Meanwhile…: A man who was convicted as a 13-year-old boy for molesting his younger sisters can possess guns now that he's been rehabilitated, the [WA] state Supreme Court ruled Thursday. The man pleaded guilty to felony child rape in 2000, five years before he graduated from high school. In 2007, a King County Superior Court judge determined that he had completed his treatment and no longer needed to register as a sex offender. But that judge and a state appeals court refused to let him have firearms after prosecutors argued that under state law, no one convicted of a felony sex offense can ever have their gun rights restored. The high court reversed those decisions in a 7-2 opinion. Writing for the majority, Justice Gerry Alexander cited another law, one that states a person shall not be precluded from possessing guns if his or her conviction has been the subject of a "certificate of rehabilitation or other equivalent procedure." The finding by the lower court that the man no longer had to register as a sex offender met that standard, Alexander wrote. The majority found it unnecessary to consider the man's argument that a lifetime firearm ban for an adult who was convicted of a felony as a juvenile violated the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees the right to bear arms. The man comes from a family of avid hunters…
http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/12/01/1928423/wash-court-rehabbed-sex-offender.html **************************************************************************************************************** Professor Joseph Olson, J.D., LL.M. o- 651-523-2142 Hamline University School of Law (MS-D2037) f- 651-523-2236 St. Paul, MN 55113-1235 c- 612-865-7956 [email protected] http://law.hamline.edu/constitutional_law/joseph_olson.html
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