As a five-time convicted felon, Glen Prince was dealing with a obligatory minimal 15 years behind bars when he was charged in federal courtroom with being a felon in possession of a handgun stemming from an armed theft on CTA prepare in 2021.
As a substitute, Prince’s case was tossed out earlier this month by a federal judge who dominated the statute barring felons from possessing handguns is unconstitutional in gentle of a latest U.S. Supreme Courtroom choice.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman is the primary to return down in Chicago’s federal courtroom and joins a host of different related instances which have thrown the decades-old regulation into a form of authorized limbo as the difficulty works its method again to the excessive courtroom.
The implications are notably massive in Chicago, the place there are a whole lot of pending felon-with-firearm instances stemming largely from the U.S. legal professional’s workplace efforts to throw federal regulation enforcement assets into the combat towards town’s relentless gun violence.
Gettleman’s Nov. 2 ruling in Prince’s case was instantly appealed by the U.S. legal professional’s workplace. The seventh Circuit U.S. Courtroom of Appeals has set a Dec. 19 deadline for prosecutors to file a temporary, courtroom data present.
It contradicts a handful of latest rulings by different district judges right here upholding the felon-with-firearm regulation, saying that Second Modification protections on gun possession have historically utilized solely to “law-abiding residents.”
On the nationwide stage, the U.S. Justice Division final month urged the Supreme Courtroom to overturn a lower-court ruling in Philadelphia that the regulation violated the constitutional rights of a man who possessed a weapon after pleading responsible years earlier to food-stamp fraud.
The Biden Administration argued in its petition that the ruling conflicts selections from two different appeals courts upholding the ban and “opened the courthouse doorways to an untold variety of future challenges by different felons.”
“Many facets of Second Modification doctrine relaxation on the premise that the Modification protects solely law-abiding residents, not felons,” Justice Division legal professionals wrote.
Congress first instituted a ban on residents convicted of sure felonies from possessing handguns within the Nineteen Thirties, but it wasn’t till 1961 that a blanket lifetime ban firearm possession was instituted for all convicted felons.
Final yr, the Supreme Courtroom’s 6-3 ruling in New York Rifle & Pistol Affiliation v. Bruen significantly expanded Second Modification protections by imposing a new constitutional check requiring gun legal guidelines to be “traditionally” per legal guidelines on the books within the seventeenth and 18th centuries.
That “Bruen” check has already led to some previously mainstream gun security laws being overturned in different states, together with bans on folks with pending domestic-violence restraining orders from having a firearm, provisions limiting guns at summer time camps and church buildings, and even a regulation requiring guns to have serial numbers.
In his opinion throwing out the cost towards Prince, Gettleman wrote that whereas the federal government has traditionally prohibited sure folks from possessing guns, prosecutors had not met their burden “to show that felons are excluded from ‘the folks’ whose firearm possession is presumptively protected by the plain textual content of the Second Modification.”
Gettleman stated the blanket ban on felons having guns “imposes a far larger burden” on gun rights than different historic categorical exclusions, akin to one throughout the Revolutionary Struggle when “people who refused to declare a loyalty oath to the rising authorities” have been barred from having firearms.
The judge additionally wrote the truth that fashionable guns are extra lethal and violence is extra prevalent in right now’s society doesn’t “justify a totally different outcome.”
“This nation’s gun violence drawback is devastating, but doesn’t change this outcome underneath Bruen, which this courtroom finds rests on the severity of (the felon-with-firearm regulation) somewhat than its categorical prohibition.”
Gettleman did, nevertheless, be aware the difficulty was a “shut query” in his thoughts, as “violence plagues our communities and that permitting those that doubtlessly pose a menace to the orderly functioning of society to be armed is a harmful precedent.”
“Though there are robust coverage causes for doing every thing attainable to maintain guns off our streets and out of our communities — insurance policies that may very well be addressed by laws somewhat than judicial edict — this courtroom can discover no such historic analog,” Gettleman wrote.
Prince, 37, was ordered launched from the Metropolitan Correctional Heart the day after Gettleman’s choice — but he didn’t stroll free, data present.
Courtroom data present Chicago police arrested him on the jail at 71 W. Van Buren St. on new costs filed in Cook dinner County accusing him of being an armed recurring felony. He’s now being held with out bond within the Cook dinner County Jail.
In keeping with the costs filed in federal courtroom, Prince was a suspect within the armed theft of three males on a CTA prepare in September 2021.
After following the utilization of a Ventra card stolen throughout the theft, police arrested Prince on Sept. 12, 2021, on a CTA prepare platform within the 200 block of South State Avenue. He was allegedly carrying a loaded 9mm Smith and Wesson handgun in addition to a absolutely loaded journal, cocaine, and the victims’ Ventra card.
He was initially charged in Cook dinner County with aggravated illegal use of a weapon by a felon, but these costs have been dropped by state prosecutors after the federal indictment was filed final yr, data present.
Prince’s felony historical past contains three different armed theft convictions in addition to 2014 conviction for aggravated battery to a police officer, courtroom data present.
The federal public defender who had been representing Prince couldn’t instantly be reached Tuesday.
A spokesman for appearing U.S. Lawyer Morris “Sonny” Pasqual declined to remark.
Prince’s federal case was amongst greater than 600 related instances filed by the U.S. legal professional’s workplace over the previous 5 years the place investigations by Chicago police and different native regulation enforcement are later eliminated to U.S. District Courtroom.
At the very least 50 folks have been charged in 2023 alone with violating the felon-with-firearm ban, courtroom data present.
The explanations to cost a defendant in federal courtroom fluctuate, but prosecutors usually market it as a device to get town’s most violent, repeat offenders off the road as an alternative of placing them again into the Cook dinner County justice system.
The potential penalties are also sometimes a lot harder. Not solely does the federal cost of illegal possession of a weapon by a felon carry a most 10-year jail sentence, defendants should serve 85% of their sentence, as an alternative of being eligible for day-for-day credit score within the state system.
If a defendant, akin to Prince, has beforehand been convicted of three or extra violent felonies, federal prosecutors can search an enhanced, obligatory minimal sentence of 15 years behind bars, or as much as life.
