Judge Carlton Reeves dismissed felon-in-possession charges against Jesse Bullock, who served 15-16 years for manslaughter, ruling the federal statute unconstitutional. This is the first district court to reject the charge under the Bruen standard, breaking from roughly 120 prior decisions that upheld it.
Chapters
For those of you who have firearm offenses, either you've been convicted of it or you have them pending, I want to make you aware of a recent case that was published of the Southern District of Mississippi. Mississippi. The judge who— the district court judge who issued this opinion is Judge Carlton Reeves, very, very highly regarded judge, somebody who everyone takes seriously. I mean, he's now on the Federal Sentencing Commission. He's been around for a long time. He's just a really important guy, really good guy. This order came out in case Number 3: 18-CR-00165. And the reason why I want to tell you about this is because it is finally a case by a very highly regarded jurist who has found that 18 U.S.C. 922, that is the felon in possession of a firearm statute, is unconstitutional. Um, you know, up until this point, about 120 different district courts have rejected that argument. We've been raising it in various ways. I mean, these challenges are kind of percolating throughout the country, but now we have a jurist who has actually found that statute to be unconstitutional as applied to the defendant in that case, who is a man named Jesse Bullock. Equally important about it is that Mr. Bullock actually served 15 to 16 years in a Mississippi Department of Corrections for a manslaughter charge. So, this is not like the situation in the Seventh Circuit. It was U.S. v. Cantor. Justice— now Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a dissent in that saying, you know, for some of these white-collar guys, you know, maybe this is unconstitutional as applied to them. So this is a step further, right? I mean, because this is somebody who actually was responsible or held responsible for the death of another human being, but still, as applied to that person, 922 is unconstitutional. So this came down on June 28th, so it's still very recent. I expect that there will be a number of judges throughout the country who are going to be reading this. We may see other judges kind of, you know, following the reasoning of Judge Reeves' opinion. They may be adopting that in some cases. In any event, what it does, I think, foretell is that this issue is headed to the United States Supreme Court. And so, you just need to be aware of it. I don't normally kind of highlight some of these district court orders.. But when you have somebody like Judge Reeves, you know, weighing in on this very important issue, it's something that people need to take seriously. So look it up. You can find it on PACER. Um, again, the defendant's name in that case is Jesse Bullock. Um, this came out on June 28th, and hopefully it's something that may be able to help you in your case. Okay, good luck. And if you have any questions, feel free to call us at our office. We can be reached at 803- 445-1333. Thanks.
