Former two-division UFC champion B.J. Penn is due back in court next month for allegedly violating a restraining order and assaulting his mother, Lorraine Shin. “The Prodigy” plans to defend himself in court.
Penn does not have an attorney and the judge granted the public defender’s motion to withdraw from the case. The court is considering granting Penn a court-appointed “standby counsel” for next month’s appearance.
“The judicial version of “hands of chin down” is anything you say “can and will be used against you in a court of law”, but even with that said and I know I don’t wanna make any mistakes, but honestly almost every time I have got a lawyer they either sold me out or they set me up and stole my money. if I go down, I go down making the decisions I wanted to,” Penn wrote on Instagram.
“I’ve always live my life that way when the bell rings I stand up and everyone else sits down, and I make the decisions that I wanted to make not talked into something by somebody else or set up by someone in a disguise that I can’t ever find later to ask him why the f*ck did he do that and then yell yelled at him or asked for my money back. It’s a dirty game. Never let a lawyer make a business decision.”
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Penn has been arrested multiple times in recent months. Leading up to the first arrest in May, Penn had been making social media posts alleging that his family has been murdered and replaced by imposters trying to steal his assets.
Penn posted a video of the arrest to social media. After being released from police custody, Penn doubled down on his assertion that his family has been replaced, calling his mother, or the imposter mother, a ‘murdering thief.’ Shin, requested and received a restraining order against her 46-year-old son.
On June 12, Penn allegedly violated the restraining order. A Hawaiian judge ordered Penn to vacate the home he shares with his 79-year old mother and extended the protective order against Penn brought by Shin until Nov. 23. The June 12th arrest was the fourth time Penn had been taken into custody in a two-week span.
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Shin believes her son is suffering from a condition called Capgras delusional syndrome.
“I believe my son [B.J. Penn] is suffering from Capgras delusional syndrome (a psychiatric disorder in which a person holds a delusion that a friend, spouse, parent, other close family member has been replaced by an identical imposter). He believes I’m an imposter who has killed his family to gain control of the family assets,” Shin wrote in a statement to police.
Penn once held the UFC lightweight and welterweight titles. He was inducted in the UFC Hall of Fame in 2015. He last fought in May 2019, losing to Clay Guida by unanimous decision.