Legal/Law/Criminal Justice and Reform

Supreme Court Hands Hands Pro-2A Community Win By Declining Follow Up-Case To Major Gun Marijuana Ruling

Sunira Moses/Wikimedia Commons

The Supreme Court declined Monday to hear the Justice Department’s petition to review an appeals court’s decision that overturned a man’s conviction for possessing a firearm after he had been convicted of possessing methamphetamine.

A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, consisting of two Trump appointees and one Obama appointee, invalidated Charles Hembree’s conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm in a Jan. 27 decision due to Hembree’s 2018 conviction for possession of methamphetamine. In a win for gun rights, the Supreme Court elected not to hear the case after the federal government appealed roughly two months before the high court issued its ruling in Hemani v. United States, which struck down the use of a gun charge because Ali Hemani was a regular marijuana user.

The refusal to hear the case allows the Fifth Circuit’s decision to stand, reducing the number of felony convictions that could strip away the Second Amendment rights of Americans in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana.

“The government did not meet its burden to prove that history and tradition support simple possession as a valid felony predicate under § 922(g)(1),” Circuit Judge Stephen Higginson, an Obama appointee, wrote for the panel. “We decline to reach so far as to find possession to be part and parcel with the drug trade, and the government’s analogy to possession of contraband has been foreclosed. Accordingly, we are compelled to reverse Hembree’s conviction as unconstitutional as-applied.”

At the time of the appeal, the DOJ asked the high court to send the case back to the Fifth Circuit in light of the resolution of the Hemani case. Federal public defenders representing Hembree instead argued that the Hemani decision did not contradict the Fifth Circuit’s ruling.

“The motion of respondent for leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted. The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied,” the Supreme Court stated in an orders list released Monday.

The type of challenge raised in Hembree’s case mattered, Hemani’s attorney told the Daily Caller News Foundation in June.

“We made sure that we brought an as-applied challenge rather than a facial challenge, meaning an as-applied challenge is a challenge saying that the law is unlawful as applied to my client versus a facial challenge, which says it’s unlawful in every instance,” Zachary Newland said. “So that’s one, you narrow the target there, right? And in some ways, you put it on the government rather than putting it on you.”