OSC will issue two significant weapon opinions tomorrow
by: Ryan • August 14, 2013 • no comments
Word comes down today that tomorrow the Oregon Supreme Court will issue opinions in St v Stark and State v Christian. Both opinions could have a significant impact on firearm possession around the state.
Stark involves "felon in possession," specifically, whether a defendant is still a felon for the purposes of that statute when a later judgment granted misdemeanor treatment. The state's position -- as well as the COA's position -- is that if the original judgment was for a felony, it doesn't matter what relief a superceding judgment provides.
It's a big decision for a number of reasons, but a favorable decision would certainly mean we'd want to change the way our client's get misdemeanor treatment -- we wouldn't just seek an order granting it, but we'd want to request a new judgment every time. In fact, we should probably be doing that regardless of the outcome of Stark.
The second opinion is State v. Christian. The constitutional question presented is whether Portland's Unlawful Possession of a Firearm ordinance is unconstitutional. There is a secondary issue involving statutory construction.
As regularly readers of the blog know, Michael Hsu has written a great constitutional challenge to an an analgous state statute, ORS 166.250(1)(b), relying in large part on the analysis in Christian, even though the COA ruled against the defendant. ORS 166.250(1)(b) makes it a crime to knowingly possess a handgun that is concealed and readily accessible to the person within any vehicle. I strongly urge you to contact me about getting a copy of Michael's demurrer. And that is true tenfold if the defendant prevails tomorrow on the constitutional issue.
