PICKWICK, Minn. – A Pickwick woman’s cat-and-mouse saga with police ended with her arrest. Cayla Jean Sandven, 40, was stopped on the main street out of Pickwick and taken into custody. This ended repeated attempts by deputies to arrest Sandven over the past couple weeks on an assault warrant from Willmar. This time her son had asked for a check on whether she was OK. As a deputy was driving to her place in Pickwick, she was backing out of the driveway. The deputy spun around and activated his flashers. Sandven kept driving, albeit slowly as if oblivious to the deputy on her tail. Finally she pulled over on County Road 17 and was arrested. Deputies had been trying since mid-November to deliver the Willmar warrant. They were sure that Sandven was inside but not answering their knocks. Through an intermediary on November 17 she said she would surrender in Wilmar the next day. She didn’t. On November 23 she said she would surrender Monday in Winona. She didn’t.
Living the sovereignty lie
A continuing theme in Sandven’s erratic communications was confusion between a country and a county. Repeatedly she claimed that Winona County lacked any arrest jurisdiction over an assault case 200 miles away in Willmar. Evidently she believed in a myth called the “sovereignty rule,” that fleeing to another county means escaping justice. Such a rule applies between countries. But applied to counties it’s a legally flawed nonsense that lives on and on – a half-baked urban legend in some ill-informed quarters.
Sandven. She can expect a Civics 101 lecture from the judge about the sovereignty myth.
Her legal woes compounded
Now that Sandven has been jailed in Winona County, she is facing new charges, besides the original Kandiyohi County charge from Willmar. The new charges from her Pickwick arrest
> Fleeing police in a motor vehicle.
> Perilous driving.
> Obstructing the legal process