INJUSTICE: REVERSED

By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

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The Washington Times
Fourteen years after being forced to plead guilty
to the "crime" of owning a gun in Washington,
the blot against the record of Dave Magnus may
be cleared. On Thursday, the District of Columbia
Court of Appeals recognized that one should not
bear a stigma for the past possession of a firearm
in the nation's capital for the purpose of self-defense.
"A conviction for conduct that is not criminal,
but is instead constitutionally-protected, is the
ultimate miscarriage of justice," Judge Stephen H. Glickman
wrote in the 12-page decision.

Other officials failed to see matters with such clarity.
The U.S. Attorney's office drew fire from the
appellate judges during oral arguments in the
case for claiming, in essence, that there was no
realistic way such gun possession cases could be
reopened, despite the Supreme Court's landmark
2008 Heller decision rejecting the District's gun
ban as unconstitutional.

Mr. Magnus got into trouble in 1996 when police
raided the residence in which he rented a room.
Officers found .357 magnum and .45 caliber pistols
among his belongings, but prosecutors focused
on the misleading fact that drugs were found
elsewhere in the boarding house. Gaillard T. Hunt, Esq.
the attorney who represented Mr. Magnus on his
appeal, insists his client had nothing to do with
the drugs. "It was a pretty clear situation,"
Mr. Hunt explained to The Washington Times.
"The place was a house with several rooms rented
out in it and each room had its own lock on the door.
The marijuana and the large amounts of cash
belonged to someone else in someone else's room."

No drug charges stuck to Mr. Magnus, who never
has been convicted of a serious crime - aside from
bogus gun charges. Considering the state of the
law at the time, those particular charges were
serious enough. Mr. Magnus saw no alternative
but to plead guilty as part of a deal to avoid jail
time. Years later, he wanted his conviction erased
in light of the Heller decision, but a trial court
judge denied the request without a hearing on the
grounds that one purportedly waives his
constitutional rights by entering a guilty plea.
Under such a reading of the law, reversing a
conviction for a noncrime would be impossible.

Fortunately, the three-judge appellate panel
thought otherwise. It ordered the trial court to
reopen the case to determine whether the guns
in question were in any way used to further an
actual crime. Should the facts prove Mr. Magnus
was innocent, the trial court would have little
choice but to absolve the unjust past conviction.

The appellate court's well-balanced reasoning
reveals how far gun rights have advanced in the
past few years, thanks in large measure to the
National Rifle Association. The group's push in
courts and statehouses around the country has
brought us to the point where even past harms are
being redressed. More work needs to be done to
ensure law-abiding residents of the District can
own and carry guns without unnecessary red tape,
but last week's ruling fires a shot across the bow
of D.C. bureaucrats who need a reminder that
the Second Amendment is the law of the land.

[All emfasis has been added by David.]