San Diego Reader

An alleged drug dealer from San Diego is acting as his own lawyer in a Providence, Rhode Island, federal court, where he's charged with moving thousands of pounds of marijuana from California to Rhode Island, reports the Providence Journal-Bulletin. Pablo Manjarres-Riend, also known as Paul Alberto Riend-Manjarres, who has been fingered by a raft of New England dope dealers, told the jury during opening arguments that "This prosecutor has not rebutted that the person being tried is a corporate fiction ens legis and that it does not refer to the flesh-and-blood natural person standing before you." Ens Legis, he said, is "a creature of the law; an artificial being as opposed to a natural person."