Sentence date set for fake diplomat

Mental-test order canceled by judge

A federal judge on Friday rescinded an order he issued last week requiring The-Nimrod Sterling, a 42-year-old Pine Bluff man, to undergo a mental evaluation before his sentencing on two charges.

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U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson held a brief hearing Friday to discuss a letter Sterling wrote him objecting to the mental-evaluation requirement. When both the prosecutor and Sterling's stand-by defense counsel agreed that there was no reason for the exam, Wilson vacated it.

Wilson then set Sterling's sentencing for 1:30 p.m. Aug. 27.

Sterling was convicted May 21 by a federal jury of impersonating a diplomat to receive something of value -- in this case, immunity from traffic tickets -- and being a felon in possession of a firearm. Prosecutors said Sterling regularly drove around Arkansas in a used limousine on which he placed stickers, and sometimes magnetic flags, claiming that he was a dignitary from the Conch Republic and, as such, could not be cited with a traffic violation or charged with a crime in the United States.

A state trooper testified that he couldn't immediately determine whether the Conch Republic was among the foreign governments that are granted immunity through the U.S. State Department, so he declined to give Sterling a ticket for speeding in a construction zone in Jefferson County, "to avoid an international incident."

Prosecutors said the Conch Republic is a nonexistent entity but that a website playfully represents it as existing in the Florida Keys. The website also sells phony "diplomatic identification cards" and other memorabilia claiming to be from the Conch Republic, which prosecutors said Sterling either ordered or copied to attain an identification card claiming to be an ambassador of the republic. They said he presented the card to law enforcement officers to avoid traffic citations.

Sterling represented himself at trial, with assistance from stand-by counsel Nicole Lybrand of the federal public defender's office.

After the jury convicted him and left the courtroom, Wilson said he was troubled by some of Sterling's remarks in his closing arguments, as well as a report from probation officers that Sterling had vowed not to participate in a pre-sentence investigation, and ordered the psychological evaluation on his own.

Sterling was once known as Nimrod Sanders but legally changed his name to The-Nimrod Sterling.

Metro on 05/30/2015

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