Sentencing Law and Policy

SCOTUS grants cert on quirky aspect of federal gun prohibition case

As reported in this SCOTUSblog post, headlined "Court grants review in firearm-possession case," the Supreme Court decided today to take up a federal criminal case involving gun rights. But, interestingly, as Amy Howe explains in the post, the Court did not accept for review the Second Amendment issue lurking in the case:

This afternoon the Court issued an initial group of orders from its October 30 Conference, adding one new case to its merits docket for the Term.  The Justices had considered  Voisine v. United States at two earlier Conferences before granting review today.

At issue are the convictions of two Maine men, Stephen Voisine and William Armstrong, for violating a federal law that prohibits the possession of firearms and ammunition by individuals who have previously been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.  Both men allege that their convictions under Maine law for simple assault and misdemeanor domestic violence assault, respectively, do not automatically qualify as misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence for purposes of the federal law, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9), because both provisions of Maine law can be violated by conduct that is merely reckless, rather than intentional.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rejected that argument, and the federal government urged the Court to deny review, but the Justices today disregarded that recommendation.

Notably, however, the Court agreed to review only the recklessness question; it declined to review a second question presented by the petition, which asked the Justices to rule on whether the ban on possession of firearms by individuals convicted of domestic violence violated their rights under the Second Amendment.

Strong crime and punishment coverage of drugs, guns and more via Vox

I remain a bit unsure of what Vox is and who is behind all of Vox Media, but I am sure that Vox has recently done a lot of good and important work on a lot of topics that should be of great interest to criminal justice fans.  Here are headlines and links:

• Black and white Americans use drugs at similar rates. One group is punished more for it.

• America's latest drug epidemic started with a legal drug

• Behind the Senate's criminal justice bill, a failed war on drugs

• America's gun problem, explained

• America doesn’t have more crime than other rich countries. It just has more guns.

• Guns killed more Americans in 12 years than AIDS, war, and illegal drug overdoses combined

"Why the U.S. is No. 1 -- in mass shootings"

In light of sad and tragic news of yet another multiple-murder shooting in Virginia (CNN report here), I found especially notable this Los Angeles Times article about some sociology research on high-profile crimes in the United States.  The piece has the headline given to this post, and it gets started this way:

The United States is, by a long shot, the global leader in mass shootings, claiming just 5% of the global population but an outsized share -- 31% -- of the world's mass shooters since 1966, a new study finds.

The Philippines, Russia, Yemen and France -- all countries that can claim a substantial share of the 291 documented mass shootings between 1966 and 2012 -- collectively didn't even come close to the United States.

And what makes the United States such a fertile incubator for mass shooters? A comprehensive analysis of the perpetrators, their motives and the national contexts for their actions suggests that several factors have conspired to create in the United States a potent medium for fostering large-scale murder.

Those factors include a chronic and widespread gap between Americans' expectations for themselves and their actual achievement, Americans' adulation of fame, and the extent of gun ownership in the United States.

Set those features against a circumstance the United States shares with many other countries -- a backdrop of poorly managed mental illness -- and you have a uniquely volatile brew, the new study says.

With those conclusions, University of Alabama criminologist Adam Lankford set out to illuminate the darker side of American "exceptionalism" -- the notion that the United States' size, diversity, political and economic institutions and traditions set us apart in the world. Lankford's paper is among those being presented this week at the American Sociological Assn.'s annual meeting, in Chicago.

Perhaps no single factor sets the United States apart as sharply as does gun ownership, wrote Lankford. Of 178 countries included in Lankford's analysis, the United States ranked first in per-capita gun ownership. A 2007 survey found 270 million firearms in U.S. civilian households -- an ownership rate of 88.8 firearms per 100 people. Yemen followed, with 54.8 firearms per 100 people.

Tough-on-crime crowd making the case for modern mass incarceration

The folks who blog at Crime & Consequences are among the most effective and eloquent advocates for the modern size, scope and operation of the American criminal justice system, and they have been especially active of late lamenting the ever-growing number of politicians calling the current system broken and urging reduced reliance on incarceration.   Here are links to just some of the major posts in this vein from C&C in the last few weeks (some of which link to others criticizing sentencing reform efforts):

• The End of Crime Reduction

• Criminals-Are-Cool Week at the White House

• Drugs, the Victimless Crime, Part Eight Zillion

• Is the Criminal Justice System Broken?

• The High Cost of Letting Criminals Go

• Where This Is Coming From, and Where It's Headed

• Where This Is Coming From, and Where It's Headed, Part II

SCOTUS grants cert on a federal case concerning restraining assets for hiring defense counsel and denies cert in notable gun case

The Supreme Court started its work this morning with this order list that include a grant of certiorari in one federal criminal case, Luis v. US.  This SCOTUSblog page provides this account of the issue the case presents:

Whether the pretrial restraint of a criminal defendant's legitimate, untainted assets (those not traceable to a criminal offense) needed to retain counsel of choice violates the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.

In addition, at the end of the orders list, the Justices denied cert in a gun case from San Francisco, which prompted a lengthy dissent by Justice Thomas (joined by Justice Scalia). Here is how that dissent begins:

“Self-defense is a basic right” and “the central component” of the Second Amendment’s guarantee of an individual’s right to keep and bear arms.  McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742, 767 (2010) (emphasis deleted).  Less than a decade ago, we explained that an ordinance requiring firearms in the home to be kept inoperable, without an exception for self-defense, conflicted with the Second Amendment because it “ma[de] it impossible for citizens to use [their firearms] for the core lawful purpose of selfdefense.”  District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570, 630 (2008).  Despite the clarity with which we described the Second Amendment’s core protection for the right of self-defense, lower courts, including the ones here, have failed to protect it.  Because Second Amendment rights are no less protected by our Constitution than other rights enumerated in that document, I would have granted this petition.

As I have noted in lots of prior posts in the wake of the Heller and McDonald rulings, if it is really true that "Second Amendment rights are no less protected by our Constitution than other rights enumerated in that document," a lot of laws criminalizing and severely punishing mere gun possession by those with a distant criminal past might be constitutionally suspect.  But this dissent from Justice Thomas, which garnered only one additional Justice, confirms my belief that the majority of the Supreme Court does not really agree that the Second Amendment works just like most other rights protected by the Constitution.

Canadian Supreme Court declares gun mandatory minimums unconstitutional

A helpful reader alerted me to a notable sentencing ruling from our northern neighbor reported in this press account headlined "Supreme Court quashes mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes: Court upholds Ontario ruling that struck down mandatory minimum sentences of 3 and 5 years." Here are the basics:

The Supreme Court of Canada dealt the Harper government's tough-on-crime agenda a serious blow Tuesday by striking down a law requiring mandatory minimum sentences for crimes involving prohibited guns. The 6-3 ruling, penned by Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, said the statute was unconstitutional as it upheld a 2013 Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that labelled the law cruel and unusual.

The ruling said the mandatory minimum sentence could ensnare people with "little or no moral fault" and who pose "little or no danger to the public." It cited as an example a person who inherits a firearm and does not immediately get a license for the weapon. "As the Court of Appeal concluded, there exists a 'cavernous disconnect' between the severity of the licensing-type offence and the mandatory minimum three-year term of imprisonment," McLachlin wrote for the majority.

Justice Minister Peter MacKay said in a statement that the government will review the decision to determine "next steps towards protecting Canadians from gun crime and ensuring that our laws remain responsive."...

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said there is a place for mandatory minimums in certain situations, noting that past Liberal governments have introduced them for "extreme crimes."

"But I think the over-use of them that the Supreme Court has highlighted, by this Conservative government, isn't necessarily doing a service to Canadians, both by not necessarily keeping us that much safer and also wasting large amount of taxpayers dollars on unnecessary court challenges," he told reporters in Oakville.

Keeping Canadians safe is cited by the government as the reason for its tough sentencing laws. McLachlin took aim at that justification in her ruling. "The government has not established that mandatory minimum terms of imprisonment act as a deterrent against gun-related crimes," she wrote. "Empirical evidence suggests that mandatory minimum sentences do not, in fact, deter crimes."

The court was deciding two appeals involving mandatory minimum sentences for gun crimes brought by the Ontario and federal attorneys general. The top court upheld the appeal court's quashing of both the three-year mandatory minimum for a first offence of possessing a loaded prohibited gun, as well as the five-year minimum for a second offence.

The Ontario and federal governments argued that the minimums do not breach the charter protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The new sentencing rules were enacted in 2008 as part of a sweeping omnibus bill introduced by the federal Conservatives.

The full ruling from the Supreme Court of Canada is available at this link.

"What rights do felons have over their surrendered firearms?"

The question in the title of this post is the substance of the title of this helpful SCOTUS argument preview of Henderson v. US authored by Richard Re over at SCOTUSblog.  Here are excerpts which highlight why I think of Henderson as an interesting and dynamic sentencing case:

Tuesday, the Court will hear argument in Henderson v. United States, a complex case that offers a blend of criminal law, property, and remedies, with soft accents of constitutionalism. The basic question is this: when an arrested individual surrenders his firearms to the government, and his subsequent felony conviction renders him legally ineligible to possess those weapons, what happens to the guns?

The petitioner, Tony Henderson, was a Border Patrol agent convicted of distributing marijuana, a felony offense. Shortly after being arrested in 2006, Henderson surrendered his personal collection of firearms and other weapons to federal agents as a condition of release during the pendency of his criminal case. According to Henderson, his weapons collection included valuable items that had long been in the family, as well as an “antique.” Moreover, the collection was and remains Henderson’s lawful property. So, starting in 2008, Henderson asked authorities to transfer his weapons collection to someone else. But prosecutors and courts alike declined. Understandably enough, Henderson didn’t want his collection to escheat to the government like so much feudal property. So he’s pressed his rights to the Supreme Court.

The legal issues start with a conflict between a procedural rule and a federal statute. Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41, the government usually has to “return” a defendant’s lawful property. But that can’t happen in Henderson’s case because a federal criminal law (18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)) prohibits convicted felons, including Henderson, from possessing firearms. So if Rule 41 were allowed to operate according to its terms, Henderson would instantly be in violation of Section 922(g)(1). The courts below recognized that result as contrary to federal law and policy. (In a footnote in its merits brief, the federal government acknowledges that some of Henderson’s long-withheld weapons collection actually doesn’t consist of firearms at all. The government accordingly assures the Court that the “FBI is making the necessary arrangements to return the crossbow and the muzzle-loading rifle to petitioner.”)

To get around Section 922(g)(1), Henderson asked the government to transfer his firearms to third parties who are permitted to possess such items – specifically, either his wife or a friend who had promised to pay for them. Those proposed transfers, Henderson points out, wouldn’t result in his own possession of the firearms. And, critically, the proposed transfers would honor Henderson’s continued ownership of the weapons.... While Rule 41 by its terms may authorize only the “return” of property, Henderson argues that the federal district courts have “equitable” authority to direct transfers to third parties....

Without questioning that federal equitable authority operates in this area, the courts below apparently rejected Henderson’s transfer request in part based on the ancient rule of “unclean hands.” Under this venerable maxim, a wrongdoer (whose hands are figuratively dirty) may not seek relief at equity in connection with his own wrongful act. Based on a broad view of that precept, the courts below seemed to say that convicted felons are categorically barred from equitable relief as to their government-held property. Henderson contends that this holding revives ancient principles of “outlawry,” whereby criminals lose the protection of the law, while also running afoul of the Due Process Clause, the Takings Clause, and other constitutional provisions. However, the Solicitor General disputes that the decision below actually rested on this ground and — more importantly — has declined to defend it.

Instead, the federal government defends the result below on the ground that Section 922(g)(1) should be read to prohibit not just felons’ actual possession of firearms, but also their “constructive possession” of such weapons. On this view, impermissible constructive possession occurs when a convicted felon can exert some control over the next physical possessor of a particular item of property. Thus, Henderson would exert constructive possession – barred by federal law – if he could direct the transfer of his firearms to any particular person, including his wife or friend. Such direction, the government contends, would also create an unacceptable risk of letting the firearm find its way back to the felon. A permissible approach, in the government’s opinion, would be for it to transfer weapons to a licensed firearms dealer for sale, with proceeds going to the convicted felon.

Having gotten the federal government to endorse some remedial third-party transfers – a significant development in itself – Henderson asks why a convicted felon can’t at least nominate specific third parties, like a museum or a relative, to receive previously surrendered firearms that double as historical artifacts or family heirlooms....

While the ultimate outcome may turn in part on case-specific facts, the case touches on a number of important public debates. This becomes most obvious when the parties peripherally joust over the Second Amendment. The case has also drawn a number of amici. For instance, the Institute for Justice connects the case to public debate over forfeitures by asserting an aged canon against such forfeitures. Meanwhile, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National Rifle Association of America respectively argue from the Excessive Fines Clause and, of course, the Second Amendment. The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the government’s only amicus, also joins issue.

"Smart Guns Save Lives. So Where Are They?"

The question in the title of this post is one that long-time readers know I have been asking on this blog for nearly a decade.  Today the question also serves as the headline for this Nicholas Kristof op-ed in the New York Times.  Here are excerpts: 

About 20 children and teenagers are shot daily in the United States, according to a study by the journal Pediatrics. Indeed, guns kill more preschool-­age children (about 80 a year) than police officers (about 50), according to the F.B.I. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This toll is utterly unnecessary, for the technology to make childproof guns goes back more than a century. Beginning in the 1880s, Smith & Wesson (whose gun was used in the Walmart killing) actually sold childproof handguns that required a lever to be depressed as the trigger was pulled.  “No ordinary child under 8 years of age can possibly discharge it,” Smith & Wesson boasted at the time, and it sold half-­a-­million of these guns, but, today, it no longer offers that childproof option.

Doesn’t it seem odd that your cellphone can be set up to require a PIN or a fingerprint, but there’s no such option for a gun?  Which brings us to Kai Kloepfer, a lanky 17­year­old high school senior in Boulder, Colo. After the cinema shooting in nearby Aurora, Kloepfer decided that for a science fair project he would engineer a “smart gun” that could be fired only by an authorized user....

Kloepfer designed a smart handgun that fires only when a finger it recognizes is on the grip. More than 1,000 fingerprints can be authorized per gun, and Kloepfer says the sensor is 99.999 percent accurate.  A child can’t fire the gun.  Neither can a thief — important here in a country in which more than 150,000 guns are stolen annually.

Kloepfer’s design won a grand prize in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Then he won a $50,000 grant from the Smart Tech Challenges Foundation to refine the technology.  By the time he enters college in the fall (he applied early to Stanford and has been deferred), he hopes to be ready to license the technology to a manufacturer.

There are other approaches to smart guns.  The best known, the Armatix iP1, made by a German company and available in the United States through a complicated online procedure, can be fired only if the shooter is wearing a companion wristwatch.

The National Rifle Association seems set against smart guns, apparently fearing that they might become mandatory.  One problem has been an unfortunate 2002 New Jersey law stipulating that three years after smart guns are available anywhere in the United States, only smart guns can be sold in the state.  The attorney general’s office there ruled recently that the Armatix smart gun would not trigger the law, but the provision has still led gun enthusiasts to bully dealers to keep smart guns off the market everywhere in the U.S.

Opponents of smart guns say that they aren’t fully reliable.  Some, including Kloepfer’s, will need batteries to be recharged once a year or so.  Still, if Veronica Rutledge had had one in her purse in that Idaho Walmart, her son wouldn’t have been able to shoot and kill her.

“Smart guns are going to save lives,” says Stephen Teret, a gun expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “They’re not going to save all lives, but why wouldn’t we want to make guns as safe a consumer product as possible?”  David Hemenway, a public health expert at Harvard, says that the way forward is for police departments or the military to buy smart guns, creating a market and proving they work....

Smart guns aren’t a panacea.  But when even a 17­year­old kid can come up with a safer gun, why should the gun lobby be so hostile to the option of purchasing one?  Something is amiss when we protect our children from toys that they might swallow, but not from firearms.  So Veronica Rutledge is dead, and her son will grow up with the knowledge that he killed her — and we all bear some responsibility when we don’t even try to reduce the carnage.

Among other potential benefits, I think a sophisticated commitment by gun rights advocated to smart gun technologies could in some ways expand gun rights to people now too often denied their rights by overly broad federal firearm restrictions.  

Right now, for example, anyone convicted of any felony is forever criminally precluded from ever even possessing a firearm.  In a world with more technologically sophisticated guns, some kind of microchip might be installed in certain hunting rifles so that they only work at designated times in designated areas and perhaps then persons guilty of nonviolent felonies could be exempted from broad felon-in-possession prohibitions in order to be able to use these kinds of guns for sport.  Or, perhaps technology might allow all persons after completing their formal punishment to still be able to exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms: ex-cons might be permitted only access to smart guns with GPS tracking/reporting technology (something comparable to the internet tracking/screening software now regularly required to be on sex offenders' computers) so that authorities can regularly follow when and how former felons are exercising their gun rights.

A few recent and older related posts:

• Could latest tragic mass shooting prompt renewed consideration of "smart gun" technologies?
• "Smart Gun Technology Could Have Blocked Adam Lanza"
• Sentencing "highlights" in President Obama's new gun control push
• Technology, smart guns, GPS tracking and a better Second Amendment
• More on smart guns, dumb technologies and market realities
• Interesting developments in "smart gun" discussions and debate
• "Can ‘Smart Gun’ Technology Change the Stalemate Over Gun Violence?"

"The Quiet Army: Felon Firearms Rights Restoration in the Fourth Circuit"

The title of this post is the title of this new paper by Robert Luther III now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This article discusses the restoration of firearm rights for felons and specifically addresses the methods by which individuals convicted of felonies under state law may be relieved of collateral federal firearms disabilities in the Fourth Circuit, with a particular emphasis on the practice in Virginia. It concludes by calling on the Fourth Circuit to make clear in an appropriate case that “a defendant’s ‘civil rights’ have been restored under state law for purposes of 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20) if the state has also restored the defendant’s right to possess firearms.”

Due to the Supreme Court of Virginia's interpretation of the Virginia Constitution in Gallagher v. Commonwealth, which concluded that the governor lacked the authority to restore firearm rights and that only the state trial court could do so, the Fourth Circuit’s failure to construe 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20) as suggested will have the unintended and disparate effect of failing to relieve all state-convicted felons in Virginia from their collateral federal firearm disabilities. To read 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20) not to remove a federal firearms disability when the felon has received the unrestricted restoration of his firearm rights by a Virginia trial court would yield a perverse result because the purpose of this statute was to redirect the restoration process to the states.

Author John Grisham says "we've gone nuts with this incarceration" of child porn downloaders

One of my (many) wonderful students alerted me to this notable UK press piece reporting on an interview with famous law author John Grisham who had some interesting (and likely-to-be-controversial) comments about tough sentencing for those who download child porn.  The article is headlined "John Grisham: men who watch child porn are not all paedophiles," and here are excerpts:

America is wrongly jailing far too many people for viewing child pornography, the best-selling legal novelist John Grisham has told The Telegraph in a wide-ranging attack on the US judicial system and the country's sky-high prison rates. Mr Grisham, 59, argued America's judges had "gone crazy" over the past 30 years, locking up far too many people, from white collar criminals like the businesswoman Martha Stewart, to black teenagers on minor drugs charges and — he added — those who had viewed child porn online.

"We have prisons now filled with guys my age. Sixty-year-old white men in prison who've never harmed anybody, would never touch a child," he said in an exclusive interview to promote his latest novel Gray Mountain which is published next week.  "But they got online one night and started surfing around, probably had too much to drink or whatever, and pushed the wrong buttons, went too far and got into child porn."

The author of legal thrillers such as The Firm and A Time to Kill who has sold more than 275m books during his 25-year career, cited the case of a "good buddy from law school" who was caught up in a Canadian child porn sting operation a decade ago as an example of excessive sentencing.  "His drinking was out of control, and he went to a website. It was labelled 'sixteen year old wannabee hookers or something like that'. And it said '16-year-old girls'.  So he went there. Downloaded some stuff — it was 16 year old girls who looked 30.

"He shouldn't ’a done it.  It was stupid, but it wasn't 10-year-old boys.  He didn't touch anything.  And God, a week later there was a knock on the door: ‘FBI!’ and it was sting set up by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to catch people — sex offenders — and he went to prison for three years."

"There's so many of them now.  There's so many 'sex offenders' — that's what they're called  — that they put them in the same prison.  Like they're a bunch of perverts, or something; thousands of ’em.  We've gone nuts with this incarceration," he added in his loft-office in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Asked about the argument that viewing child pornography fuelled the industry of abuse needed to create the pictures, Mr Grisham said that current sentencing policies failed to draw a distinction between real-world abusers and those who downloaded content, accidentally or otherwise.  "I have no sympathy for real paedophiles,” he said, "God, please lock those people up.  But so many of these guys do not deserve harsh prison sentences, and that's what they're getting," adding sentencing disparities between blacks and whites was likely to be the subject of his next book.

There are currently some 2.2m people in jail in the US — or more than 750 per 100,000 population — which makes the US by far the heaviest user of prison sentences in the world. By contrast, Britain imprisons just 154 per 100,000 population.  However Mr Grisham’s remarks are likely to anger child-rights campaigners that over the past decade have successfully lobbied the US Congress to demand tougher sentences for those who access child pornography online.

Since 2004 average sentences for those who possess — but do not produce — child pornography have nearly doubled in the US, from 54 months in 2004 to 95 months in 2010, according to a 2012 report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. However the issue of sex-offender sentencing has sparked some debate in the US legal community after it emerged that in some cases those who viewed child porn online were at risk of receiving harsher sentences than those who committed physical acts against children.

A provocative article in the libertarian magazine Reason headlined "Looking v Touching" argued last February that something was "seriously wrong with a justice system in which people who look at images of child rape can be punished more severely than people who rape children".  And in January this year the US Supreme Court was unable to resolve a debate over whether a man who viewed images of a child rape should be as liable to pay the same financial compensation to the victim as the original perpetrator of the crime.

UPDATE: As I expected, John Grisham's child porn sentencing comments has stirred controversy and he has already issued a formal apology.  This CNN story provides the basics of the early aftermath:

Those comments and the nature in which Grisham discussed the very serious issue of child pornography incited a flood of hurt, disappointed and angry reactions from fans.

"The day that you came out in an interview and said that watchers of child porn get too stiff of a penalty for it (you said 10 years was too much) makes you someone that I cannot support nor no longer want to read," a reader named Kendra Benefield Lausman shared on Grisham's Facebook page; another posted that she's taken her entire Grisham library to her "burn barrel" with the intent to set the books on fire.

"How do you think child porn is made?" a poster named John Kelly asked on Grisham's page. "Someone is still getting hurt you imbecile. I'm sad to say that I will never purchase, nor consume, one of your books ever again. I am disgusted."

After the uproar began, Grisham issued an apology.

"Anyone who harms a child for profit or pleasure, or who in any way participates in child pornography -- online or otherwise -- should be punished to the fullest extent of the law," the author said in a statement. "My comments made two days ago during an interview with the British newspaper The Telegraph were in no way intended to show sympathy for those convicted of sex crimes, especially the sexual molestation of children. I can think of nothing more despicable. I regret having made these comments, and apologize to all."

That may not be enough for some of his former followers. "You clearly said in the interview that people (like your drunk friend) who look at child porn don't deserve severe punishment," Facebook user Raylene Jolly Wheeler posted in response to Grisham. "Not sure how you can backtrack that statement."

District Court embraces as-applied Second Amendment limit on federal felon-in-possession prohibtion

As long-time readers know, ever since the Supreme Court's Second Amendment Heller ruling, I have long thought federal criminal law's threat of severe sentences on any and all felons in possession of any and all firearms is constitutionally questionable. Now, thanks to this post by Eugene at The Volokh Conspiracy, I see that one federal district court has finally held that there are as-applied Second Amendment problems with the federal felon-in-possession criminal statute.

The notable Second Amendment ruling comes in Binderup v. Holder, No. 13-cv-06750 (E.D. Pa. Sept. 25, 2014) (available here).  Interestingly (and perhaps not surprisingly),  Binderup is a civil rights suit brought by a relatively sympathetic individual with a minor criminal past, not a case involving a federal criminal defendant claiming the Second Amendment precludes his prosecution.  And here are excerpts from the start and end of the lengthy opinion:

As further discussed below, plaintiff distinguishes himself from those individuals traditionally disarmed as the result of prior criminal conduct and demonstrates that he poses no greater threat of future violent criminal activity than the average law-abiding citizen. Therefore, he prevails on his as-applied challenges to § 922(g)(1) on Second-Amendment grounds under the framework for such claims set forth by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in United States v. Barton, 633 F.3d 168 (3d Cir. 2011)....

Because plaintiff’s statutory claim fails, I reach his alternative constitutional claim asserted in Count Two. For the reasons expressed above, I conclude that plaintiff has demonstrated that, despite his prior criminal conviction which brings him within scope of § 922(g)(1)’s firearm prohibition, he poses no greater risk of future violent conduct than the average law-abiding citizen. 

Therefore, application of § 922(g)(1) to him violates the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution under the framework set for the by the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in United States v. Barton, 633 F.3d 168 (3d Cir. 2011). Accordingly, plaintiff is, and defendants are not, entitled to summary judgment on plaintiff’s as-applied constitutional challenge asserted in Count Two of the Complaint.

It now will be real interesting to see if the feds will appeal this ruling to the Third Circuit or instead just leave it be.

Is Chicago now providing more support for the claim that more guns means less crime?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this new Washington Times article (hat tip: C&C), which carries the headline "Chicago crime rate drops as concealed carry applications surge; City sees fewer homicides, robberies, burglaries, car thefts as Illinois residents take arms."  Here are excerpts:

Since Illinois started granting concealed carry permits this year, the number of robberies that have led to arrests in Chicago has declined 20 percent from last year, according to police department statistics. Reports of burglary and motor vehicle theft are down 20 percent and 26 percent, respectively.  In the first quarter, the city’s homicide rate was at a 56-year low.

“It isn’t any coincidence crime rates started to go down when concealed carry was permitted. Just the idea that the criminals don’t know who’s armed and who isn’t has a deterrence effect,” said Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association.  “The police department hasn’t changed a single tactic — they haven’t announced a shift in policy or of course — and yet you have these incredible numbers.”

As of July 29 the state had 83,183 applications for concealed carry and had issued 68,549 licenses.  By the end of the year, Mr. Pearson estimates, 100,000 Illinois citizens will be packing.  When Illinois began processing requests in January, gun training and shooting classes — which are required for the application — were filling up before the rifle association was able to schedule them, Mr. Pearson said.

The Chicago Police Department has credited better police work as a reason for the lower crime rates this year. Police Superintendent Garry F. McCarthy noted the confiscation of more than 1,300 illegal guns in the first three months of the year, better police training and “intelligent policing strategies.” The Chicago Police Department didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Washington Times.

However, the impact of concealed carry can’t be dismissed.  Instead of creating more crimes, which many gun control advocates warn, increased concealed carry rates have coincided with lower rates of crime.

A July study by the Crime Prevention Research Center found that 11.1 million Americans have permits to carry concealed weapons, a 147 percent increase from 4.5 million seven years ago.  Meanwhile, homicide and other violent crime rates have dropped by 22 percent. 

“There’s a lot of academic research that’s been done on this, and if you look at the peer-reviewed studies, the bottom line is a large majority find a benefit of concealed carry on crime rates — and, at worst, there’s no cost,” said John Lott Jr., president of the Crime Prevention Research Center based in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. “You can deter criminals with longer prison sentences and penalties, but arming people with the right to defend themselves with a gun is also a deterrence.”

I know that all the research concerning relationships between gun laws and crime are controversial, and I am certain that these recent Chicago experience will not come close to resolving these on-going debates.  Still, whatever might account for the good crime news out of Chicago, I hope everyone is inclined to celebrate the reality of greater personal liberty and less crime in the Windy City.

Could McCullen's First Amendment scrutiny impact (and strengthen) Second Amendment claims?

I am not a First Amendment expert, and thus I cannot expertly assess all the Justices' First Amendment work today in the SCOTUS abortion buffer-zone ruling in McCullen v. Coakley (available here). But a quick review of the Chief Justice's majority opinion revealed that the Court struck down a Massachusetts regulatory law justified on public safety grounds using intermediate scrutiny because the state had "not shown that it seriously undertook to address the problem with less intrusive tools readily available to it [nor] that it considered different methods that other jurisdictions have found effective." Id. slip op. at 27.   As the title to this post suggests, I wonder if court analysis of Second Amendment challenges to federal, state and local gun regulations might be impacted by the Supreme Court's First Amendment analysis in McCullen.

As of this writing, it is not yet even clear what level of scrutiny courts should be applying to Second Amendment challenges to federal, state and local gun regulations.  But in many settings, many courts have adopted the same basic intermediate analysis that led to Massachusetts' law being found unconstitutional in McCullen.  Of particular interest, therefore, is the language quoted above, in which the Chief Justice assails Massachusetts for failing to seriously explore how to "address the [public safety] problem with less intrusive tools" and to consider "different methods that other jurisdictions have found effective."  I suspect many gun rights advocates, when pressing challenges to federal, state and local gun regulations defended on the basis of public safety, will be quick to quote this language and to assert that a jurisdiction's gun restrictions should be struck down absent evidence the state seriously explored "less intrusive" restrictions and/or considered "different [gun laws] that other jurisdictions have found effective."

Applying strict scrutiny, Louisiana Supreme Court upholds facial constitutionality of criminalizing gun possession with illegal drug possession

Thanks to this post by Eugene Volokh, I see that the Louisiana Supreme Court issued an interesting and important unanimous decision earlier this week upholding a state gun crime statute against a facial state constitutional challenge.  Here is how this opinion in Louisiana v. Webb, No. 2013-KK-1681 (La. May 7, 2014) (available here), starts and ends:

We granted a writ to determine whether a recent constitutional amendment involving a fundamental right to bear arms found in La. Const. art. I, § 11 renders a criminal statute related to the possession of a firearm while possessing illegal drugs, facially unconstitutional.

According to the defendant, because the right to bear arms has been recently enshrined as a fundamental constitutional right, notwithstanding the fact the defendant was allegedly carrying illegal drugs while in possession of a firearm, La. R.S. 14:95(E) is facially unconstitutional.  Essentially, the defendant argues that, even assuming he possessed illegal drugs, because La. R.S. 14:95(E) deals not only with illegal drugs but with firearms, the firearm aspect of the statute cannot survive strict judicial scrutiny, and the entire statute must be declared unconstitutional.

We disagree.  Nothing in the recent constitutional amendment regarding firearms requires dismissal of the criminal charges against the defendant for carrying a firearm while in possession of illegal drugs.....

To promote public safety by curtailing drug trafficking, the state of Louisiana has a compelling interest in enhancing the penalty for illegal drug possession when a person engages in that illegal conduct with the simultaneous while in possession of a firearm. Undeniably, the right to keep and bear a firearm is a fundamental right in Louisiana. However, when a person is engaged in the unlawful conduct of possessing illegal drugs, the person’s own unlawful actions have “qualified his right” to engage in what would otherwise be the exercise of that fundamental right. See Helms, 452 U.S. at 420 (indicating “appellee’s own misconduct [in abandoning his child] had qualified his right to travel interstate.”).

Earlier, we observed that in amending Article I, § 11 of the constitution, the electorate tasked this court with applying a very technical legal test to answer a very practical question. From all aspects, we have found the technical points of the law constitutionally allow the state to make it a crime to possess an illegal drug with a firearm. We can now, therefore, answer this practical question: Is the act of possessing a firearm and illegal drugs so essential to the liberties citizens ought to be able to enjoy in an orderly society that a law to the contrary is unconstitutional? “We have held that the function of the court in construing constitutional provisions is to ascertain and give effect to the intent of the people who adopted it. It is the understanding that can reasonably be ascribed to the voting population as a whole that controls.” Caddo-Shreveport Sales and Use Tax Com'n v. Office of Motor Vehicles, Dept. of Public Safety and Corrections of State, 97-2233 (La. 4/14/98), 710 So.2d 776, 780. Nothing in Article I, § 11 of the constitution informs us that the electorate, whose intent is ultimately the intent that governs, believed that possessing firearms with illegal drugs meets the electorate’s expectations of a society whose hallmark is ordered liberty.

We, therefore, affirm the ruling of the district court, finding La. R.S. 14:95(E) is not unconstitutional, and that nothing in Article I, § 11 of the constitution requires the charges against the defendant to be quashed. This case is remanded to the district court for further proceedings.

Connecticut debate spotlights how fights over death penalty can impede other needed reforms

Long time readers know that one of my enduring frustrations with debates over the fate of death penalty concerns how this debate can sometimes get in the way of other important criminal justice work.  A notable new example of this dynamic was on display this week in Connecticut, as evidenced by this local article headlined "Juvenile Sentencing Bill Fails Second Year In A Row." Here are the basic details:

A barrage of amendments, a planned Republican filibuster over the merits of reviving the death penalty, and recent charges against a Milford teen in the fatal stabbing of a classmate scuttled a criminal justice bill on the last day of the 2014 session.

The bill would have offered inmates serving long prison sentences for crimes they committed at a young age a chance at freedom.  The measure was crafted in response to two U.S. Supreme Court rulings, in 2010 and 2012.  The court held that life sentences for offenders younger than 18 are unconstitutional and that juvenile offenders must be given a "meaningful opportunity" to seek release.

The legislation cleared the House of Representatives on a broad and bipartisan vote in early April. But for the second year in a row, it failed to come up in the Senate by midnight Wednesday, when the General Assembly adjourned.  Republicans signaled to Democratic leaders that they were going to block the bill by filing 22 amendments, including one to reinstate the death penalty in Connecticut for convicted terrorists and another to eliminate a program that aims to rehabilitate prisoners by offering them credit toward early release....

Senate President Pro Tempore Donald Williams said there were enough votes to pass the measure. But, facing Republican opposition and wanting to avoid votes on controversial issues like the death penalty, Williams opted not to bring the bill up....

The proposed bill was based on recommendations by the non-partisan Connecticut Sentencing Commission. It would have permitted prisoners who committed crimes as teenagers and are serving prison terms of 20 years or less to be eligible for a sentence review after they had served 60 percent of their time.  Inmates serving 50 years or more could receive that "second look" 30 years into their sentences.  The proposal would not have guaranteed freedom for the inmates but would have given them the opportunity to argue their case at a special parole hearing with highly restrictive criteria.

"We're disappointed with what happened in the Senate," said David M. Borden, a retired state Supreme Court justice who chairs the Sentencing Commission, the panel charged with reviewing criminal justice policy and proposing legislation.  The commission's members include prosecutors, defense attorneys, police, corrections officials and the state victims advocate.  "When you look at the bill dispassionately and look at the facts dispassionately and clear away all the underbrush of things that don't have anything to do with it, it's a very good bill," Borden said Thursday.  "To the extent politics got in the way, well, we live in the real world ... we'll take the consequences."

The commission will meet in June and determine whether it will push for the measure again in 2015.  "I don't think there's going to be a strong sentiment for giving up this fight," Borden said.  He said 70 inmates in Connecticut already have filed cases seeking revisions in their sentences, based on the two Supreme Court rulings.  "This bill would have set down reasonable parameters for how these cases should be handled," Borden said.

In the absence of legislation setting a legal framework, the decision of how to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court rulings likely will be left to state courts, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said Thursday. "Don't be surprised if it goes to court,"  Malloy said. The courts "will do what the [legislature] should have done and perhaps do more." 

Should those who really favor gun rights protest the right to sell and own a safer gun?

The question in the title of this post is a little of my usual topics, but I need to vent a bit about this discouraging story in the Washington Post highlighting that some folks who support gun rights are against the idea of using technology to produce a safer gun.  The article is headlined "Maryland dealer, under pressure from gun-rights activists, drops plan to sell smart gun," and here are excerpts:

A Rockville gun store owner who said he would sell the nation’s first smart gun — even after a California gun store removed the weapon from its shelves to placate angry gun-rights activists — backed down late Thursday night after enduring a day of protests and death threats.

Andy Raymond, the co-owner of Engage Armament, a store known for its custom assault rifles, had said earlier this week that offering the Armatix iP1 handgun was a “really tough decision” after what happened to the Oak Tree Gun Club near Los Angeles. Oak Tree was lambasted by gun owners and National Rifle Association members who fear the new technology will be mandated and will encroach on Second Amendment rights.

Electronic chips in the gun communicate with a watch that can be bought separately. The gun cannot be fired without the watch....

[A]fter hundreds of protests on his store’s Facebook page and online forums — a repeat of what Oak Tree faced — Raymond released a long video on the Facebook page saying he had received death threats and would not sell the gun. He apologized and took responsibility for the decision. He had sold none of the smart guns and would not, he said.

Earlier, Raymond had said he’s on the “right-wing vanguard of gun rights” but is vehemently opposed to gun rights activists arguing against the idea of a smart gun — or any gun. “To me that is so fricking hypocritical,” Raymond had said. “That’s the antithesis of everything that we pro-gun, pro-Second Amendment people should be. You are not supposed to say a gun should be prohibited. Then you are being no different than the anti-gun people who say an AR-15 should be prohibited.”...

Besides reliability in the face of danger, the opponents’ most pressing fear is that sales of the iP1 will trigger a New Jersey law mandating that all handguns in the state be personalized within three years of a smart gun’s going on sale anywhere in the United States. Similar proposals have been introduced in California and Congress.

Raymond said he didn’t want the law to kick in and didn’t think he’d be responsible if it did, because Oak Tree already had the gun for sale. He said the law was not his problem or Armatix’s. “This is not Armatix screwing over the people of New Jersey,” he said. “It’s the legislature screwing over the people of New Jersey. Bushmaster didn’t screw over the people of Newtown. Adam Lanza did. It’s just disgusting to me to see pro-gun people acting like anti-gunners. What is free if it’s not choice?”...

The demand for smart guns is subject to debate. Gun rights advocates, including the National Shooting Sports Foundation, say there seems to be little desire for such weapons at the moment. They point to a survey the group commissioned last year showing that 14 percent of Americans would consider buying a smart gun. “We think the market should decide,” Lawrence G. Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told The Post this year.

Gun-control advocates believe that smart guns could reduce gun violence, suicides and accidental shootings. A dream of researchers and politicians for decades, the idea found renewed interest within the federal government following the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. A group of Silicon Valley investors led by Ron Conway recently launched a $1 million contest to encourage smart-gun technology.

Numerous approaches are in development. Armatix uses RFID chips like those in anti-theft tags attached to clothing in stores. Other companies use a ring to enable the gun’s operation. Grips that recognize an owner are being tested, as are sensors to detect fingerprints and voices. The iP1, developed over a period of years by Armatix, a German firm, is the first smart gun to be marketed in the United States.

Increasing gun ownership is what Raymond said he was after in planning to sell the iP1. “If this gets more people, especially those on the fence, to go out and enjoy their Second Amendment freedoms, to go sport shooting and realize how much fun it is, then I am all for it,” Raymond said before changing his mind. “This is really not a bad thing.”

Regular readers know that I am both a supporter of the Second Amendment and of smart gun technology. If developed effectively, smart guns ought be be able to increase gun rights and reduce gun violence: e.g., smart gun technology might be a way to allow a former non-violent felon, who now is prohibited by federal law from possessing any firearm, to own a gun for self-protection that can only operate from his home. And smart gun technology ought to be able to provide effective digital evidence of gun use (and misuse) to be used by police and other law enforcement officials to investigate and prevent crime.

I understand the fears that some gun rights advocates may have about possible "misuse" of smart gun technology, but these folks should realize that these kinds of concerns about the misuse of a good technology (i.e., guns) are exactly what motivates gun control advocates.  Moreover, as smart gun technology improves, I suspect it is only a matter of time before the real issue is how these guns are made and sold, not whether they are available.

A few recent and older related posts:

• Could latest tragic mass shooting prompt renewed consideration of "smart gun" technologies?
• "Smart Gun Technology Could Have Blocked Adam Lanza"
• Sentencing "highlights" in President Obama's new gun control push
• Technology, smart guns, GPS tracking and a better Second Amendment
• More on smart guns, dumb technologies and market realities
• Interesting developments in "smart gun" discussions and debate
• "Can ‘Smart Gun’ Technology Change the Stalemate Over Gun Violence?"

Two interestingly different rulings on two of the even Amendments from the Fourth Circuit

A helpful reader aleerted me to the fact that the Fourth Circuit issued some interesting criminal justice rulings yesterday.  US v. Carter, No. 12-5045 (4th Cir. Apr. 30, 2014) (available here), concerns a notable Second Amendment claim and gets started this way:

Following his conviction and sentencing for possessing two firearms while being an unlawful user of and addicted to a controlled substance (marijuana), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), Benjamin Carter appealed, contending that § 922(g)(3) infringed on his right to bear arms, in violation of the Second Amendment. We vacated the judgment and remanded the case to the district court to allow the government to substantiate the fit between § 922(g)(3) and the government’s important interest in protecting the community from gun violence.  See United States v. Carter (“Carter I”), 669 F.3d 411 (4th Cir. 2012).  After taking evidence from both sides, the district court held that the government had carried its burden in justifying the regulation of guns under § 922(g)(3), and Carter filed this second appeal.

Because we agree with the district court that the government adequately demonstrated a reasonable fit between its important interest in protecting the community from gun violence and § 922(g)(3), which disarms unlawful drug users and addicts, we now affirm.

US v. Ramirez-Castillo, No. 13-4158 (4th Cir. Apr. 30, 2014) (available here), concerns a notable Sixth Amendment claim and gets started this way:

In this appeal, we review the propriety of a prison sentence imposed subsequent to a jury trial in which the jury made two specific factual findings but never returned a guilty verdict.  Saul Ramirez-Castillo (“Appellant”) challenges his conviction and sentence for possession of a prohibited object by a federal inmate.  On December 14, 2011, Appellant was charged in a single-count indictment with “knowingly possess[ing] prohibited objects, that is, two homemade weapons,” while an inmate at a Federal Correctional Institute in Estill, South Carolina (“FCI Estill”), in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1791(a)(2), (b)(3), and (c).  A jury trial was held on September 25, 2012.  At the conclusion of the evidence, the district court charged the jury with determining: (1) whether the first object at issue was a “weapon”; and (2) whether the second object at issue was possessed by Appellant. The jury answered “yes” to each question, but was never asked to determine whether Appellant was “guilty” or “not guilty” of the charged offense. Although the jury never returned a guilty verdict, the parties proceeded to sentencing on February 21, 2013.  Appellant was sentenced to 33 months’ imprisonment, to be served consecutively to his prior undischarged term of imprisonment of 66 months.

Because we conclude the district court violated Appellant’s right to have a jury determine his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, we vacate Appellant’s conviction and sentence, and we remand the case to the district court.

I cannot help but find a bit of functional irony in the reality of the Carter and Ramirez-Castillo results: an illegal alien possessing weapons in federal prison prevails on his Sixth Amendment jury rights claim, while an American marijuana user in his home loses in his Second Amendment gun rights claim.

Without much to say about the Second Amendment, SCOTUS gives broad reading to federal firearm possession crime

In a unanimous ruling (with two separate concurrences), the Supreme Court this morning interpreted broadly in US v. Castleman, No. 12–1371 (S. Ct. Mar. 26, 2014) (available here) the federal crime set forth in, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9), prohibiting anyone who has been convicted of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” from ever possessing a gun. Here is how the main opinion in Castleman, authored by Justice Sotomayor, gets started and its final two paragraphs:

Recognizing that “[f]irearms and domestic strife are a potentially deadly combination,” United States v. Hayes, 555 U. S. 415, 427 (2009), Congress forbade the possession of firearms by anyone convicted of “a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.” 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(9).  The respondent, James Alvin Castleman, pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor offense of having “intentionally or knowingly cause[d] bodily injury to” the mother of his child. App. 27. The question before us is whether this conviction qualifies as “a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.”  We hold that it does....

Finally, Castleman suggests — in a single paragraph — that we should read §922(g)(9) narrowly because it implicates his constitutional right to keep and bear arms.  But Castleman has not challenged the constitutionality of §922(g)(9), either on its face or as applied to him, and the meaning of the statute is sufficiently clear that we need not indulge Castleman’s cursory nod to constitutional avoidance concerns.

Castleman’s conviction for having “intentionally or knowingly cause[d] bodily injury to” the mother of his child qualifies as a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.”  The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit is therefore reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

Notably, there are separate concurrences by Justice Scalia (author of the landmark Heller Second Amendment ruling) and Justice Alito (author of the follow-up McDonald ruling describing gun possession as a fundamental right). But neither Justice seems even a bit concerned by a broadened interpretation of a federal statute that makes forever criminal the possession of a firearm by millions of persons who have been convicted of only a certain type of misdemeanor.

For many of the reasons set forth in the various Castleman opinions (which I need to read carefully before commenting further), I think the Justices are on solid ground with statutory interpretation in this case. But what I think makes the case truly interesting and telling is what short shrift is given to the supposedly fundamental rights protected by the Second Amendment even by all five Justices who have previous spoke grandly about these rights in Heller and McDonald.

"Are there no limits on Second Amendment rights?"

The title of this post is the title of this new entry by Lyle Denniston at the "Constitution Daily" blog of the National Constitution Center.  After I reprint some excerpts, I will explain why I see more limits on Second Amendment rights than any other right in the Constitution:

In only one place in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights is there a provision that flatly bars the government from regulating one of the protected rights. That is in the First Amendment, declaring that “Congress shall make no law respecting” the rights listed in that Amendment. The “right to keep and bear arms” is not one of those rights; it is contained in the Second Amendment.

The Second Amendment’s text, of course, does say that the right it protects “shall not be infringed.” Is that the same thing as saying that government may pass “no law respecting” gun rights?...

The only place that Americans can look for a binding interpretation of what the Constitution’s words mean – other than to the people acting through the amendment process to make a new constitutional declaration – are the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court....

Over the time since 1791, when the Bill if Rights was ratified, the Supreme Court has given its blessing to an entire governing edifice that regulates First Amendment rights: the laws of libel and defamation, limits on publishing secret military strategy, regulation of “obscene” and “indecent” expression, and limits on “hate speech.” Famously, the court has said that one has no right to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Even the right to worship freely sometimes is curbed by laws that regulate conduct that has religious meaning.

In contrast to the First Amendment, there is very little constitutional history about the meaning of the Second Amendment. In fact, until just five years ago, the “right to keep and bear arms” was not generally understand as a personal right to have a gun, even for self-defense. It was only in 2008 that the Supreme Court declared that such a personal right does, indeed, exist.

That decision, in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, is – so far – the most important decision the court has ever issued on the scope of the “right to keep and bear arms.” But in that very ruling, the Court said explicitly: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” It went on to say just as clearly that it was not barring the government from imposing “reasonable regulation” on that right.

Is a “reasonable regulation” of gun rights, then, an “infringement” on those rights? If the word “infringement” means to encroach on something, as one does when one “trespasses” on someone else’s private property, that does not support the idea that Second Amendment rights are absolutes. Government can “trespass” on private property to put out a fire, for example....

The Supreme Court, of course, could re-enter into that national debate if it felt a need to clarify just what kind of “regulation” of gun rights is allowed without being found to violate the Second Amendment. Up to now, however, the Court does not seem to sense that need. It has issued only one significant gun rights decision since the 2008 ruling, and that 2010 decision in McDonald v. Chicago expanded the personal right to a gun to exist at the state and local level, as well as at the federal level. The court did not go further to explain what it would allow in gun regulation by state and local governments.

It has been asked, every year since then, to take on a variety of new cases, to answer some of the lingering questions: does the personal right to have a gun extend beyond one’s own home, who can be forbidden to have a gun at all, when can a gun be carried in public in a concealed way, what types of guns or ammunition can be regulated or even banned, what places in a community are too sensitive or too prone to violence to allow guns in them, how can the government trace a gun that has been used in a violent incident, how freely should gun shows be allowed to operate?

However, the Court has resisted giving an answer to any follow-up questions. And what that has meant, in the national conversation over gun rights, is that anyone’s argument about the extent of those rights is just as good as anyone else’s, and neither side needs to listen to the arguments that the other side makes.

As regular readers know, I have long highlighted (and lamented) that so far the Second Amendment has been interpreted by lower courts to mean that, if an American ever does one bad thing once (a felony or certain misdemeanors), she can forever be subject to a criminal convction for exercising Second Amendment rights. I know of no other express right set forth in the Bill of Rights that a person forever forfeits based on a single prior bad act. Thus, from my perspective, the Second Amendment is subject to many more rigid limits than any other constitutional right.

Louisiana Supreme Court at crosshairs of strong gun rights and tough drug laws

As reported in this effective local article, headlined "Court considering second major gun law: La. drug-gun statute latest to face review," the top court in the Pelican State has a lot of interesting legal issues to sort out in the wake of state voters having last year approved by a gun-rights constitutional amendment backed by the National Rifle Association.  Here are the particulars:

Amid the growing confusion over whether Louisiana’s litany of gun crimes violates its residents’ turbocharged right to bear arms, the state Supreme Court has decided it will try to settle one of the most consequential questions: Does it remain constitutional to charge a person with a high-grade felony for having a gun at the same time as illegal drugs, no matter what kind of drugs or how much?

Rico Webb, a 22-year-old caught in a car with one marijuana cigar and a gun, points to a state constitutional amendment passed last year, applauded by conservatives and the National Rifle Association, that for the first time in American history declared gun ownership a fundamental right in Louisiana, subject to the same level of judicial scrutiny as free speech and voter equality.

The amendment provoked an avalanche of legal challenges to the state’s major gun-crime laws. At least three judges have declared various criminal statutes unconstitutional. The Louisiana Supreme Court is tasked with sorting out the mess.

The high court already is considering the statute that forbids certain felons from possessing firearms. It heard oral arguments last month, and its decision is pending.  In the meantime, the court agreed on Friday to take up Webb’s challenge to the law that punishes the possession of guns and drugs with five to 10 years in prison without the possibility of parole....

The constitutional amendment sailed through the Legislature last year and received overwhelming support from voters at the ballot box. Its proponents, both inside and outside the Legislature, defended the measure as a guarantee of freedom if federal gun protections were to somehow fall.

But critics described it as an unnecessary law that solved no problem.  Louisiana already had among the most liberal gun laws in the nation. All the amendment has accomplished, they say, is widespread constitutional chaos that could endanger public safety and waste hundreds of courthouse hours on the taxpayers’ dime.

The measure was pitched by conservative legislators as a state equivalent to the Second Amendment.  But in practice, it goes far past the protections offered by the U.S. Constitution.  The amendment erased language in the law that allowed the Legislature to prohibit carrying a concealed weapon and specified that, for the first time anywhere in the nation, gun laws would be subject to a “strict scrutiny” test, the highest level of judicial review.

“What the Legislature did is it took discretion away from itself,” said Raymond Diamond, a LSU law professor and Second Amendment scholar.  “This pro-gun Legislature voted to bind itself, and future Legislatures that might not be so pro-gun, from undertaking gun control. It has similarly binded local communities in ways that right now we really don’t understand.”  He has described the amendment as “a can of worms.”

It pushed the Louisiana Supreme Court to become the first in America to analyze criminal gun statutes using a strict scrutiny test.  That test presumes that every person has the right to be armed. Any law that seeks to infringe that right must pass a grueling legal test that kills more than two-third of the laws that come up against it.  The state must show that the law serves a compelling government interest, and that it is so narrowly defined that there is no less restrictive way of achieving that interest.

The arguments against the current statutes are similar, in that they equally dole out “heavy-handed penalties” to vast groups of people.  The drug statute treats people caught with small amounts of marijuana the same as those with large amounts of more serious drugs.  The felon-with-a-gun statute equates burglars with murderers. It includes a list of 150 felony offenses, characterized as drug or violence crimes, and says that anyone convicted of any of them is barred from possessing a firearm for 10 years after being released from prison.

The state supports that law by arguing that those with a demonstrated capacity to break the law are more dangerous when armed. Its position on the drugs-and-gun statute is the same: Drugs beget violence and guns make volatile situations deadly.

But Webb’s attorney, New Orleans public defender Colin Reingold, argues that the state cannot prove, under a strict-scrutiny test, that a single marijuana blunt makes him more dangerous when armed than anyone else, particularly since the possession of alcohol and guns is not equally restricted.  “The true danger of a firearm comes not from the manner in which its owner keeps or bears it, but rather from how the citizen uses the weapon,” Reingold wrote in his appeal to the Supreme Court.

Webb, who has no criminal record, was arrested on Sept. 10, 2012, when police pulled over his girlfriend for having a broken taillight.  He confessed to police that he had the blunt in his backpack and said the gun on the floorboard was his, too.  The gun was legal and the marijuana alone would have amounted to a misdemeanor, prosecuted in Municipal Court and typically punished with a fine and probation.  But combined, the gun and pot became a felony with a minimum sentence of five years and a maximum of 10 years, without the possibility of parole.

Webb appealed his charge to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which announced on Friday it would hear the case.  Over the years, the courts will have to sort out which of the 80 other gun crimes on Louisiana law books remain constitutional under the new amendment.

The state has become an experiment. “This is an exciting time because there is some risk that some of the laws will be declared unconstitutional,” Diamond said.  “Everybody’s very interested to see what the court’s going to do with it.”

Various prior Second Amendment and gun policy posts:

• Big (ugly?) NY Times report on felons getting back gun rights
• "Should pardoned felons have gun rights?"
• North Carolina Supreme Court finds state constitutional right for some felons to bear arms
• Notable new Alaska appellate decision on denying gun rights to non-violent felons
• "Convicted Felon Sues State Over Right To Bear Arms"
• Fourth Circuit suggests people must be "responsible" to get full Second Amendment protection
• Might restoration of felon gun rights actually reduce recidivism?
• Are Scooter Libby and Martha Stewart and millions of others not among the Constitution's "people"?
• "Why Can’t Martha Stewart Have a Gun?"
• Should NRA care more about gun rights for non-violent felons or those accused of domestic violence?
• "Is the Supreme Court only willing to work at the fringes of the Second Amendment?"
• Senator Rand Paul talking up restoring voting and gun rights for felons, as well as sentencing reform

Latest USSC publication highlights remarkable "disparities"(?) in federal FIP sentences

I am pleased to see that the US Sentencing Commission now has up on its website another terrific new data document in its series of reader-friendly "Quick Facts" publications.  (Regular readers may recall from this prior post that the USSC describes these publications as a way to "give readers basic facts about a single area of federal crime in an easy-to-read, two-page format.")

As I have said before, I think this series is a very valuable new innovation coming from the USSC, and I have already learned a lot and benefited greatly from these publications.  This latest document, which "presents data on offenses under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), commonly called 'felon in possession' cases," includes these notable data details:

In fiscal year 2012, 5,768 offenders were convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)....

One-quarter (25.2%) of offenders convicted under section 922(g) were assigned to the highest criminal history category (Category VI). The proportion of these offenders in other Criminal History Categories was as follows: 11.7% of these offenders were in Category I; 9.3% were in Category II; 21.1% were in Category III; 18.9% were in Category IV; and 13.8% were in Category V.

10.3% were sentenced under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) (18 U.S.C.§ 924(e))...

The average sentence length for all section 922(g) offenders was 75 months; however, one-quarter of these offenders had an average sentence of 24 months or less while one-quarter had an average sentence of 96 months or more.

The average sentence length for offenders convicted of violating only section 922(g) and who were sentenced under ACCA was 180 months.

The average sentence length for offenders convicted of violating only section 922(g) but who were not sentenced under ACCA was 46 months.

The title of this post has the term "disparities" in quotes followed by a question mark because these basic sentencing data about a pretty basic federal crime could be interpreted in many disparate ways. Given that all the offenders sentenced for FIP likely were engaged in pretty similar conduct (simple possession of a firearm) and all of them, by definition, had to have a serious criminal record in order to be subject to federal prosecution, one might see lots of unwarranted disparity among this offender group given the extraordinary outcome variations documented here -- in FY2012, over 10% of FIP offenders are getting sent away for an average of 15 years, but another 25% are going away for only 8 years, while another 25% are going away for only 2 years.

Then again, given the apparently varied criminal histories of the FIP offenders, the sentencing variation here surely reflects various (reasoned and reasonable?) judicial assessments of different levels of recidivism risk for different FIP offenders.  I certainly hope that the those being sentenced to decades behind bars for gun possession are generally those with very long rap sheets, and that those getting sent away only for a couple years are those with much more limited criminal histories.

Finally, in addition to noting the profound significance that past crimes clearly have on current sentencing in FIP cases, I must note that it is these past crimes that itself serves to convert the behavior here in to a federal crime.  Indeed, if one takes the Second Amendment very seriously (as I do), the actual "offense behavior" in these cases might often be subject to significant protection as the exercise of a fundamental constitutional right unless and until the person has a disqualifying criminal past.  Proof yet again that the past, at least when it comes to criminal sentencing and constitutional rights, is often ever-present.

Ninth Circuit rejects Second Amendment attack on federal crime of gun possession by certain misdemeanants

In a lengthy panel opinion coupled with a notable concurrence, the Ninth Circuit today in US v. Chovan, No. 11-50107 (9th Cir. Nov. 18, 2013) (available here), rejects a defendant's Second Amendment challenge to the federal statute criminalizing gun possession by persons convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors. Here is how the majority opinion starts:

Following the entry of a conditional guilty plea, Daniel Chovan appeals the district court’s denial of his motion to dismiss an indictment against him for violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9).  Section 922(g)(9) prohibits persons convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors from possessing firearms for life.  Chovan contends that § 922(g)(9) is unconstitutional both on its face and as applied to him because it violates his Second Amendment right to bear arms.  In the alternative, he argues that § 922(g)(9) does not apply to him because his civil rights have been restored within the meaning of 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(33)(B)(ii).  We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291.  We reject Chovan’s “civil rights restored” argument, hold that intermediate scrutiny applies to his Second Amendment claim, and uphold § 922(g)(9) under intermediate scrutiny.

In a lengthy concurrence, Judge Bea explains why he thinks strict scrutiny is the right way to scrutinize the federal gun crime at issue here, and his opinion concludes this way:

The Heller opinion did not provide lower courts with explicit guidance on how to analyze challenges to statutes under the Second Amendment. If we are to apply the familiar tiers of scrutiny analysis in Second Amendment cases, instead of a pure textual, historical, and structural analysis, however, history and precedent still dictate a more stringent examination of these issues than the majority allow. Strict scrutiny has become an integral aspect of much of our constitutional jurisprudence. See Fallon, supra, at 1268 (ranking strict scrutiny “among the most important doctrinal elements in constitutional law”). After applying strict scrutiny to § 922(g)(9), I come to the same conclusion as do the majority, and uphold the law. The close look afforded by strict scrutiny, however, ensures that the law truly is narrowly tailored to further a compelling governmental interest, and ensures that the Second Amendment’s contours are drawn by the Constitution, and not by Congress.

"Is the Supreme Court only willing to work at the fringes of the Second Amendment?"

The question in the title of this post is the main headline of this notable and effective new commentary by Lyle Denniston at the blog of the National Constitution Center. (Hat tip: How Appealing.)  Here are excerpts:

The Constitution’s Second Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled five years ago, protects an individual’s personal right to have a gun for self-defense.  It has returned to the Second Amendment only once since then, in a decision three years ago extending that personal right across the nation, so that it can be used to challenge state and local gun control laws as well as such laws at the federal level.

Since then, more than a half-dozen test cases on the issue have been filed at the court, and each one has been bypassed.  It appears that no one on the court is pushing to return to the issue; it takes four votes on the bench to grant review, and there is no reliable indication that any case has drawn even one vote....

Although lower courts have issued an array of differing and sometimes conflicting decisions (the pattern that usually draws in the Supreme Court), the scope of the Second Amendment right is still in a kind of constitutional limbo.  It remained there on Tuesday, when the Justices turned aside an appeal by a Maryland man, Raymond Woollard, who lives near Baltimore. He once had a permit to have a gun that he could carry outside his home, because he had shown he faced a potential threat from a son-in-law who had shown violent tendencies.  But when he tried to get the permit renewed, he was turned down, on the premise that he had not proved that he still faced a threat to his safety.  The court’s refusal to hear his appeal came quickly, after the Justices’ first fleeting look at the case. That has been the pattern for the past several years....

The message that the Supreme Court has seemed to be sending — at least up until now — is that it is in no hurry to resolve open questions about how far constitutional gun rights extend. It has not even agreed to spell out in a final way the constitutional test that it will apply to judge the validity of any specific gun control law.

As this trend continues, it tends to put an exaggerated emphasis on each new case that reaches the Supreme Court: Will this be the one that will finally get the Justices’ attention; if not, what will it take?  Since the Supreme Court is the sole entity to determine the scope of the Second Amendment right (aside from the legislatures that can put together a clarifying constitutional amendment), judges and legislators across the country have to wonder when they will get new constitutional guidance.

Especially because the Supreme Court left so much unclear about the scope and application of the Second Amendment in Heller, and particularly now that these issues have been "percolating" in lower courts for a half-decade, I think it is getting to be past time for the Justices to take up some "Heller application" cases.  In this setting, the SCOTUS is starting to seem a bit like too many others decision-makers inside the Beltway: apparently unwilling or unable to make hard decisions about how competing priorities ought to be balanced in the development of Second Amendment jurisprudence, the Justices so far are avoiding making any decisions at all.

SCOTUS takes up another federal criminal gun case while dodging bigger Second Amendment contentions

The Supreme Court this morning granted review on a technical federal gun crime issue, but denied review on a Second Amendment case looking to figure out the reach of SCOTUS rulings in Heller and McDonald.  Here is the SCOTUSblog summary of these developments:

The Court also granted review ... on the legality under federal law of the owner of a gun selling it to someone else, if the new owner can have a gun legally.  That case is Abramski v. United States (12-1493).  However, the Court followed its recent pattern of refusing to hear constitutional challenges to gun control laws under the Second Amendment, turning aside a Maryland case seeking to expand the personal right to have a gun beyond the home (Woollard v. Gallagher, 13-42).

Notably, Abramski is the second technical statutory federal gun crime case that the Supreme Court has decided to resolve this Term.  Two weeks ago, the Court granted cert in US v. Castleman, which concerns whether a "Tennessee conviction for misdemeanor domestic assault by intentionally or knowingly causing bodily injury to the mother of his child qualifies as a conviction for a 'misdemeanor crime of domestic violence' under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9)."

Based on a too-quick review of the cert briefing in these cases, I doubt that either Abramski or Castleman will result in a major ruling concerning federal criminal law or sentencing.  But, especially given the relative dearth of significant sentencing cases on the SCOTUS docket so far, I will keep these cases on my persona watch-list.  I think either or both cases could develop into Second Amendment sleepers if some of the briefing or some of the Justices contend that there is more at stake in these cases than just a technical federal statutory crime issue.

NY Times debates "Reconsidering Young Lifers’ Sentences"

The Room for Debate section of the New York Times has this new set of pieces discussing whether all juve murderers should get the retroactive benefit of the Supreme Court's Miller Eighth Amendment ruling.  Here is the section's set up:

In the wake of last year’s Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Alabama that juveniles may never receive a mandatory sentence of life without parole, The Times editorial board has called for courts and legislators to apply this principle regardless of the date of conviction.

Courts in some states agree. Earlier this month, the Louisiana Supreme Court took on this question in the case of Darryl Tate, who was 17 when he robbed two men and killed one of them in 1981.

Should all people in prison for life without parole who committed their crimes before their 18th birthday be eligible for a new sentencing hearing?

Here are the contributions, with links via the commentary titles:

• "Give Them Another Chance" by Jody Kent Lavy, Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth

• "Judgments Should Remain Intact" by Kent Scheidegger, Criminal Justice Legal Foundation

• "The Problem With Retroactivity Rules" by William Baude, Volokh Conspiracy

• "It Won’t Be Easy, But It Must Be Done" by R. Daniel Okonkwo, D.C. Lawyers for Youth

• "Time to Affirm What We Mean by ‘Juvenile’" by Annie Salsich, Vera Institute of Justice

Senator Rand Paul talking up restoring voting and gun rights for felons, as well as sentencing reform

My (unhealthy? appropriate?) bromance with U.S. Senator Rand Paul has reached a whole new level based on this notable new article from Kentucky.  The piece is headlined "Sen. Rand Paul calls for restoring felons' voting, gun rights," and here are excerpts:

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul told a largely black audience Monday in Louisville that he will push to restore the voting and gun-ownership rights of felons who have completed their sentences — and he will urge state Senate Republicans to follow his lead. Currently in Kentucky, felons must petition the governor to get their voting rights restored.

“I am in favor of letting people get their rights back, the right to vote ... Second Amendment rights, all your rights to come back,” he said. “I know of one man who 30-some-odd years ago had pot plants in his closet in college, got a felony conviction in college, still can’t vote, and it’s plagued him his whole life trying to get work.”

The Republican’s comments came at the Plymouth Community Renewal Center in western Louisville as he spoke with community leaders about issues that affect African Americans. Additionally, as he has done in the past, he called for doing away with mandatory minimum sentences in the federal criminal justice system, saying they are often too harsh.

The Rev. Patrick Delahanty, the executive director of the Catholic Conference of Kentucky and who was not at the meeting, applauded Paul’s stance on restoring voting rights in a later interview. He said Paul’s comments could help advance the issue during the next session of the General Assembly....

Paul said during the meeting in western Louisville that he believes felons should have their rights restored automatically — either immediately after completing their sentences or at some specified point after the sentences are served. He said he plans to talk to leaders in the Kentucky Senate about their opposition and would be willing to travel to Frankfort to testify in favor of legislation to restore voting rights....

The League of Women Voters found in a 2006 study that nearly one in four African Americans is banned from the polls because of a felony conviction, compared with 1 in 17 Kentuckians overall.

Paul, who has said he is considering running for president in 2016, has been meeting with African-American groups in an effort to bridge the gap between blacks and the Republican Party. Paul also met this year with students at the historically black Howard University in Washington, D.C., and then later with students at historically black Simmons College in Louisville.

During an hourlong discussion Monday, Paul listened as black leaders talked about issues that hinder African Americans’ ability to get a leg up and fully participate in the community. Much of their concern centered around helping black men who committed crimes but have turned their lives around.

This AP article about Senator Paul's comments today also contributes to my man-love for this GOP leader:

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul drew a favorable response Monday in a mostly black Louisville neighborhood as the tea party favorite promoted the ideas of giving judges more sentencing flexibility, restoring voting rights for felons and offering tax breaks to lure businesses into struggling communities....

Paul spoke with a group of ministers and community activists during a meeting that lasted more than an hour. The senator told the group at the Plymouth Community Renewal Center that the "War on Drugs" unfairly targeted blacks. "We went crazy on the 'War on Drugs,'" the libertarian-leaning senator said. "Drugs aren't good. We should have some laws. ... We have to figure out how to go forward, so changing those laws is important."

Paul criticized federal mandatory minimum penalties that he said have clogged prisons with non-violent drug offenders. Blacks make up a disproportionately high number of those inmates, he said. "We have people in jail for life for non-violent drug crimes," he said. "I think this is a crime, in and of itself."

The first-term senator is a leading sponsor behind legislation that would give federal judges greater flexibility in sentencing. The measure is scheduled to be reviewed at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing later this week.

"Mandatory minimums have trapped a lot of people, made them felons, made it hard for them to get jobs, for non-violent crimes," Paul said. "I would just as soon take some of these non-violent crimes and make them misdemeanors so you don't get in that trap."

Paul said he's also considering legislation that would restore voting rights for non-violent felons of federal crimes. The bill is still in draft form, he said, but the restoration of rights would apply to non-violent offenders who haven't committed other crimes for perhaps five years.

Paul said such a bill would especially be aimed at people who committed drug offenses as young adults — which he referred to as a "youthful mistake." Such offenders pay for those indiscretions for decades to come, he said. "I think the biggest problem right now with voting rights is ... not being allowed to vote because the law says you can never vote," he said.

Some recent and older related posts:

• NAACP head recognizes Tea Party favors some progressive criminal justice reforms (and sometimes more than Democrats)
• Rand Paul begins forceful pitch in campaign against federal mandatory minimums
• "The most interesting part of [Rand Paul's] speech was his widely anticipated defense of drug law reform." 
• "Prison-Sentence Reform: A bill to give judges flexibility to impose shorter sentences deserves conservatives’ support."
• Wall Street Journal pitch for the Prez to get behind the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013
• Justice Safety Valve Act gets bipartisan introduction in House of Representatives
• "Bipartisan Legislation To Give Judges More Flexibility For Federal Sentences Introduced"
• Another notable GOP member of Congress advocating for federal sentencing reform

"Can ‘Smart Gun’ Technology Change the Stalemate Over Gun Violence?"

The title of this post is the headline of this new piece of reporting over at The Crime Report, which echoes some ideas that I have been raising on this blog for a number of years and that I have given extra attention to following the Newtown massacre.  Here are excerpts:

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter issued a challenge to the gun industry yesterday, arguing that the application of “smart gun” technology, designed to program firearms so that only their owners can fire them, could not only save lives but neutralize the concerns of gun rights advocates.

"Why don't you at least try?” Nutter, who also serves as president of the U.S., Conference of Mayors, asked Joe Bartozzi, vice-president of the Connecticut-based firearms manufacturer O.F. Mossberg and Sons.  “Put one on the market and see what happens."

But Bartozzi, speaking at a roundtable for newsroom editors and columnists at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, insisted it wouldn’t work.  Bartozzi said Mossberg had already surveyed focus groups about some of the cutting-edge technology already available, such as personalized rings that could be digitally programmed to recognize the legitimate owner of a weapon.

The response, he said, was overwhelmingly negative.  Customers who wanted guns to protect themselves and their families considered such technology too unreliable, he said. "What if I have to hand the gun to my spouse in an emergency?”  Bartozzi recalled a focus group member asking.

"It’s hard to understand that it represents more than just a piece of steel or plastic.  It represents personal security; it represents security when the police aren't there.  It represents even food when there's no supermarket. It represents self-defense.  It represents liberty and freedom for a lot of people," Bartozzi said....

Nutter and fellow panelist Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak argued that finding technological solutions to the challenge of gun access represented a common sense approach to a problem both sides agreed was a key factor in reducing the kind of gun violence that has afflicted many U.S. cities: the easy access to guns — particularly those sold or trafficked on the black market — to youth gang members and others who otherwise could not get them legally....

The smart gun technology issue, ranging from biometrics to trigger locks, also reflects a wider challenge by gun safety advocates to treat guns as consumer products subject to national safety standards similar to seatbelts in cars or childproof medicine bottles.

Bartozzi, a member of the board of governors of the National Shooting Sports Foundation — the leading industry lobby group — insisted guns are unlike other consumer products subject to federal rules because they are protected by the Second Amendment.  “I think sometimes we confuse what our privileges and rights. Driving a car is a privilege.  You have the right to own a gun,” he said.

Rybak and other speakers at yesterday’s “Under the Gun” roundtable charged that leading gun rights lobbies such as the National rifle Association (NRA) and the NSSF made it harder to reach any compromise because of their objections to both technological solutions and efforts to modernize even the current system for tracking guns used during crimes.

Based in part on prior discussions on this blog (some of which are linked below), I understand fully the reservations that many gun owners and gun-rights activists have about using technology to try to prevent mis-use of firearms.  Nevertheless, I think the development of device that might at least enable one to eletronically disable a stolen or lost firearm could perhaps generate interest in the marketplace, especially if the federal government created tax incentives to encourage use of this kind of gun-safety technology.

More broadly, I think the development of a safer "smart gun" could and should be spurred by some kind of "Project X" private funding scheme through a university or think tank (see example here), especially now that it seems the private marketplace or governments are making much progress on this front.  I suspect just a few millions dollars as a "smart gun" prize (only a fraction of what is being poured into gun policy lobby shops and PACs) could go a very long way to moving forward and ultimately saving innocent lives.

A few recent and older related posts:

• Could latest tragic mass shooting prompt renewed consideration of "smart gun" technologies?
• "Smart Gun Technology Could Have Blocked Adam Lanza"
• Sentencing "highlights" in President Obama's new gun control push
• Technology, smart guns, GPS tracking and a better Second Amendment
• More on smart guns, dumb technologies and market realities
• Interesting developments in "smart gun" discussions and debate

In Chicago for symposium on "Gun Violence and the Second Amendment"

As detailed on this webpage, I am on a panel this morning at the Union League Club of Chicago to help kick off a "symposium on the issue of gun violence and the Second Amendment, co-sponsored by ULCC Public Affairs and the Chicago Bar Association." Here are the details:

ULCC Public Affairs and its Subcommittee on the Administration of Justice, in partnership with the Chicago Bar Association's Human Rights Committee, presents a half-day (8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.) symposium with expert panelists focusing on efforts to curtail gun violence and the parameters of the Second Amendment....

The event begins with continental breakfast at 8:30 a.m. and a panel discussion on the scope and impact of the Second Amendment on the issue of gun violence prevention, moderated by Professor Ann Lousin of the John Marshall Law School.  Panelists for this segment include David G. Sigale (plaintiff's attorney in McDonald, et al v. City of Chicago), Professor Geoffrey R. Stone (former provost of The University of Chicago and dean of its law school), and Professor Douglas Berman (Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University Law School).

The mid-morning panel, titled "Public Policy Initiatives Related to Gun Control and Gun Violence," will review state and federal legislative responses to gun violence as well as social concerns correlated with gun violence, such as poverty and lack of educational and employment opportunities.  The discussion will be moderated by J. Timothy Eaton of Shefsky & Froelich and will feature panelists Professor Jens Ludwig, University of Chicago; Juliet Leftwich, Legal Director, Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, and John Tillman, CEO of the Illinois Policy Institute.

As reported in this SCOTUSblog post, the Supreme Court is slated to release orders and opinions at the exact time of my panel discussion.  Based on the blogging variation on Murphy's Law, I am predicting this means that SCOTUS will hand down this morning some of the big sentencing decisions I have been eagerly awaiting, and in turn that I will need a lot more time than usual to report and assses whatever happens.  (Of course, the very fact that I am making this prediction could mean that SCOTUS decides today only some more boring civil rulings that I and other sentencing fans can just ignore.)

Don't registered sex offenders need gun rights for personal self-defense more than others?

The question in the title of this post is my initial reaction to this big newpaper story from Iowa, headlined "50 sex offenders have gun permits: Law enforcement is concerned that state law allows offenders to easily obtain permits."  Here are excerpts from the lengthy Des Moines Register story,  which is less than fully informative about legal matters, but provides a lot of interesting facts nonetheless:

Joshua Duehr is one of more than 50 sex offenders in Iowa who can carry a gun in public. “I don’t leave the house without one,” said Duehr, who lives in Dubuque.

It’s legal — and it’s news that has surprised some state lawmakers and alarmed a few Iowa and national law enforcement officers.  An FBI official, the president of the Iowa State Sheriffs’ & Deputies’ Association, the president of the Iowa State Police Association and two state lawmakers told The Des Moines Register they have public safety concerns after learning that a two-year-old state law on gun permits allows registered sex offenders to obtain a weapons permit....

Some, if not most, applications by sex offenders for permits to carry weapons would have been denied by county sheriffs before 2011, according to officials from the Iowa Department of Public Safety.  But under a two-year-old state law, sheriffs no longer have discretion to reject such applications.

The law change means people convicted of misdemeanor sex crimes can now walk the streets, malls or virtually any public place in the state while carrying a gun.  Almost all of the sex offenders on the Register’s list were convicted of misdemeanors such as lascivious conduct with a minor or assault with intent to commit sexual abuse.

But the Register found three men convicted of felony sex crimes who had permits to carry weapons in public.  Two of those men had their permits revoked by sheriffs after the Register asked about their situations....

Some sheriffs were aware that sex offenders are carrying weapons in public, primarily because they issue the permits and have firsthand knowledge about the issue.  But other professionals in Iowa’s law enforcement community were caught off guard.

Rob Burdess, a Newton police detective and the president of the Iowa State Police Association, was unaware that sex offenders are being issued weapon permits until he was asked about it by the Register.  He noted that people with felonies or domestic abuse convictions are typically unable to obtain weapon permits, so he questions the logic of allowing sex offenders — even those convicted of non-felony offenses — to carry weapons in public....

[A] review of states surrounding Iowa found that some sex offenders can obtain permits to carry weapons even though authorities said they aren’t aware of a large number being issued.  Those states — including Nebraska, Missouri and Wisconsin — have laws similar to Iowa’s that do not specifically exclude sex offenders from obtaining such permits. Minnesota law, however, makes it a misdemeanor for a person required to register as a sex offender to carry a handgun.

Just as state laws vary, so do opinions about whether armed sex offenders inherently pose more of a risk than other citizens.  Sex offense recidivism rates are much lower than commonly believed, according to legislative testimony given in multiple states by Jill Levenson, an associate professor at Lynn University in Florida.  She is frequently recognized as a national expert on sexual violence....

National uniform crime data from 2006 — the most recent data available — show that about half of all reported sex offenses included a weapon of some form (including the use of fists) but less than 1 percent of all reported sex offenses included the use of a firearm, according to Jason Rydberg, a graduate student at Michigan State.  Iowa numbers mirror the national trend.  Of the roughly 5,750 people on Iowa’s sex offender registry, 47 — or less than 1 percent — used guns in their crimes, according to data from the Iowa Department of Public Safety....

The Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, a national organization focused on the prevention of sexual abuse, generally advocates for cases to be reviewed individually when assessing if a sex offender is likely to reoffend or jeopardize public safety.  “There’s no blanket way of stating that sex offenders are more dangerous than everybody else,” said Maia Christopher, executive director of the association.

Iowa Rep. Clel Baudler, R-Greenfield and a former state trooper, isn’t reassured by the type of research offered by Levenson or groups like the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers.  Until he was contacted for this article, Baudler was unaware that the new gun permit law he advocated for in 2010 has allowed dozens of sex offenders to obtain weapon permits....

An Iowa sheriff may deny a permit to carry a weapon if he believes probable cause exists that the person is likely to use a weapon in a way that would endanger themselves or others.  Those types of denials typically must be based on documented actions from the past two years.  Iowans who believe sheriffs have wrongly rejected their applications for a weapon permit may appeal.  Each appeal, generally reviewed by an administrative law judge, can cost a county government and taxpayers hundreds of dollars....

The cost and the real possibility of losing a case is one reason sheriffs don’t deny permits to carry weapons — even in cases where they have reservations — several sheriffs told the Register.

Washington County in January issued a permit to acquire a weapon to Ronald Nicholis Hahn Jr., who has been on the sex offender registry since 2005 because he was convicted of indecent exposure.  Dunbar said he approved the permit because Hahn passed background checks.  Hahn, 51, said he poses no threat to public safety and that he uses guns for hunting.  “My offense happened seven or eight years ago and it has nothing to do with weapons, so why should I be denied the ability to purchase a gun?” Hahn asked.

Rep. Matt Windschitl, R-Missouri Valley, indicated that he believes Iowa’s new weapons permit law doesn’t need to be revised to specifically ban sex offenders.  People convicted of felonies, including sex offenders, are already prohibited from obtaining a permit, he emphasized. “If their local sheriff does not have probable cause to restrict that person under current law from being able to obtain a permit, then that’s the situation at hand,” said Windschitl, a gunsmith who has advocated for multiple pro-gun bills.

Aggravatingly, this story fails to note that it is a serious federal crime, subject to up to 10 years imprisonment, for any and all persons convicted of a felony or a domestic violence misdemeanor from even possessing a gun. Thus, as the story indirectly notes, only persons without a felony or domestic violence conviction is even lawfully able to possess a gun, let alone get a lawful state permit for one. (I find notable that somehow three sex offender felons were able to get an Iowa gun permit, which perhaps highlights the need for background checks on how good current background checks are in the permit-issuance process in Iowa.)

More to the point of the question in the title of this post, if we think the Second Amendment right to bear arms is linked in some important and significant way to the natural right of personal self-defense (as Heller suggested), a reasonable claim might be made that it would be uniquely unconstitutional to deny gun permits to otherwise eligible persons on a state sex offender registry. There has long been considerable anecdotal evidence of considerable vigilante violence directed toward persons based simply on their presence on a sex offender registry. Given the history of private violence directed toward sex offenders — not to mention the possibility that local law enforcement might not be too quick to come to the aid of someone they know is a registered sex offender — I can fully understand why Joshua Duehr and other low-level registered sex offender might be afraid to move around in public without packing heat to potentially aid any efforts to exercise their natural right of self defense.

Though I do not fancy myself a Second Amendment expert, I wonder if a state law like Minnesota's  prohibiting misdemeanor sex offenders from having a firearm in constitutional in the wake of Heller and McDonald.  If and when a low-level sex offender in Minnesota or elsewhere could reasonably document a history of serious personal threats of serious violence directed toward him because of his placement on the registry and asserted a genuine belief in his need for a firearm in order to protect himself, could a state really require his name and address to stay on the sex offender registry while also denying him a right to keep and bear arms to defend himself?

Based on new Louisiana constitutional provision, state judge strikes down law criminalizing felon gun posssission

As reported in this lengthy local article from New Orleans, some felons in the Bayou have gotten (for now) some benefit from the modern gun rights movement. Here are the basics:

An Orleans Parish judge on Thursday ruled that the state statute forbidding certain felons from possessing firearms is unconstitutional, in the wake of a constitutional amendment passed last year that made the right to bear arms a fundamental one in Louisiana.  The issue will now go straight to the state Supreme Court, which must decide whether the statute infringes on Louisiana citizens' now-enhanced right to gun possession.

Orleans Parish Criminal District Court Judge Darryl Derbigny on Thursday dismissed the charge against one felon, but took his decision a step further than another judge faced with a similar decision earlier this month.

Derbigny ruled that the entire statute -- RS 14:95.1 -- was unconstitutional after voters last year approved by a sweeping majority a constitutional amendment backed by the National Rifle Association. That bill made gun ownership a "fundamental right," on the same level as freedom of speech or religion. A court interpreting any law restricting a fundamental right -- as gun ownership is now considered -- must approach it with "strict scrutiny," the highest level of judicial scrutiny.

Before Jan. 1, questions of gun rights were considered with "rational scrutiny," which allowed regulations to "protect the public health, safety, morals or general welfare." But strict scrutiny requires that the law is, first, necessary for a "compelling government interest." Then, it must be so narrowly defined as to serve only that interest and, third, be the least restrictive way of doing so.

The Orleans Parish public defenders office challenged the constitutionality of the statute on behalf of a half-dozen clients, all charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. The attorneys concede that public safety is a compelling interest to bar violent offenders, like murderers or armed robbers, from possessing weapons. But the law also bars people convicted of a number of less obviously violent felonies from possessing guns....

The case before Derbigny involved a 20-year-old man named Glen Draughter who had previously pleaded guilty to attempted simple burglary. Draughter was later caught riding in a car with two other people; a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson was in the backseat and an AK-47 with a 30-round magazine was in the trunk.

Public defenders Jill Pasquarella and Colin Reingold argued that under a strict-scrutiny test, the government must be able to provide compelling data showing that those convicted of crimes like simple burglary prove a heightened threat to society when armed. "There is, simply, no rational basis for stripping Louisianans of their rights ... where they have been convicted of crimes that are wholly unrelated to firearm possession or use," Pasquarella wrote to judges in this and several other cases.

Assistant District Attorney Matthew Payne submitted sociological studies suggesting a link between such offenses and a proclivity toward later violent crime.

But Derbigny on Thursday ruled that the statute infringed on constitutional protections when analyzed under a "strict scrutiny" test required of laws restricting fundamental rights. He wrote that it "is not narrowly tailored to achieve the government's interest."...

Judge Frank Marullo had already ruled in favor of defendants in several similar cases. But he did not declare the statute unconstitutional, saying his rulings applied to specific defendants and the circumstances of their cases. Judge Arthur Hunter is scheduled to hear a similar case later this month.

Payne on Thursday noted that he intends to appeal the decision. When a statute is deemed unconstitutional in its entirety, the appeal skips mid-level appeals courts and is fast-tracked straight to the state Supreme Court for review.

If the Supreme Court sides with Derbigny, and rules that the statute violates the state constitution, the law will be scrapped and the Legislature forced to rewrite it. If the court finds that the amendment makes the gun-possession law unconstitutional, it will also have to decide whether the unconstitutionality is retroactive -- which could jeopardize convictions that occurred before the amendment went into effect....

In the meantime, prosecutions of felons in possession of a firearm will continue on, said Chris Bowman, spokesman for Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro. In the weeks leading up to the November election, with the gun rights amendment on the ballot, Cannizzaro warned of the possible fallout.

He wrote an op-ed column threatening that it would lead to a "flurry of litigation in which criminal defendants will challenge the constitutionality of current criminal laws regulating gun possession."

The nonpartisan Bureau of Governmental Research also urged voters to defeat the constitutional amendment, saying it "would expose the public to unnecessary risks and hamper law enforcement efforts" and adding: "There is no good reason to enter this uncharted territory." Gov. Bobby Jindal wrote an op-ed too, but his exhorted voters to pass the amendment, which he described as "an ironclad guarantee of freedom here in Louisiana."

In a prepared statement Thursday, the Jindal administration said: "We disagree with the judge's ruling. The amendment passed last session is not in conflict with Louisiana or federal law barring felons from owning guns."

Cannizzaro's office, meanwhile, offered an "I told you so" statement. "District Attorney Cannizzaro predicted that the passing of this amendment would cause prosecutors across the state to go to court and defend the constitutionality of 14:95.1," Bowman said Thursday.

Some related Second Amendment and gun policy posts:

• Big (ugly?) NY Times report on felons getting back gun rights
• "Should pardoned felons have gun rights?"
• Can dismissed domestic violence complaint justify revoking gun permit?
• "Medical marijuana users fight for gun rights"
• North Carolina Supreme Court finds state constitutional right for some felons to bear arms
• Notable new Alaska appellate decision on denying gun rights to non-violent felons
• "Convicted Felon Sues State Over Right To Bear Arms"
• Fourth Circuit suggests people must be "responsible" to get full Second Amendment protection
• Might restoration of felon gun rights actually reduce recidivism?
• Are Scooter Libby and Martha Stewart and millions of others not among the Constitution's "people"?
• "Why Can’t Martha Stewart Have a Gun?"
• Should NRA care more about gun rights for non-violent felons or those accused of domestic violence?

Should NRA care more about gun rights for non-violent felons or those accused of domestic violence?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this lengthy new front-page New York Times article headlined "Ruled a Threat to Family, but Allowed to Keep Guns." Here is an excerpts from the first part of the article:

[I]n one of a handful of states, the protection order would have forced [an abusive husband] to relinquish his firearms.  But that is not the case in Washington and most of the country, in large part because of the influence of the National Rifle Association and its allies.

Advocates for domestic violence victims have long called for stricter laws governing firearms and protective orders.  Their argument is rooted in a grim statistic: when women die at the hand of an intimate partner, that hand is more often than not holding a gun.  In these most volatile of human dramas, they contend, the right to bear arms must give ground to the need to protect a woman’s life.

In statehouses across the country, though, the N.R.A. and other gun-rights groups have beaten back legislation mandating the surrender of firearms in domestic violence situations.  They argue that gun ownership, as a fundamental constitutional right, should not be stripped away for anything less serious than a felony conviction — and certainly not, as an N.R.A. lobbyist in Washington State put it to legislators, for the “mere issuance of court orders.”

That resistance is being tested anew in the wake of the massacre in Newtown, Conn., as proposals on the mandatory surrender of firearms are included in gun control legislation being debated in several states.

Among them is Washington, where current law gives judges issuing civil protection orders the discretion to require the surrender of firearms if, for example, they find a “serious and imminent threat” to public health.  But records and interviews show that they rarely do so, making the state a useful laboratory for examining the consequences, as well as the politics, of this standoff over the limits of Second Amendment rights.

By analyzing a number of Washington databases, The New York Times identified scores of gun-related crimes committed by people subject to recently issued civil protection orders, including murder, attempted murder and kidnapping.  In at least five instances over the last decade, women were shot to death less than a month after obtaining protection orders. In at least a half-dozen other killings, the victim was not the person being protected but someone else.  There were dozens of gun-related assaults like the one Ms. Holten endured.

The analysis — which crosschecked protective orders against arrest and conviction data, along with fatality lists compiled by the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence — represents at best a partial accounting of such situations because of limitations in the data.  The databases were missing some orders that have expired or been terminated.  They also did not flag the use of firearms in specific crimes, so identifying cases required combing through court records....

In some instances, of course, laws mandating the surrender of firearms might have done nothing to prevent an attack.  Sometimes the gun used was not the one cited in the petition. In other cases, no mention of guns was ever made.  But in many cases, upon close scrutiny, stricter laws governing protective orders and firearms might very well have made a difference.

As long-time readers know, I find puzzling and troubling that the NRA or others are quick to assert or assume that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, if it really is about protecting a truly fundamental constitutional right, that it can be permanently stripped away for any and every felony conviction, even very-long-ago, indisputably non-violent drug possession or white-collar offenses.  This new article reinforces my sense that the NRA's advocacy policies, as well as existing gun laws and practices, are crude and problematic tools now often used to deny gun rights to persons who are not obviously dangerous while sometimes preserving gun rights for persons who are obviously dangerous.

Some related Second Amendment and gun policy posts:

• Big (ugly?) NY Times report on felons getting back gun rights
• "Should pardoned felons have gun rights?"
• Can dismissed domestic violence complaint justify revoking gun permit?
• "Medical marijuana users fight for gun rights"
• North Carolina Supreme Court finds state constitutional right for some felons to bear arms
• Notable new Alaska appellate decision on denying gun rights to non-violent felons
• "Convicted Felon Sues State Over Right To Bear Arms"
• Fourth Circuit suggests people must be "responsible" to get full Second Amendment protection
• Might restoration of felon gun rights actually reduce recidivism?
• Are Scooter Libby and Martha Stewart and millions of others not among the Constitution's "people"?
• "Why Can’t Martha Stewart Have a Gun?"

Interesting developments in "smart gun" discussions and debate

I just came across this notable piece from California on my favorite firearms topic, namely smart gun technologies and policies.  The report is headlined "Personalized guns touted as safety check," and here is how it starts:

In the latest James Bond movie, the hero is given a gun that recognizes the palm of his hand.  Later, when a bad guy snatches the pistol away in a tussle, it won't fire, and Agent 007 lives to die another day.  It may have felt like Hollywood fantasy, but the basic premise is very real — and very dear — to some lawmakers and gun control advocates.

They believe that in the age of smartphones and the aftermath of December's elementary school massacre in Connecticut, the time has come for a marriage of firearms — which have changed little for decades — and modern technology that allows all sorts of devices to be personalized to their user.

President Obama, in the anti-gun-violence plan he introduced in January, directed the attorney general to issue a report on "existing and emerging gun safety technologies."  He also promised prizes to companies that develop the smart guns.

Sensing momentum, state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, introduced legislation last month that would require all handguns sold in the state to be "owner-authorized."  Under the bill, which is similar to one New Jersey passed in 2002, standard guns would become illegal for sale 18 months after the state Department of Justice determines personalized guns are readily available and function well.

The idea is that a gun should be useless if picked up by a child or a suicidal teen or stolen in a burglary.  The weapons would feature biometric technology such as fingerprint or grip recognition, or radio-frequency identification, which is used in employee-access badges and the toll-collection system FasTrak.

The guns could be used only by their owner, who in some cases would have to wear a special watch or ring to be able to fire the weapon.  The firearms could be configured to allow for multiple users, such as family members.

Skeptics of the technology point out that, despite years of research and high hopes, such guns are still not available in the United States.  But that may be changing.

Belinda Padilla, the head of U.S. sales for a German company called Armatix, said the firm plans to sell a .22-caliber pistol in the United States by this summer that works only after its user activates it by entering a five-digit code into a wristwatch.  The watch uses radio waves to communicate with the gun.  "The bottom line is, this exists now," said Stephen Teret, founder of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University, who has followed the progress of personalized guns for years.  "The question isn't one of technological feasibility anymore, but one of policy."

No one doubts the tough politics around personalized guns, which have been studied and debated for more than two decades.  Many gun owners oppose them, saying they fear the technology will fail them in a pinch.  A major gun control group, the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., also opposes the idea, arguing that personalized technology would save few lives, distract from more important efforts, and give a false impression that guns are safe, perhaps driving new sales.

Brandon Combs, who heads the Calguns Foundation, a gun rights organization, said personalized guns aren't close to being marketable or reliable.  Even if they were, he said, a law mandating their sale would make guns much more expensive and difficult to use, infringing upon the constitutional right to bear arms. "We're creating laws now for a possible future that may or may not ever come to fruition, and to me that's silly," Combs said.  "The reality is this would do nothing but create another opportunity for California to ban handguns and make them expensive for people."

A few recent and older related posts:

• Could latest tragic mass shooting prompt renewed consideration of "smart gun" technologies?
• "Smart Gun Technology Could Have Blocked Adam Lanza"
• Sentencing "highlights" in President Obama's new gun control push
• Technology, smart guns, GPS tracking and a better Second Amendment
• More on smart guns, dumb technologies and market realities

Talk in Chicago of increasing mandatory minimum sentences for gun possession

As reported in this new local article from Chicago, that city's "mayor, cops and prosecutors are taking aim at Illinois’ gun possession laws — calling for longer mandatory prison terms and 'truth in sentencing'." Here are some of the details of the proposal and the sentencing debate is has started to engender:

Their wish list includes boosting the minimum required sentence for people convicted of gun possession from one year in prison to three years. They hope to increase the minimum sentence for felons caught with guns from two years to three years.

They also want everyone convicted of felony gun possession to be required to serve 85 percent of their sentences. Now those inmates must complete only half their terms — and sometimes much less after earning “good time” in prison.

Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez said the proposed reforms would deter more people from carrying guns illegally and would help curb violence. “The guys who are doing the shootings would be away from the corners for a longer time,” Alvarez said in an interview.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, whose office drafted the legislative proposals, is expected to announce them Monday with Alvarez and other officials. “Criminals continue to escape with minor sentences for possessing and using firearms,” Emanuel said in a prepared statement.

For months, police Supt. Garry McCarthy has proposed lengthening the mandatory sentence for gun possession to three years, pointing to New York City, where he was once a high-ranking cop. The state of New York passed a 3½-year mandatory minimum sentence for illegal gun possession in 2007. The following year, NFL star Plaxico Burress was arrested after a handgun he was carrying accidentally discharged and shot him.

Burress pleaded guilty to a lesser offense and was hit with a two-year jail term, drawing national attention to New York City as a place that cracks down on illegal gun possession. Criminologists point to the mandatory gun sentence in New York as one of the reasons for the Big Apple’s continuing decline in violent crime.

Chicago — whose murder tally rose 16 percent to 506 last year — has about three times as many murders per capita as New York. Also, about 85 percent of murders in Chicago involve a gun, compared to about 60 percent in New York.

While the cops and prosecutors in charge of locking up criminals support lengthier sentences, one judge said the General Assembly — and the public — need to think hard before making the gun laws harsher. “As a taxpayer of this state, I would hope the legislators are cognizant that creating mandatory minimum sentences creates a financial consequence to the state,” said Cook County Judge Nicholas Ford.  “A lot of judges bristle at mandatory minimum sentences.  It’s not my position to question it.  It’s my job to enforce whatever the legislature forwards me.

“But for a person who’s never been convicted of a felony, for a person who’s never committed a violent crime, for a taxpayer who’s never had any problems with the law, I wonder about that,” Ford said.

Alvarez responded that few people without criminal backgrounds are charged with felony gun possession in Cook County.  “You will see that once in a while, but that is when our discretion [as prosecutors] comes into play in charging and in looking at cases once they’re in the system,” she said.

Supporters of mandatory minimum sentences say they also provide a predictable outcome. Indeed, a Chicago Sun-Times examination found wide disparities in how often Cook County judges put people behind bars for gun possession before mandatory minimum sentences fully took effect in early 2011.

Ford, for example, sentenced 42 defendants for gun possession and sent about 76 percent to prison. About 21 percent received probation and 2 percent went to boot camp. The length of his average prison sentence was almost two and a half years. Judge Michael Brown, meanwhile, sentenced 45 defendants. About half went to prison, 23 percent received community service, 18 percent probation and 5 percent boot camp. But the length of his average prison sentence was more than three years.

Overall, Cook County judges sent nearly three-quarters of such defendants to prison for an average sentence of almost two and a half years.  About 14 percent got probation, 6 percent boot camp and 4 percent community service.  The newspaper studied 2011 sentencing outcomes in felony gun possession cases that didn’t include other types of crimes.

Many of those cases involved 2010 arrests, which didn’t apply to the mandatory minimum sentences that took effect in 2011. A separate law that took effect in late 2009 requires a minimum sentence of three years for gang members convicted of carrying a loaded gun.

The Sun-Times analysis found that judges sometimes sentenced defendants to Cook County boot camp — a four-month program with eight additional months of strict supervision. Ford called boot camp a “really solid disposition” for younger defendants without a felony record or violent background.

But Alvarez said she doesn’t think judges should have the option to sentence such defendants to boot camp. “It’s not ‘pen’ time,” she said. “I think the law is clear that they should not be giving boot camp, but judges see it a different way.”

Alvarez said she’s considering discussing the matter with Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans and “seeing if there’s something we need to change legislatively — or litigate it.” As Alvarez and other politicians pursue tougher gun laws, one man convicted of illegal gun possession surprisingly said they’re right.

Matthew Munoz, 24, was arrested in 2011 after he and his pals got into a squabble with rival gang members on the South Side.... Munoz was eligible for probation because his crime happened in 2010, before the one-year mandatory minimum took effect. He was sentenced to two years’ probation, but after one year he messed up when he tried to foil a drug test.

Munoz was sent to prison. But because he got credit for time he spent in the Cook County Jail, he said he spent only one day at Stateville Correctional Center. “It’s called ‘dress in and dress out,’ ” he said.

Munoz is now on parole, which he vows to complete successfully. He plans to go to school and get a job. “Some people need prison to learn their lesson,” Munoz said. “I wish I got sent to prison a long time ago. I kept getting probation for this and that. . . . Chicago is getting out of control with the gang violence. They should send those guys to prison — even guys like me.”

As serious sentencing fans know well, and as this article helps highlight, mandatory minimum sentencing laws do not really mandate prison for all offenders.  Rather, they mostly serve to transfer the discretion as to which offenders go to prison from judges to prosecutors. 

If there is good research indicating that this transfer of discretion in the gun crime settings help to reduce illegal gun use and gun violence, I can understand why folks in Chicago and elsewhere think increased mandatory minimums should be a needed response to gun crimes and gun violence.  But, as lots of research and experience reveals in the federal system and elsewhere, having prosecutors as exercising the most sentencing discretion via mandatory minimums tends to increase sentencing disparities, not ensure that similar defendants always receive similar sentences.

Recent and older related posts:

• Sentencing "highlights" in President Obama's new gun control push
• Is there really a simple explanation for record-low homicide rate in NYC (or the increase in Chicago)?
• More proof mandatory sentencing laws are never really mandatory and can enhance disparities
• "Empirical evidence suggests a sure fire way to dramatically lower gun homicides: repeal drug laws"
• Fascinating federal "gun control" criminal charges in wake of NY ambush murder-suicide
• Does the last decade add support for "more guns, less crime" claims?
• What do folks think of a local "violence tax" on guns and ammunition?

"What the Gun Lobby and the Marijuana Lobby Have in Common"

The title of this post is the headline of this new commentary by Andrew Cohen at The Atlantic.  It gets started this way:

Last week, I took a glancing look at some of the most dubious gun measures creeping up from state legislatures all over the country since the beginning of the year. The statutory text may differ from state to state, but the theme of those post-Newtown proposals are essentially the same: Under the banner of federalism, expressing alarm at federal power, earnest lawmakers are seeking to use new state laws to prevent law enforcement officials from enforcing existing (and future) federal gun regulations.

At the same time, also in the last five weeks, lawmakers in at least 18 states -- more than one-third of the nation -- have proposed dozens of new marijuana laws that would dramatically alter the way millions of people interact with pot.  Again, the details differ from bill to bill.  But, again, the underlying theme is familiar: Under the banner of federalism, expressing disdain with federal power, earnest lawmakers are seeking through these measures to erode the scope of federal law, which still classifies marijuana as a dangerous drug that is illegal to sell or possess.

The new generation of gun laws, which run directly counter to national public opinion, is rooted in the fealty of state lawmakers to the 10th Amendment, to the 2nd Amendment, to gun industry lobbyists and to its tribune, the National Rifle Association.  And these measures, if passed, would be patently unconstitutional.  You can amend or repeal a federal statute, in other words, including of course a federal gun regulation, but as a state lawmaker you cannot seek to punish federal officials who are trying to enforce it.

On the other hand, the new generation of marijuana laws, which represent growing national support for reasonable reform, is a direct result of the stunning election success last November of two legalization measures in Colorado and in Washington.  These measures, too, on their face, violate federal marijuana law.  And, ultimately, either the federal law will have to change, or these state laws will have to change.  That change isn't likely to come first from the courts.  It's going to have to come from lawmakers, from Congress, and the White House.

Sentencing "highlights" in President Obama's new gun control push

Thanks to this helpful piece from the New York Times, which is headlined "What’s in Obama’s Gun Control Proposal," I see that at least a few of the latest idea on gun control coming from the White House involve sentencing matters.  Via the list provided by the Times, here is a partial account of the provisions likely to be of greatest interest to sentencing fans:

Proposed Congressional Actions

• Requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales, including those by private sellers that currently are exempt.

• Reinstating and strengthening the ban on assault weapons that was in place from 1994 to 2004....

• Increasing criminal penalties for "straw purchasers," people who pass the required background check to buy a gun on behalf of someone else.

• Acting on a $4 billion administration proposal to help keep 15,000 police officers on the street....

Executive actions...

• Directing the attorney general to review categories of individuals prohibited from having a gun to make sure dangerous people are not slipping through the cracks....

• Issuing a presidential memorandum to require federal law enforcement to trace guns recovered in criminal investigations.

• Releasing a report analyzing information on lost and stolen guns and making it widely available to law enforcement authorities.

• Maximizing enforcement efforts to prevent gun violence and prosecute gun crime.

• Issuing a presidential memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research gun violence.

• Directing the attorney general to issue a report on the availability and most effective use of new gun safety technologies and challenging the private sector to develop innovative technologies.

As regular readers know, the last listed item here is of particular interest to me because I continue to want to believe that smart gun technologies may be a much more effective and efficient means to reduce gun violence than lots of new prohibitions or increased sentences and other costly criminal justice investments.

Prior related posts following Newton masacre:

• Could latest tragic mass shooting prompt renewed consideration of "smart gun" technologies?
• "Smart Gun Technology Could Have Blocked Adam Lanza"
• "Empirical evidence suggests a sure fire way to dramatically lower gun homicides: repeal drug laws"

Fascinating federal "gun control" criminal charges in wake of NY ambush murder-suicide

This AP story, headlined "New York woman arrested in connection with murder of 2 firefighters," discusses the federal criminal law follow-up to the depressing ambush murder-suicide that took place in upstate New York earlier this week (discussed here).  Here are some details:

William Spengler raised no alarms in prison for 17 years and for more than a decade afterward.  Well-spoken, well-behaved and intelligent, his demeanor was praised by four straight parole boards that nevertheless denied him parole, worried that bludgeoning his 92-year-old grandmother with a hammer showed a violent streak that could explode again.

After his sentence was up in 1996, he stayed out of trouble until 2010, police said Friday. That's when Spengler went to a sporting goods store with a neighbor's daughter, picked out a Bushmaster semiautomatic rifle and a shotgun and had her buy the guns that the convicted felon couldn't legally possess.  On Monday, he used the weapons to ambush firefighters lured to a blaze he set at his house in upstate Webster, killing two people and wounding three others before killing himself.

On Friday, state and federal authorities charged the woman who bought the guns, 24-year-old Dawn Nguyen, with lying on a form that said she would be the owner of the guns she bought for Spengler.  The charges involve the semiautomatic rifle and the 12-gauge shotgun that Spengler had with him Monday when volunteer firefighters Michael Chiapperini and Tomasz Kaczowka were gunned down.  Three other people, including two other firefighters, were wounded before the 62-year-old Spengler killed himself.  He also had a .38-caliber revolver, but Nguyen is not connected to that gun, police said....

U.S. Attorney William Hochul said Nguyen bought the two guns on June 6, 2010, on behalf of Spengler.  Police used the serial numbers on the guns to trace them to Nguyen.  "She told the seller of these guns, Gander Mountain in Henrietta, N.Y., that she was to be the true owner and buyer of the guns instead of William Spengler," Hochul said.  "It is absolutely against federal law to provide any materially false information related to the acquisition of firearms."

During an interview late on Christmas Eve, she told police she had bought the guns for personal protection and that they were stolen from her vehicle, though she never reported the guns stolen.  The day after the shootings, Nguyen texted an off-duty Monroe County Sheriff's deputy with references to the killings.  She later called the deputy and admitted she bought the guns for Spengler, police said Friday....

As police announced the charges against Nguyen, a clearer portrait of Spengler began to emerge, in the words of wary parole commissioners who kept him locked up until the law said they had to let him go.  At his final parole hearing in 1995, the then-45-year-old Spengler repeated his desire to get out of prison while he still had time to rebuild his life. He also took issue with a previous decision not to release him because the board believed he remained a danger to society....

During four hearings between 1989 and 1995, Spengler quarreled with parole board members over details of his grandmother's killing, insisting each time he'd only hit her three times on the head with a hammer while evidence pointed to 13 blows, and initially saying he couldn't explain why the attack happened....

The transcripts reveal a well-spoken man, proud to be staying out of trouble in prison and earning positions of trust and responsibility, even time out of prison with a work crew that did renovation work in places including a century-old chapel.  The board members mention Spengler testing high for intelligence and noted he came to prison with no other crimes on his record, had only dabbled in drug use and had a spotty work history, mostly as a house painter....

"So why do you think you killed her?" Spengler was asked in 1989.  "I still haven't figured that out. It was matter of just wanting to get out. She was between me and the door," he replied.

"She was just a little, bitty old lady," a board member commented.  "I realize that. That's why I still can't explain it," Spengler said.

This gun-buying back-story and the federal criminal charges facing Dawn Nguyen raise so many issues concerning not only the challenges of gun control, but ultimately sentencing purposes, policies and practices. Federal law imposes serious penalties on any felons possessing any guns — a prohibition which itself seems suspect if the Second Amendment's protection of self-defense rights is to be viewed as a serious natural/constitutional right for all persons — but this case highlights how easily even this widely accepted form of gun control can be evaded.  Sophisticated "smart gun" technology (recently discussed here and here) might help on this front by ensuring only legal/registered buyers can operate the gun, but even a "Lojack-style" gun operation technology would have difficulty prevent "neighborly friends" like Dawn Nguyen from aiding prohibited persons like William Spengler from getting access to firearms.

Speaking of Spengler and Nguyen, I continue to focus on the reality that Spengler apparently served over 17 years as a seemingly changed person in prison and was successful on parole for another decade thereafter.  It seems possible that Dawn Nguyen did not know Spengler was a convicted killer when he asked for help getting firearms; even if she did, Spengler likely convinced her that his criminal past was way in the past.  Moreover, Spengler apparently possessed the guns bought by Nguyen for him for over two years without incident (and another gun, for that matter) before Spengler snapped and turned (back?) into a homicidal evil killer.

Given that it appears Nguyen is ready to admit commiting a federal "gun control" crime, her involvement in this tragic event is now full of challenging federal sentencing issues.  I seriously doubt that Nguyen even considered the prospect of Spengler would commit a serious crime with the guns she bought for him, let alone multiple murders.  Should she still be held criminally responsible at sentencing for the horrific harms caused by the guns she bought based on a lie?  Should the many victims of Spengler's crimes get to be involved in her prosecution and eventual sentencing?  Especially if and when a plea deal is considered by the involved attorneys, is there a particular sentence or sentencing range that is obviously too lenient or too harsh for Nguyen "gun control" crime?  (Bill Otis spotlights some of these issues in this new post at Crime & Consequences titled "Should We Criminally Punish Non-Violent, Regulatory Offenses?".)

A few recent related posts:

• Could latest tragic mass shooting prompt renewed consideration of "smart gun" technologies?
• "Smart Gun Technology Could Have Blocked Adam Lanza"
• "Empirical evidence suggests a sure fire way to dramatically lower gun homicides: repeal drug laws"
• Appreciating blessings — and the limits of laws — this (too violent) holiday season

"Smart Gun Technology Could Have Blocked Adam Lanza"

The title of this post is the headline of this new Huffington Post commentary by David Shuster, which I view as a long-needed and welcome example of a new kind of discourse over gun control needed in the wake of the Newtown massacre.  Here are excerpts:

As our leaders begin the uncertain political debate over gun control, there is a simple and straightforward policy solution right now that would uphold gun owners' 2nd amendment rights and still keep our kids safer.  It's called "smart gun technology."

The system is similar to "smart technology" already in use for things like cars, iPhones and security doors.  A computer microchip measures the bio-metric details of the person attempting to activate the product. If the details match the rightful owner, the device is "enabled." If the details don't match, the device will not work or open.

Smart gun technology has been around for years. CBS News profiled a New Jersey institute that was perfecting it in 2009. Science Daily had a story about the emerging technology back in 2005,

The most reliable smart gun technology involves a grip recognition system.  There are 16 digital sensor chips embedded in the handle. The computerized sensors capture the unique pattern and pressure of your grip, plus the specific size of your hand.  If someone else tries to use the gun, the information will not match the stored pattern of the gun owner's — and the weapon will not fire....

[T]his technology, as well as similar versions involving fingerprint recognition, could be embedded in guns today.  But for years, the National Rifle Association has blocked these efforts, in part because they would make guns costlier to produce and purchase.  The NRA has also insisted that smart gun technology would infringe upon the Second Amendment. Constitutional experts say that argument is absurd.  The Constitution allows for all kinds of product regulations....

The best argument against smart gun technology is a logistical one. It could prevent a homeowner who wrestles away an intruder's gun from firing it back at them. I think we can agree, however, that such MacGyver-like situations are exceedingly rare.  And the fact is, 10 to 15 percent of guns used in home invasions, robberies and mass shootings are weapons that have been stolen.

Furthermore, smart gun technology allows for multiple biometric "identities" to be stored in one gun.  This would solve a problem for police or members of the military who may want to have the option of "sharing weapons."

In the case of the Connecticut massacre, is it possible that Adam Lanza's mother, a gun enthusiast who reportedly took her sons to the range, would have embedded Adam's biometric data on her weapons if that was possible?  Sure.  But family baby sitters have told reporters that Nancy Lanza repeatedly urged "caution" around Adam and was worried about his behavioral problems....

The weapons Adam Lanza relied on were not his. They belonged to his mother, the only person entitled to use them.  And while she may have taught her son how to fire the weapons at shooting ranges over the years, she was the sole owner of the weapons, not him.  If smart technology had been in place, the weapons would have likely been useless to Adam Lanza.

And that's the point. Congress and the President should begin their new effort at preventing mass shootings by mandating something that might have made a different in Newtown, Conn. — require smart gun technology in all weapons.  Just as our nation insists on basic quality standards for cars, houses, tools, air, water, and etc, insisting on basic features for all weapons that may be "fired" is perfectly reasonable.

It's not about taking guns away.  It's about making sure that guns can't be fired by anybody but their lawful owners.  Is that too much to ask?

As long-time readers know, I have been talking up smart-gun technology on this blog for years (examples here and here), and I have been sincerely hoping that the horrific shooting in Connecticut will start generating new and needed buzz on this encouraging front. This Huff Post commentary is a good start, and I sure hope the new leadership and initiatives coming from President Obama and VP Biden (basics here from the AP) will be focused like a laser on the potential pros and cons of smart guns.

Prior posts both old and new:

• Technology, smart guns, GPS tracking and a better Second Amendment
• More on smart guns, dumb technologies and market realities
• Could latest tragic mass shooting prompt renewed consideration of "smart gun" technologies?

Could latest tragic mass shooting prompt renewed consideration of "smart gun" technologies?

Like so many others, I have been struggling to come to terms with the largely incomprehensible and horrifically tragic mass murder in Connecticut on Friday.  And the struggle has not been especially aided by another round of the same old debates over the politics and practicalities of gun control and over the so-called "gun culture" in the United States.  But a helpful reader reminded me of my posts nearly five years ago here and here about the prospect of smart-gun technologies being a possible frontier for a better gun control discourse.

Because I am not well-versed on gun manufacturing or the modern devises that now control and monitor smart phones and smart cars, I still cannot readily discuss what kind of engineering might have allowed Adam Lanza's mother to buy all the guns she wanted without making it so easy for her son to murder her and so many innocent teachers and children with her guns.  But I have an inkling that most (all?) legal gun purchasers — and surely all law enforcement agencies — would love to have guns that, through some sort of advanced technological means, would become disabled if pointed toward the authorized owner and/or would not function in certain regions and/or would not fire more than a single shot without a special user code. 

Rather than go on and on as I did years ago concerning the seeming value (and failure of) advancing smart-gun technologies with the help of modern GPS tracking, I will close here by linking to my old posts on this topic and by encouraging readers to supply links to any new (or old) discussions of new gun technologies.

Prior posts from way back in February 2008:

• Technology, smart guns, GPS tracking and a better Second Amendment
• More on smart guns, dumb technologies and market realitie

UPDATE:  For clarity, I wanted to add that I fully recognize that smart-gun technologies would surely not eliminate all (or even most) gun crimes or harmful/illegal uses of firearms.  But I do think advanced gun technology could and should reduce misuse and harms, just as smart car and related safety technologies have reduced the number and severity of car accidents.

Does the last decade add support for "more guns, less crime" claims?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this new USA Today story, which is headlined "Federal gun checks surge as violent crime ebbs."  Here is how the piece starts:

The number of federally required background checks of prospective gun purchasers has nearly doubled in the past decade — a time when violent crime has been in long decline in many places across the USA, according to FBI records.

The bureau's National Instant Check System (NICS) does not track actual firearms sales — multiple guns can be included in one purchase.  But the steady rise in background checks — from 8.5 million in 2002 to 16.8 million in 2012 — tracks other indicators that signal escalating gun sales.

Advocates on both sides of the gun-rights debate disagree over what is driving the trend. Gun-rights groups attribute the steady increase to the growing popularity of hunting and other gun-recreation uses, the impact of state laws allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns and concerns that the Obama administration will push for laws restricting weapons purchases.

Gun-control advocates, led by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, say existing gun owners are responsible for most new purchases (about 20% of gun owners possess 65% of the nation's guns, according to a 2006 Harvard study).  Brady Campaign President Dan Gross said concerns about new gun-control laws are part of a "marketing ploy" to keep firearms moving.

No gun-control legislation was passed in President Obama's first term and no major proposal was offered during the 2012 presidential election campaign.  Still, there is an "expectation" that new gun-control proposals will surface in Obama's second term, said National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre.  "People expect a siege on the Second Amendment (right to bear arms).''

Larry Keane, senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said gun-related recreation — from hunting to target shooting on the range — is growing, too.  From 2006 through 2011, spending on hunting equipment grew by nearly 30%, according to a national survey published in August by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Keane said the overall firearms industry has thrived despite the sputtering economy and the decline in violent crime. "Personal safety still is a big reason people purchase firearms," Keane said.  "The economic downturn, I think, raised fears that crime would eventually go back up."

Split Seventh Circuit panel extended Second Amendment rights to outside home

I have not blogged much of late on Second Amendment jurisprudence, in part because it seems all lower courts have no qualms about saying the the purported "fundamental right" to "keep and bear arms" recognized by the Supreme Court in Heller and McDonald has no application whatsoever to non-violent felons or certain misdemeanants.  Still, a big Second Amendment ruling today from a Seventh Circuit panel in Moore v. Madigan, No. 12-1269 (7th Cir. Dec. 11, 2012) (available here), struck me as blog-worthy.  Here is the close of the majority opinion (per Judge Posner):

We are disinclined to engage in another round of historical analysis to determine whether eighteenth-century America understood the Second Amendment to include a right to bear guns outside the home.  The Supreme Court has decided that the amendment confers a right to bear arms for self-defense, which is as important outside the home as inside.  The theoretical and empirical evidence (which overall is inconclusive) is consistent with concluding that a right to carry firearms in public may promote self-defense.  Illinois had to provide us with more than merely a rational basis for believing that its uniquely sweeping ban is justified by an increase in public safety.  It has failed to meet this burden.  The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment therefore compels us to reverse the decisions in the two cases before us and remand them to their respective district courts for the entry of declarations of unconstitutionality and permanent injunctions.  Nevertheless we order our mandate stayed for 180 days to allow the Illinois legislature to craft a new gun law that will impose reasonable limitations, consistent with the public safety and the Second Amendment as interpreted in this opinion, on the carrying of guns in public.

What do folks think of a local "violence tax" on guns and ammunition?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this new local article out of Chicago, headlined "Cook County Considers 'Violence Tax'." Here are the interesting details:

A potential Cook County tax takes aim at guns, and gun rights activists aren't happy about it.

County president Toni Preckwinkle is considering a "violence tax" on guns and ammunition to help plug a $115 million budget gap in 2013. Under the tax, guns and ammunition would cost more, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, but Preckwinkle isn't saying how much more just yet.

The idea follows a violent Chicago summer, when some weekends left multiple people killed and dozens others injured in shootings. The city's murder rate is up 25 percent, and the Cook County Jail is near capacity with 9,000-plus inmates....

The idea raises questions about how much this would raise for the county and whether the tax would really cut down on crime.

"If we can tax cigarettes, it seems we can tax bullets and guns," said Chicago resident Cathryn Taylor. "But at the same time, I get the point that if people are buying the stuff illegally, then the tax doesn't matter because they aren't going through legal channels anyway."

The idea has come up before. Ald. Roberto Maldonado (26th) pushed for a 10-cent per-bullet tax back in 2007 when he was Cook County board commissioner. That didn't happen....

Preckwinkle's budget proposal is set to be unveiled Oct. 18, and an ammunition tax isn't the only potential money maker on the table. The board president reportedly wants to lease the top two floors of the County Building in Chicago's Loop for what she estimates could net at least $1 million a year for 10 years.

In response to this story, I cannot help but think about Chris Rock's great riff on gun control and "bullet control" in which he explains just why the world would be so much better if each bullet cost $5,000.

"Decisional Minimalism and the Judicial Evaluation of Gun Regulations"

The title of this post is the title of this intriguing looking new piece by Professor Richard Boldt now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In District of Columbia v. Heller, a sharply divided United States Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects “the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.” Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, made clear that the Court’s recognition of this right, which it found inconsistent with the District of Columbia’s restriction on the possession of handguns in the home, did not mean that persons have “a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” The Court chose not to delineate “the full scope of the Second Amendment,” and also “declin[ed] to establish a level of scrutiny for evaluating Second Amendment restrictions.” The majority opinion in Heller is significant both for the constitutional right it established and for the questions of scope and operation associated with that right that it left unresolved. Justice Scalia’s choice to write this “narrow” opinion has “unleashed a flood of litigation” in the lower courts, as litigants and judges have confronted the uncertainty purposely left by the Supreme Court majority.

Woollard v. Sheridan, a test case brought in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland by Raymond Woollard and the Second Amendment Foundation, is one of many such cases to be presented in recent months. While Justice Scalia’s Heller decision relies on familiar conservative interpretive methods, including a hard-edged textual analysis and a heavy dose of originalism, in order to find a “core” right of individual citizens to possess guns in their homes for self defense, his further choice to avoid resolving significant questions of scope and operation reflects a different form of conservative constitutional jurisprudence, which professor Cass Sunstein has termed “Burkean minimalism.” To the extent that the Supreme Court embraced Burkean minimalism in Heller, the tradition of balanced handgun regulation in the states generally, and the more particular regulatory practice in Maryland, ought to count significantly in both the determination of the scope of the right and in its operation. The exercise of judicial review under these circumstances should be characterized by a deferential stance toward the sensitive public policy judgments reached decades ago and maintained over the years by officials in the legislative and executive branches of state government. Many lower courts confronting these issues have explicitly or implicitly recognized the essentially conservative nature of this developing jurisprudence, its Burkean incrementalism. The District Court in Woollard chose a more aggressive path, and in that respect misread the important cautionary signals that the Supreme Court majority has provided.

Notable comments from Justice Scalia on the Second and Eighth Amendments

Justice Scalia is making the rounds as part of a book promotion tour, and on Sunday he appeared on the "Fox News Sunday" program. This Reuters article about the appearance reports on some of his comments about two Amendments that are often of special interest to sentencing fans.  Here are excerpts:

In light of the July 20 massacre in which a gunman killed 12 moviegoers in Colorado, Scalia was asked whether legislatures could ban the sale of semiautomatic weapons.  He said the 2008 [Heller] ruling stated that future cases will determine "what limitations upon the right to bear arms are permissible.  Some undoubtedly are."

Scalia -- a proponent of the idea that the Constitution must be interpreted using the meaning of its text at the time it was written -- cited "a tort called affrighting" that existed when the Second Amendment was drafted in the 18th century making it a misdemeanor to carry "a really horrible weapon just to scare people like a head ax."

"So yes, there are some limitations that can be imposed," he said.  "I mean, obviously, the amendment does not apply to arms that cannot be hand-carried.  It's to 'keep and bear' (arms).  So, it doesn't apply to cannons.  But I suppose there are handheld rocket launchers that can bring down airplanes that will have to be ... decided."

Regarding the death penalty, Scalia said opponents want it struck under the ban on cruel and unusual punishment included in the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. "But it's absolutely clear that the American people never voted to proscribe the death penalty," he said.  "They adopted a cruel and unusual punishment clause at the time when every state had the death penalty and every state continued to have it.  Nobody thought that the Eighth Amendment prohibited it."

Second Circuit rejects Second Amendment attack on federal firearm possession statute

Thanks to a very helpful reader, I see that the Second Circuit has a notable new Second Amendment opinion in US v. Decastro, No. 10-3773 (2d Cir. June 1, 2012) (available here). Here is how the majority opinion (per Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs) gets started:

Following a bench trial on stipulated facts in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York (Patterson, J.), Angel Decastro was convicted of transporting into his state of residence a firearm acquired in another state in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(3).  Decastro appeals on the ground that § 922(a)(3) violates his Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.  He argues: [1] that § 922(a)(3) is unconstitutional on its face; and [2] that, in combination with New York’s licensing scheme, the prohibition on the transportation into New York of a firearm purchased in another state made it virtually impossible for him to obtain a handgun for self-defense. For the following reasons, the judgment of the district court is affirmed.

Judge Hall concurs in a separate opinion in order to "enunciate how [he] reach[es] the determination that § 922(a)(3) does not impose a substantial burden on the exercise of Decastro’s Second Amendment right."

Until I have a chance to review this opinion more thoroughly, I cannot predict with confidence how strong supports of broad and potent Second Amendment rights might react to this ruling. But I can already predict that NYC Mayor Bloomberg, a very strong advocate of very strong gun control, is certain to be very pleased with this opinion (unless Chief Judge Jacobs happened to hand the opinion down in Manhattan while drinking a Big Gulp of Mountain Dew).

Fascinating discussion of Second Amendment in Tenth Circuit's affirmance of alien-in-possession conviction

The Tenth Circuit handed down a really interesting opinion this afternoon in the course of rejecting a set of constitutional attacks on 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(5)(A), which prohibits illegal aliens from possessing firearms.  As explained at the start of the opinion in US v. Huitron-Guizar, No. 11-8051 (11th Cir. May 7, 2012) (available here), the defendant in this case moved "to dismiss the indictment on grounds that § 922(g)(5) unconstitutionally abridges the right to bear arms as interpreted in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause (which applies to the federal government through the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause)."  Here are some of the many interesting passages from the Tenth Circuit 's discussion:

The right to bear arms, however venerable, is qualified by what one might call the “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” and “why.”...

Our issue concerns the “who.” Section 922(g), a part of the amended Gun Control Act of 1968, forbids gun possession by nine classes of individuals: felons, fugitives, addicts or users of controlled substances, the mentally ill, illegal and non-immigrant aliens, the dishonorably discharged, renouncers of their citizenship, those subject to court orders for harassing, stalking, or threatening intimate partners or their children, and those convicted for misdemeanor domestic violence.  No Second Amendment challenge since Heller to any of these provisions has succeeded....

Mr. Huitron-Guizar agrees that those guilty of serious crimes and the mentally ill are sensibly stripped of firearms they might otherwise lawfully keep.  Yet he wonders what it is about aliens that permits Congress to impose what he considers a similar disability?...

The [Supreme] Court [in a 1990 Fourth Amendment ruling] seemed unwilling to say that illegal aliens, who reside here voluntarily and who accept some social obligations, have no rights the government is bound to respect when, say, they protest a raid or detention. Instead, Verdugo-Urquidez teaches that “People” is a word of broader content than “citizens,” and of narrower content than “persons.”...

How, historically, has this country regulated weapon possession by foreigners?  Are we to understand gun ownership as among the private rights not generally denied aliens, like printing newspapers or tending a farm, or one of the rights tied to self-government, like voting and jury service, largely limited to citizens?...

We think we can avoid the constitutional question by assuming, for purposes of this case, that the Second Amendment, as a “right of the people,” could very well include, in the absence of a statute restricting such a right, at least some aliens unlawfully here — and still easily find § 922(g)(5) constitutional.

Among the many joys that come from reading all of the Tenth Circuit's work in this case is to see how quickly the panel dispatches a very original (and very unlikely to succeed) effort to spin a political controversy into an argument for a reduced sentence: "Finally, the argument that a departure or variance was in order based on governmental conduct is meritless.  The attempt to connect, in a vague, freewheeling way, the gun possession at issue here with the Fast and Furious Operation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is not persuasive."

A justifiably(?) long prison term for exteme child-care stupidity

It is really hard to have any sympathy for really mean people who hurt children, but this local sentencing story from Illinois, headlined "Rockford man gets 12 years for burning child with iron," leads me to wonder whether we ought to have perhaps a little sympathy for really stupid people who hurt children. Here are the details:

A man who ironed a shirt while it was on the back of an 18-month-old girl pleaded guilty Wednesday to aggravated battery to a child and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Elliott Moore, 43, of Rockford was sentenced by Judge Rosemary Collins, Winnebago County State’s Attorney Joe Bruscato announced today.

On Feb. 5, 2010, Rockford police officers were sent to Rockford Memorial Hospital to take a report of aggravated battery to a child. Officers learned that the child had a large, open burn mark in the middle of the back.

The child’s mother reported Moore was her live-in care provider who watched her children while she was at school. The mother said on Feb. 4, 2010, she returned home and found Moore standing in the parking lot holding a bag of his clothes, stating he had to go to work. She said he was very agitated and that she knew he did not need to be at work for quite some time. That evening, the mother indicated her daughter was up all night crying. When she changed the child’s clothing, she noticed a large, open burn on her back, Bruscato said.

During an interview with detectives, Moore said he was watching the child and a sibling and was having difficulty ironing because the child was on his lap.  He said that he placed one of his work shirts on the child’s back and ironed.  The defendant said the child woke up crying, and he saw that he had burned her back. He said he then put cold water on her back and put the child in a sleeper....

Aggravated battery to a child is a Class 2 felony with a sentencing range of three to seven years in prison.  Because of the victim’s age, Moore was eligible for an extended term — a range of three to 14 years in prison.

Perhaps I am naive to take at face value the defendant's account of how he burned this toddler, and perhaps deep evil (rather than deep stupidity) is involved here and justifies a decade+ in a cage for this crime.  Still, if the poor child ultimately has no enduring harms and if the defendant truly was just guilty of being huge idiot, I wonder if anyone else questions whether the judge here really needed to nearly max-out the defendant's sentence.

Is California's prison population reduction going as well as it seems?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this local article headlined "California prisons clearing out."  Here are excerpts:

Images of California's overcrowded prisons are so striking that the U.S. Supreme Court included two photographs of the problem in last year's landmark opinion that forced the state to address the issue.

On Friday, state corrections leaders will announce they have made an important step toward their goal to ease overcrowding, finally getting rid of the last of thousands of bunks that were crammed into day rooms, gymnasiums and other spaces to hold inmates.

In a news conference scheduled to be held at the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, corrections chief Matthew Cate and other officials are scheduled to announce the end of what the department itself calls "iconic images of (the) overcrowding crisis."...

The use of what the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation calls "nontraditional beds" peaked at just under 20,000 in 2007, Callison said.  Their use stemmed from the prison system at one point holding twice as many inmates as the 80,000 it was designed to house.  "The degree of overcrowding in California's prisons is exceptional ..." the Supreme Court concluded in its May 2011 opinion, which described in graphic detail how officials found room to house them....

Following the court's order that the state reduce its prison population by 33,000 inmates to bring it to 137.5 percent of capacity, state officials went to work.  Gov. Jerry Brown's "realignment" plan, which shifts responsibility for some offenders considered low-level, nonviolent and nonserious to county jails, has since helped cut the prison population from about 144,000 inmates to about 127,770.

"The number of nontraditional beds had been falling since '07, but realignment has basically taken us over the finish line," Callison said.  The department hopes to reduce overall population to 137.5 percent of capacity -- about 110,000 inmates -- by June 2013.

It is surely way too early to reach a final judgment (or even a mid-stream judgment) about whether the Plata prison overcrowding litigation and California's prison-population-reduction responses has proven to be a great public policy success.  But I continue to see in the California papers positive stories like the one reported here, while I am yet to see many stories reflecting the parade of horribles sometimes described by those who opposed the various prison reduction orders during the Plata litigation. Thus the question in the title of this post.

"Second Amendment Penumbras: Some Preliminary Observations"

The title of this post is the title of this new short paper by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, which is now available via SSRN and has this on-sentence abstract: "With the Second Amendment now a working part of the Bill Of Rights in the wake of the Supreme Court's decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, this brief Essay examines the likely extent of penumbral rights under the Second Amendment, as well as the possible effect on unenumerated rights in general of an enforceable right to arms."

A quick review of the draft leads me to conclude that Professor Reynolds sees, as do I, how the Second Amendment could now have a potentially profound impact on the application of some criminal gun laws. Consider, for example, this interesting passage from the article:

First Amendment analogies, in fact, suggest another doctrine that might apply: chilling effect.  Traditionally, violation of gun laws was treated as mere malum prohibitum, and penalties for violations were generally light.  During our nation’s interlude of hostility toward guns in the latter half of the twentieth century, penalties for violations of gun laws, especially in states with generally anti-gun philosophies, became much stiffer.  Gun ownership was treated as a suspect (or perhaps “deviant” is a better word) act — one to be engaged in, if at all, at the actor’s peril.

But with gun ownership now recognized as an important constitutional right belonging to all Americans, that deviant characterization cannot be correct.  Regulation of firearms cannot now justifiably proceed on an in terrorem approach, in which the underlying goal is to discourage people from having anything to do with firearms at all.  Laws treating fairly minor or technical violations as felonies must be regarded with the same sort of suspicion as pre–New York Times v. Sullivan laws on criminal libel: as improper burdens on the exercise of a constitutional right.

Doesn't Heller and McDonald impact old precedents concerning federal FIP crimes?

The question in the title of this post is prompted an interesting (and I think incorrect) ruling today by a Tenth Circuit panel in US v. Games-Perez, No. 11-1011 (10th Cir. Jan. 23, 2012) (available here).  The issue and basics of the ruling are explained in the majority opinions's first paragraph:  

Defendant and appellant Miguel Games-Perez was indicted for possession of a firearm by a felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).  Claiming that he was unaware that he was actually a felon, Mr. Games-Perez filed a motion inlimine, seeking a pre-trial ruling that the government was required to prove that he actually knew he was a felon.   When that motion was denied, Mr. Games-Perez filed a motion to enter a conditional guilty plea under Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2), asking to reserve the right to appeal the district court’s denial of his motion in limine. The district court granted Mr. Games-Perez’s motion, pursuant to which he entered a conditional guilty plea. The district court sentenced him to fiftyseven months’ imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release. Mr. Games-Perez appeals his sentence, which we affirm.

The majority opinion affirms the ruling that the defendant need not know he was a felon in order to be guilty of the federal crime of "felon-in-possission" of a firearm by reaffirming a 1996 ruling of the circuit that no mens rea is required as to the "is a felon" element of this federal crime.  Whether that was a sound ruling in 1996 is debatable, but it strikes me that it is a constitutionally problematic ruling in the wake of the SCOTUS Second Amendment rulings in Heller and McDonald that certain persons have a constitutional right to possess a firearm in certain circumstances.

Notably, in a separate lengthy concurrence, Judge Gorsuch assails the soundness of the 1996 precedent stressed by the majority with reference to the Second Amendment:

Following the statutory text would simply require the government to prove that the defendant knew of his prior felony conviction. And there’s nothing particularly strange about that. After all, there is “a long tradition of widespread lawful gun ownership by private individuals in this country,” and the Supreme Court has held the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own firearms and may not be infringed lightly. Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600, 610 (1994); District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). At the same time, of course, the Court has expressly indicated that laws dispossessing felons are consistent with the Constitution. Heller, 554 U.S. at 626; but see United States v. McCane, 573 F.3d 1037, 1048-49 (10th Cir. 2009) (Tymkovich, J., concurring) (questioning the Court’s analysis on this score). And given all this, it is hardly crazy to think that in a § 922(g)(1) prosecution Congress might require the government to prove that the defendant had knowledge of the only fact (his felony status) separating criminal behavior from not just permissible, but constitutionally protected, conduct.

But, despite this astute analysis, Judge Gorsuch feel compelled to follow the circuit's 1996 precedent rather than to conclude (as his own reasoning suggests) that Heller and McDonald makes this old precedent constitutionally suspect.  Curious -- and worrisome for anyone seriously committed to gun right and/or concerned about broad application of vague laws limiting gun possession.

Fourth Circuit suggests people must be "responsible" to get full Second Amendment protection

The Fourth Circuit has an interesting and notable Second Amendment ruling today in US v. Chapman, No. No. 10-5071 (4th Cir. Jan. 4, 2012) (available here). Here is how the opinion begins, the passage that prompts the title of this post, and the ends of the opinion:

Section 922(g)(8) of Title 18 of the United States Code prohibits a person who is subject to a domestic violence protective order issued under certain specified circumstances from, inter alia, possessing a firearm or ammunition in or affecting interstate commerce. 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8). The sole issue raised on appeal by Ronald Chapman (Chapman) is whether his conviction on one count of violating § 922(g)(8) survives his as-applied constitutional challenge under the Second Amendment, U.S. Const. amend. II.  For reasons that follow, we affirm the judgment of the district court [which rejected the defendant's Second Amendment claim]....

Chapman’s claim is not within the core right identified in Heller — the right of a law-abiding, responsible citizen to possess and carry a weapon for self-defense. Assuming arguendo that Chapman was a law-abiding citizen at the time he possessed the six firearms and 991 cartridges of ammunition set forth in the indictment, he was, without a doubt, not a responsible citizen by virtue of: (1) a judicial finding that he likely committed domestic abuse; (2) his engaging in behavior causing him to be judicially prohibited for 180 days from using, attempting to use, or threatening to use physical force against his intimate partner that would reasonably be expected to cause bodily injury; (3) his serious attempts at suicide using firearms in the very home in which he claims to have possessed such firearms for self-defense and his endangering the life of his ex-wife in the process; and (4) his discharge of a firearm out of the bedroom window in the direction of his ex-wife.   Accordingly, we conclude that intermediate scrutiny is the appropriate standard of scrutiny for Chapman and similarly situated persons....

We also recognize that the prohibitory net cast by § 922(g)(8)(A)-(B) and (C)(ii) may be somewhat overinclusive given that not every person who falls within in it would misuse a firearm against his own child, an intimate partner, or a child of such intimate partner, if permitted to possess one. This point does not undermine the constitutionality of § 922(g)(8)(A)-(B) and (C)(ii), however, because it merely suggests that the fit is not a perfect one; a reasonable fit is all that is required under intermediate scrutiny....

For the reasons stated, we hold that § 922(g)(8)(A)-(B) and (C)(ii), as applied to Chapman, satisfies the intermediate scrutiny standard in analyzing his Second Amendment challenge to such statute. We, therefore, affirm the judgment of the district court.

This ruling just further confirms my view that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is a quirky one among those rights expressly recognized in Bill of Rights.  I doubt that a court would hold that someone could, simply by virtue of being subject to a domestic violence protective order, be subject to federal criminal prosecution for, say, just going to church or writing a book or exercising other First Amendment rights.  Perhaps more worrisome for those who care about gun rights, I wonder if and when folks deeply committed to gun control might claim that persons who are, say, unwilling to register their guns with the authorities are not responsible citizens entitled to full Second Amendment protection.