Hello Freedomphiles! Ever heard of the case of Michael Watson? Let me fill you in.
Michael Watson is a 50 year-old blind ex-con living in Louisiana, who had recently had a few break-ins, and wanted to get a gun to protect his home and his life.
A friend of his said he could help him out. When he asked how much he would need, the friend suggested he trade some of his prescription Oxycontin for it. When making the trade, Watson was arrested.
Here's the rub - under what Watson wanted to do in the first place, he would have been arrested for purchasing a gun as a felon, a law with dubious merits. But because the friend suggested that he trade drugs for the gun rather than cash, he was also arrested for a drug deal, and for using a gun in a drug deal.
And the friend was actually a police informant suggesting these things at the request of the cops.
The Christian Science Monitor notes:
Although the case sounds unique, it is becoming increasingly common in sting operations for undercover agents to introduce or suggest a gun as a form of payment in a drug deal. Under the law as written by Congress, the gun adds an automatic five years in prison – and sometimes much more – to any drug charges.
This is dirty pool, all the way around. The guy only wanted a gun to protect himself in a society that has left the blind man without the means for self-defense. So the cops introduce the drugs into the scenario, which has the double effect of adding another charge and making the original gun charge much worse. In effect, they were doubling-down to try and get more jail time for this guy.
Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. The Christian Science Monitor reports:
The US Supreme Court has reversed the conviction of a Louisiana man who was charged with "using" a gun during a drug deal after an agent handed the man the gun in a swap for drugs during an undercover sting operation.
In a unanimous decision announced Monday, the high court said the federal gun law is designed to prevent criminals from "using" their own guns during crimes. When federal agents introduce unloaded firearms into an undercover investigation, the suspect should not be held criminally liable for the presence of the gun at the scene of a crime, the court ruled.
The Supreme Court's primary authority for its decision was the English language.
Writing for the court, Justice David Souter says the government's defense of its reading of the law "would trump ordinary English."
"The government may say that a person 'uses' a firearm simply by receiving it in a barter transaction, but no one else would," Justice Souter writes. "A boy who trades an apple to get a granola bar is sensibly said to use the apple, but one would never guess which way this commerce actually flowed from hearing that the boy used the granola."
