7 hours ago
Maryland Supreme Court upholds ban on gun possession in some non-felony cases
(Photo by U.S. Customs and Border Protection)
The Maryland Supreme Court upheld a state law banning gun possession by people who have been sentenced to two years or more in prison, calling it comparable to a ban on gun possession by felons, whether the underlying crime was a felony or not.
Despite a string of recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have greatly strengthened gun rights, the high court has not suggested that the Second Amendment 'prohibits the enactment of laws banning the possession of guns by categories of persons thought by a legislature to present a special danger of misuse,' the Maryland court said Friday.
Maryland's law is such a law, said the opinion by Maryland Chief Judge Matthew Fader.
'Based on our conclusion that § 5-133(b)(2) [the challenged law] is the equivalent of a prohibition on the possession of firearms by felons, and the United States Supreme Court's repeated references to such prohibitions as presumptively constitutional, we conclude that it satisfies Second Amendment scrutiny and is facially constitutional,' Fader wrote.
But in a lengthy dissent, Justice Jonathan Biran said that the U.S. Supreme Court rulings rely on historical context, and that the majority could not point to any previous law that 'disarmed a citizen who violated a legal norm of society but was not viewed as a threat to public safety.'
'The logical conclusion of the Majority's historical analysis is that the General Assembly may make infractions such as jaywalking or exceeding the posted speed limit the basis for permanent firearms disqualification by increasing the maximum penalty for those offenses to imprisonment for more than one year,' Biran wrote in a 65-page dissent, 22 pages of which were a history of British and U.S. gun laws.
The law was challenged by Robert L. Fooks, who was charged in Wicomico County in 2021 with allegedly stealing firearms from relatives to sell at pawn shops. Included in the 14-count indictment were two gun possession charges based on Fooks' 2017 conviction for 'constructive criminal contempt,' for which he received a sentence of 4 years and 6 months.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
The 2017 conviction was for 'willful failure to pay child support,' according to court records. The ruling said constructive criminal contempt is a common law offense that is neither a felony nor a misdemeanor and does not some with a minimum or maximum sentence.
Fooks pleaded guilty in 2021 to the gun charges and agreed to pay restitution to a relative, in exchange for the other charges being dropped. But he retained his right to challenge the gun conviction on Second Amendment grounds.
Fooks claimed on appeal that his conviction runs afoul of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that say the burden is on the state to prove the need for gun restrictions, not on the individual to protect gun rights. Banning gun possession for the conviction of a nonviolent crime is not the same as banning someone convicted of a violent crime or a felony, he argued.
The Appellate Court of Maryland disagreed, upholding the law affirming Fooks' convictions. The Maryland Court of Appeals agreed, saying there is 'no magic to … the word 'felony,'' but that courts must look to the intent of lawmakers who decided which crimes should merit a ban on gun possession.
'The common thread among felon dispossession statutes is thus not any magic afforded to the use of the word 'felony' but a general intent to prohibit the possession of firearms by individuals who have committed offenses the respective legislative body has deemed serious enough to be eligible for a significant term of imprisonment,' Fader wrote.
In major Second Amendment rulings over the last 16 years, 'Justices constituting a majority of the Supreme Court of the United States have identified laws like § 5-133(b)(2) as presumptively lawful,' Fader wrote, and Maryland should, too.
'The General Assembly, like the United States Congress and other state legislatures around the country, has concluded that individuals convicted of serious criminal offenses should not be permitted to possess firearms, regardless of whether the particular offenses they previously committed are themselves violent,' he wrote.
Biran said the majority opinion was 'well written and its conclusions may be proven to be correct after the Supreme Court decides a case like this one,' but he disagreed. The recent history of U.S. Supreme Court cases have taken the permanent disqualification of a person from gun ownership because of a nonviolent criminal conviction 'off the table,' he wrote.
'When the State seeks to prosecute a person for possessing a firearm based on a prior conviction, the State meets its burden … if it shows that the predicate conviction was for an offense that is violent in nature,' Biran wrote in dissent.
'Mr. Fooks's predicate conviction is for constructive criminal contempt. That offense is not violent in nature,' he wrote. 'It follows that, as applied to Mr. Fooks, PS § 5-133(b)(2) violates the Second Amendment.'
