Federal Court Rules Firearm Restrictions on Defendants Awaiting Trial Are Constitutional
Source: US News and World Report/AP
March 18, 2024, at 10:50 p.m
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Court orders that prohibited two criminal defendants from possessing firearms while they awaited trial were constitutional because they were in line with past restrictions on firearms, a federal court ruled Monday.
Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez, writing for a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, found that U.S. laws have historically sought to disarm dangerous criminal defendants, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Sanchez said those previous prohibitions justified the restrictions placed on John Thomas Fencl and Jesus Perez-Garcia, defendants in California whose challenges to the law were consolidated in Monday’s order.
“Here, the historical evidence, when considered as a whole, shows a long and broad history of legislatures exercising authority to disarm people whose possession of firearms would pose an unusual danger, beyond the ordinary citizen, to themselves or others,” Sanchez wrote. “The temporary disarmament of Fencl and Perez-Garcia as a means reasonably necessary to protect public safety falls within that historical tradition.”
Read more: https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2024-03-18/federal-court-rules-firearm-restrictions-on-defendants-awaiting-trial-are-constitutional
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