in their way.

*

Motley asked Sibley for a driver’s license. Sibley refused to cooperate, talking instead about having “no contracts with the state” and refusing Motley’s orders to step away from the car.

Sibley decided to shoot when the officer touched his holstered gun. He believes common law gave him that right and cites Wild West court rulings to back his claim.

“Most people . . . would tell me you’re supposed to submit to this, even though you know it’s false arrest. And I just don’t buy that whatsoever. That is a clear trespass against me. He becomes at that point no different than any other kidnapper,” Sibley says.

He admits chasing Motley to his cruiser--firing twice toward the fleeing officer’s back--before squaring off over the trunk. Lyon acknowledges joining in with her 9-millimeter, pumping a 14-round clip into the officer’s car and body.

“I reacted instinctively. I defended my husband,” Lyon says.

*

Sibley and Lyon are trying to take their unusual appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. At the same time, they seek vindication in the court of public opinion--they have hired a California publicist and published a 24-page booklet to document their saga.

Their argument hinges on belief in a hidden amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Believers say it was ratified in 1819 and prohibits lawyers and others with government licenses from serving in public office.

As proof, they produce several 19th-century copies of the Constitution that include the amendment.

They say the amendment means lawyers, judges, prosecutors--even police officers--are all in office illegally. Thus, Motley was just a thug trying to kidnap Sibley, and the judges who sentenced them to death are constitutionally powerless.

The amendment did exist--it was approved by Congress in 1811, as America was preparing for a second war with Great Britain. Legal scholars say it would have outlawed public service by Americans who took knighthoods or other titles from foreign governments.

They also say it was never ratified by the states.

Sibley, 54, and Lyon, 48, think otherwise, but realize their actions may bring them closer to death. Only two people have been set free from Alabama’s death row since capital punishment was restored in 1975.

Lyon says it’s a chance they have to take.

“If they don’t want to give me justice, that’s life,” she says, gazing past the fenced patio behind her cell to the courtyard and road beyond. “But at least I died fighting. I want the blood on their hands.”