Federal firearms conviction vacated by 7th Circuit.

• Author: Ziemer, David

Byline: David Ziemer

The Seventh Circuit last week vacated a man's conviction for possession of a firearm after having been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.

However, the court did not strike the statute down as unconstitutional, but remanded the case to the district court to give the government the opportunity to establish a reasonable fit between the statute's means and its end.

Addressing the record made before the district court, Judge Diane S. Sykes wrote for the court, The government ... has premised its argument almost entirely on Heller's reference to the presumptive validity of felon-dispossession laws and reasoned by analogy that sec. 922(g)(9) therefore passes constitutional muster. That's not enough.

In 2006, Steven Skoien was convicted of domestic battery in Wisconsin state court and placed on probation. In 2007, he was arrested with a hunting shotgun in his truck. He admitted he had gone hunting and shot a deer earlier in the day. He did not own the gun.

Skoien was charged in federal court and sentenced to two years in prison after pleading guilty before U.S. District Court Judge Barbara B. Crabb; however, he reserved his right to challenge the denial of his motion to dismiss the indictment on Second Amendment grounds. The Seventh Circuit reversed the conviction on Nov. 18.

Dicta

The government's argument, and the district court's denial of Skoien's motion to dismiss, were both based on the following statement in the U.S. Supreme Court's 2008 opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S.Ct. 2783: ℕothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places, such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

Calling the passage dicta, the Seventh Circuit concluded it was not dispositive of whether Skoien's possession of the firearm was protected by the Second Amendment. Instead, the court concluded that all gun laws must be independently justified.

Examining the...