Thursday, December 30, 2010

Domestic Violence Misdemeanor Firearms Disability

United States v. Chester (4th Cir. 2010): U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered district court to rehear a case involving a guy convicted of domestic violence misdemeanor in possession of a firearm.  It does not appear that they were necessarily in agreement with his claim that this law violated the Second Amendment, but they were intent on seeing the district court hear a thorough presentation of his argument against the law before this goes up to the Supreme Court.  (He sounds like a real bad guy, all the way around.  The domestic violence conviction:
On April 26, 2004, Chester savagely attacked his 22-year old daughter, Meghan Chester ("Meghan"). Apparently, their dispute arose over what Meghan had eaten for lunch that day.  In this attack, Chester slammed his daughter on the kitchen table. Meghan attempted to leave but Chester followed her, threatened her, and punched her in the face. Meghan fell to the floor in pain, but Chester continued to attack her. He began kicking her as she lay on the ground, and also dumped buckets of water over his daughter’s head.
The incident that brought police to their door, leading to the discovery that Mr. Chester had guns in the house:
On October 10, 2007, the Kanawha County police returned to the Chester family home in response to a second domestic violence call. This time, the call was placed by Mrs. Linda Guerrant-Chester ("Guerrant-Chester"), Chester’s then-wife.  When the officers arrived, Guerrant-Chester told them that she awoke at 5:00 a.m. and discovered her husband outside the house, receiving oral sex from a prostitute. When Chester realized that Guerrant-Chester had seen him, he yelled, [obscenities in the original deleted] and proceeded to drag Guerrant-Chester inside the house. Once inside, Chester grabbed Guerrant-Chester’s face and throat and strangled her while repeatedly shouting "I’m going to kill you!" Chester’s daughter, Samantha Chester, heard Chester repeatedly threaten to kill Guerrant-Chester and came to the kitchen.
Charming guy, all the way around.  I can't think of a better example of a domestic violence misdemeanor that is likely to sway judges in favor of the law.

They also cite one of my law review articles at page 14 as evidence of scholarly division concerning how far prohibitions may be carried.

1 comment:

  1. "I can't think of a better example of a domestic violence misdemeanor that is likely to sway judges in favor of the law."

    Aggravated battery of a girl, and strangulation while making death threats are wonderful misdemeanors in themselves, aren't they?

    Anyone else see the basic justice disconnect here? It's just more of the old "We decided it's not worth putting him away, so we'll just restrict everybody's liberties as we would like to see his restricted,"

    ReplyDelete