{"id":718,"date":"2013-10-29T13:34:26","date_gmt":"2013-10-29T20:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.recordgone.com\/news\/?p=718"},"modified":"2014-03-27T15:03:33","modified_gmt":"2014-03-27T22:03:33","slug":"u-s-supreme-court-to-decide-gun-ban-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.recordgone.com\/news\/2013\/u-s-supreme-court-to-decide-gun-ban-case\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Supreme Court to Decide Gun Ban Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to hear a case that will define the scope of the Lautenberg Amendment, a federal law that prohibits individuals convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence<\/a> from possessing a firearm. The Court will clarify which convictions fall under this federal prohibition, and the decision could restore the firearm rights of many people currently under a lifetime ban.<\/p>\n

Federal law makes it a crime for any person convicted of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” to possess a firearm. The phrase “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” is defined to include any federal, state, or tribal misdemeanor offense, committed by a person with a specified domestic relationship to the victim, that “has, as an element, the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon.” <\/p>\n

In 2001, James A. Castleman pled guilty to a misdemeanor domestic assault charge in Tennessee for intentionally or knowingly causing bodily injury to the mother of his child. As a result of that plea, he was subsequently charged with illegal possession of firearms in violation of the Lautenberg Amendment in 2009. He contested the indictment, claiming that he was not convicted of using physical force in his domestic assault case.<\/p>\n

Castleman Case Could Return Firearm Rights to Many<\/h2>\n

The Supreme Court will determine the meaning of the term \u201cuse of physical force\u201d as it applies to the Lautenberg Amendment. In a different context, the Supreme Court has interpreted the \u201cuse of physical force\u201d as the use of \u201cviolent force . . . capable of causing physical pain or injury to another person,\u201d a characterization that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit applied in this case. <\/p>\n

The Sixth Circuit ruled that Castleman\u2019s conviction did not qualify as a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence for the Lautenberg Amendment, because the statute of which he was convicted did not require proof of a serious physical injury and the indictment did not specify the type or severity of injury. Therefore, the \u201cbodily injury\u201d could be a result of conduct that cannot be described as violent. <\/p>\n

Attorney Mathew Higbee says that the Sixth Circuit\u2019s interpretation of the law makes sense. \u201cThe reality is that a large percentage of convictions classified as domestic violence come from acts that did not involve any violent force or threat of it. The legislative intent of the amendments to the Violence Against Women Act shows that Congress was concerned about actual violence\u2014 not the myriad of non-violent acts that result in people pleading guilty of or being found guilty of a crime of misdemeanor domestic violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s position is that any misdemeanor assault conviction against a domestic partner is a disabling offense under the Lautenberg Amendment. If the Supreme Court affirms the Sixth Circuit\u2019s opinion, a large number of domestic violence convictions would no longer be disabling. A domestic assault conviction would have to be based on the use of actual, physical violence before it falls under the federal law; threats, coercion, and anything absent violent force would no longer count. <\/p>\n

Oral arguments in the case of United States v. Castleman are expected to be scheduled in January of 2014. <\/p>\n

If you enjoyed this article, similar articles can be found on our expungement law blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you want to know more about record expungement, check our expungement knowledge base<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court of the United States has agreed to hear a case that will define the scope of the Lautenberg Amendment, a federal law that prohibits individuals convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence from possessing a firearm. Federal law makes it a crime for any person convicted of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” to possess a firearm. The phrase “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” is defined to include any federal, state, or tribal misdemeanor offense, committed by a person with a specified domestic relationship to the victim, that “has, as an element, the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon.”
\n Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.recordgone.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.recordgone.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.recordgone.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.recordgone.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/www.recordgone.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.recordgone.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1137,"href":"https:\/\/www.recordgone.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions\/1137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/\/www.recordgone.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/www.recordgone.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/\/www.recordgone.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}