Best Federal Criminal Defense Lawyer Michael Leonard analyzes Judge Coleman’s 922(g)(1) Opinion interpreting Bruen. Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois (“NDIL”) joined what is becoming a long line of Judges in that District to apply and interpret the United States Supreme Court’s Bruen decision. For a review the Court’s decision in Bruen, as well as a review of other decisions from the NDIL, see Leonard Trial Lawyers’ prior posts on this blog.
Judge Coleman issued her recent decision interpreting Bruen in the case of United States v. Griffin, 21 CR 693 (“Griffin”). In Griffin, the defendant moved to dismiss the section 922(g)(1) count against him, arguing that it was unconstitutional as applied. Judge Coleman first found that felons were in fact “people” covered by the Second Amendment to the United States. See Griffin, at p. 7 (“the Court finds that the plain text of the Second Amendment covers all people –
including a person convicted of a felony”).
Judge Coleman found, however, that was not dispositive, stating that “[a]lthough the Second Amendment’s plain text presumptively protects firearms possession by felons, that does not end the analysis. Under Bruen, if the government can show that the felon dispossession statute is part of this country’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, then the statute survives.” Before completing her analysis, Judge Coleman paused to criticize the test articulated by the Court in Bruen. Judge Coleman stated that she was “disheartened by the Supreme Court’s decision to rely on an analysis of laws that existed at this nation’s founding to determine the constitutionality of modern gun regulations. Indeed, to interpret modern regulations pertaining to the critically important Second Amendment
right to bear firearms for self-defense, the Supreme Court requires that this Court rely on a history and tradition of a nation that at the time would have regarded individuals, including Griffin and this Judge, as three-fifths of a person at best and property at worst. As demonstrated below, the Bruen test causes the government to make uncomfortable arguments to justify the constitutionality of modern gun regulations.” Nonetheless, Judge Coleman found that, “[r]egrettably, this Court must acknowledge that Breun is the law.”
That Judge Coleman had the wherewithal to shine a light on those facts is impressive. District Court Judges are far too often overly deferential to the reasoning of the Federal Circuit Courts and of course to the Supreme Court. This was not one of those moments. To that end, Judge Coleman further pointed out the “significant danger inherent in the Bruen test regarding the nature, interpretation, and availability of the historical evidence. In this district alone, in the space of only a few weeks, multiple judges have been asked to adjudicate constitutional rights based on differing historical records. It is alarming that defendants’ constitutional rights and freedom might be deprived because an overworked defense attorney was unable to dig a 300-year-old regulation out of the archives.” That too hits the nail on the head. Indeed, if applying Bruen were at all straightforward, there would not already be a myriad of cases where different courts, some within the same District, arrived at the complete opposite conclusions with respect to the Constitutionality of the very same federal firearm statutory provisions.
In any event, Judge Coleman ultimately held, to the defense bar’s dismay, that section 922(g)(1) is Constitutional. Judge Coleman relied in part upon the fact that Bruen requires “only that the government identify a well-established and representative historical analogue, not a historical twin. In other words, even if a modern-day regulation is not a dead ringer for historical precursors, it still may be analogous enough to pass constitutional muster.” See Griffin, at pp. 7-8.
However, in so finding, Judge Coleman expressly rejected several of what the Government proposed as “historical analogues.” As Judge Coleman stated, one of “the arguments the government relies on this nation’s history of explicit discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities to support Section 922(g)(1)’s constitutionality. Amazingly, the Government argues that ‘firearm regulations directed toward disarming Native Americans and Black people were pervasive’ and that these regulations demonstrate the government’s historical ‘authority to disarm classes of people who were not dependable adherents to the rule of law.”
The Government did not get away with that one. Judge Coleman stated, “[t]he Court is dismayed by the government’s continuous reliance on admittedly bigoted and racist laws in these cases . . Indeed, the Court would be remiss in failing to point out that the government’s characterization of Griffin, a Black man, as an ‘untrustworthy adherent to the law’ would have been the same characterization the founders had about the enslaved Africans. The government essentially expands on Bruen’s test to argue that the denial of all constitutional rights at the founding can justify the denial of some constitutional rights today. The
government should be careful in ‘pick[ing] [its] friends out of history’s crowd.'” Id. at p. 10.
Moreover, Judge Coleman further stated, “[t]he government demonstrates ignorance and insensitivity toward this nation’s history of slavery and the peculiar institution’s modern impact on Black Americans. This level of disregard becomes all the more concerning when the realities of how Section 922(g)(1) is enforced against primarily Black Americans is considered.”
Rarely does a Federal Judge take a United States Attorneys’ Office to task. It is about time.
Ultimately, however, Judge Coleman held that the Government had met its burden, finding “hat the laws disarming British loyalists are a proper historical analogue. The historical record supports a finding that legislatures categorically disarmed individuals who they feared would disregard the law and disturb the social order. The Court finds that a historical rationale exists for disarmament based on perceived danger.”
Michael Leonard
Leonard Trial Lawyers
December 5, 2023