ACLU sues over gun...

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Was reported in the news on 07-02-2009.

ACLU files suit over gun rights

A New Orleans man is suing the city and its district attorney for refusing to give back a gun that police seized when he was arrested on drug and firearms charges.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday filed the federal suit on behalf of Errol Houston Jr., who was arrested last year following a traffic stop.

The suit says the district attorney's office declined to prosecute Houston but has refused to return his .40 caliber firearm.
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ACLU Sues Cannizzaro, Riley Over Gun Confiscation

A branch of the American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit against New Orleans' top law enforcement officials for refusing to return a handgun to its owner.

Erroll Houston, Jr. is a painting contractor who says he carries a weapon for personal protection. He is licensed to do so, according to the suit.

Police confiscated the gun when they arrested Houston last July. But the District Attorney's office never pursued charges and Houston never went to trial.

He also never got the gun back.

"For the government to keep property that someone is legally entitled to own, there must be good cause, and the owner is entitled to due process," ACLU Executive Director Marjorie Esman said. "Mr. Houston has done nothing wrong. There are no criminal charges against him.

"His firearm, which he is and was entitled to carry, has been confiscated for no reason. It is past time for NOPD and the District Attorney to return it."

Esman said Houston made repeated requests for the return of his property, but was told policy prohibits the return of weapons confiscated during an arrest.

The City of New Orleans, Police Superintendent Warren Riley and District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro are named in the lawsuit, which was filed Thursday in federal court.

WDSU has requested a response from both Cannizzaro and Riley but has not yet heard back from their offices.

Houston claims Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro has instituted a policy that firearms seized during arrests will not be returned to their owners.

The ACLU says that policy violates Houston's constitutional rights.

Cannizzaro says his office decides on a "case by case basis'' whether to return confiscated guns.
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I hope they win and leave the door open for the numerous others that have been treated in the same fashion. Is NO ever going to learn????
 
this happens OFTEN...

I have a client that was charged with shooting into the back window of a vehicle (shooting into occupied dwelling/car (a serious charge)). the car followed him to his house after a road rage incident. We were arguing self defense but it was NOT a strong case but one I had a decent chance of winning if I got the right jury.

My client was prepared to go to trial, so the state backed off but they still had his ak-47.

I was court appointed (so in NC the D would not have to pay for my services if case dismissed), so I do not handle property issues b/c the Judge may seize the property for payment of my services.

The other issue is if the charges are dormant demanding your gun back can make the charges come back. In NC there is no statute of limitations. So to avoid the possibility of prosecution it might be better to purchase another gun. It has to be a cost/benefit analysis.
 
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Keep in mind this is the STATE ACLU, not the national organization. Many states have active ACLU groups that do a lot of pro gun type of work.

The National organization however continues to state that they disagree with Heller and are adamantly anti gun.

http://www.laaclu.org/

ACLU Sues District Attorney For Return of Firearm
7.2.2009

Today the ACLU Foundation of Louisiana filed suit against the City of New Orleans, District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro, and Chief of Police Warren Riley, for refusing to return a firearm to its lawful owner. Erroll Houston, Jr., a New Orleans resident and painting contractor, is licensed to carry a gun and sometimes does so to protect himself against crime in his neighborhood. On July 5, 2008, he was arrested. At the time of his arrest, the police confiscated his firearm. About a month later, the District Attorney refused the charges, at which time Mr. Houston attempted to get his firearm back. The New Orleans Police Department told Mr. Houston that the gun must be released by the District Attorneys' Office. Despite repeated requests, the District Attorney has refused to return it to Mr. Houston, citing a policy prohibiting the return of firearms after the arrest of the owner.
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Do NOT make the mistake of supporting the National organization which still says:

The ACLU interprets the Second Amendment as a collective right. Therefore, we disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision in D.C. v. Heller. While the decision is a significant and historic reinterpretation of the right to keep and bear arms, the decision leaves many important questions unanswered that will have to be resolved in future litigation, including what regulations are permissible, and which weapons are embraced by the Second Amendment right that the Court has now recognized.
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Thank you Texas Rifleman for making that distinction for me.
 
Police confiscated the gun when they arrested Houston last July. But the District Attorney's office never pursued charges and Houston never went to trial.
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Any lawyer here know if there is some sort of statute of limitations on this sort of thing? I'm curious if they waited until now to file the suit so as to allow one year to pass since the arrest.
 
The ACLU is different than the NRA in that the NRA is a centrallized national organization. The ACLU is, as the name implies, a union of state organizations. It generally conducts litigation throught the state orgs the majority of which hold a more pro 2A position than the national organization.

Even without that, I don't think the ACLU is actively against the 2A. They (the national org) is just ambivelant to it.
 
Good information. I thought the ACLU was anti gun, across the board. Nice to see that some local ACLUs have a common sense view of gun rights and will go to bat for the gun owner.
 
I'm also glad to see some local chapters getting on board with defending 2a rights as much as they do other rights. The national org is really shooting itself in the foot by trying to stick with the "collective rights" BS, a mindset that the vast majority of modern constitutional scholars disagree with. In fact, even in writing the dissenting opinion in the Heller case, the dissenting judges stated their agreement with the idea of the 2a protecting an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. That any organization would ignore this rare form of total agreement from the SCOTUS is folly of the worst kind.



I generally like the ACLU, and I think they do a great job, but they've really missed the boat when it comes to the 2a.
 
My understanding of this is that the ACLU is treating it as an illegal seizure of property case, not as a gun rights case. In other words, they're fighting this one despite the fact that a gun is involved, not because of it.

Still, it's the right thing to do - the government should not be seizing legally-owned property for flimsy, frivolous reasons.
 
In other words, they're fighting this one despite the fact that a gun is involved, not because of it.
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That's fine.

Remember: we may have won Heller, but the day-to-day application of gun rights isn't about gun rights, necessarily.

If you can have your property seized arbitrarily at the whim of law enforcement officers, without due process, RKBA means NOTHING. It's easy to just take your guns, even if you have a right to own guns.

It's these day-to-day cases where rights are often won or lost for real.
 
Do NOT make the mistake of supporting the National organization which still says:
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And do not make the mistake of opposing a multi-issue national organization because of a disagreement with a single issue. While the ACLU may not be a supporter of individual gun ownership, it does a lot of good work to defend our many other civil liberties, many of which are just as important if not more important than the second amendment.
 
Of course, groups like IJ and FIRE have been doing a lot of good work, too, and they don't oppose the 2nd Amendment.

FIRE has been doing work the ACLU should be doing, but apparently chooses not to do for political reasons.

So don't make the mistake of thinking that the only place you can donate, in order to support civil liberties, is the ACLU.
 
And do not make the mistake of opposing a multi-issue national organization because of a disagreement with a single issue. While the ACLU may not be a supporter of individual gun ownership, it does a lot of good work to defend our many other civil liberties, many of which are just as important if not more important than the second amendment.
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You're under the impression that the others can exist at all without the Second.

They can't. The writers recognized it, Scalia recognized it in Heller.

It's a shame so many gun owners don't recognize it.
 
You're under the impression that the others can exist at all without the Second.

They can't. The writers recognized it, Scalia recognized it in Heller.

It's a shame so many gun owners don't recognize it.
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That's quite an assumption to make about someone that you don't know, and also unfortunate considering second amendment issues are the primary reason I am attending law school. Let's just say I get it (more so than you'll ever know).

While the second amendment may be important in securing many of our other rights, it is by no means more important than those rights. Habeus corpus, trial by jury, free speech, etc. Take one away, with or without the second amendment, and any society will have big problems.

ANY organization that actively supports ANY civil rights is a friend of mine, and should be appreciated by anyone that supports the second amendment and loves liberty.
 
ANY organization that actively supports ANY civil rights is a friend of mine, and should be appreciated by anyone that supports the second amendment and loves liberty.
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Even if that organization directly states they don't believe the Second applies to citizens?

Not sure how you can get that contradiction to work for you.

It does not work for me and I won't support the national ACLU as long as they continue to state that the Second Amendment does not apply to me as a citizen, regardless of what else they may do.
 
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ANY organization that actively supports ANY civil rights is a friend of mine, and should be appreciated by anyone that supports the second amendment and loves liberty.
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Even if that organization directly states they don't believe the Second applies to citizens?
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Yes. Someone who loves liberty should support organizations that work to defend those liberties. Would you stop supporting the NRA if they said that they don't believe the 5th Amendment is a civil right?
 
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Yes. Someone who loves liberty should support organizations that work to defend those liberties. Would you stop supporting the NRA if they said that they don't believe the 5th Amendment is a civil right?
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Yes, probably so. They are all tied together in a way that makes each of them vulnerable without the others.

I'm quite sure the Brady Campaign supports the First Amendment, do you support them?

Would you buy a house with one wall missing?
 
Yes, probably so. They are all tied together in a way that makes each of them vulnerable without the others.

I'm quite sure the Brady Campaign supports the First Amendment, do you support them?
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Your comparison is invalid, as the Brady Campaign actively fights against the second amendment (and therefore against liberty), whereas the ACLU does not. As another poster mentioned previously, if anything, the ACLU is completely ambivalent when it comes to second amendment issues.

The day the ACLU directly attacks the second amendment, or any other of our rights, is the day they will lose my support. Of course, that will never happen, as that is not how the ACLU operates.
 
As another poster mentioned previously, if anything, the ACLU is completely ambivalent when it comes to second amendment issues.

The day the ACLU directly attacks the second amendment, or any other of our rights, is the day they will lose my support. Of course, that will never happen, as that is not how the ACLU operates.
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The ACLU is known to be the "defender of rights". By directly stating that the Second does not apply to citizens they are far from ambivalent. If they would ignore it completely that is one thing, but they no not.

They flat out state that they do not believe having one's gun rights interfered with is a problem:

In our view, neither the possession of guns nor the regulation of guns raises a civil liberties issue.
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I consider that a direct attack on the Second Amendment, but I see that many of you are desperate to back the national ACLU for whatever reason, so knock yourselves out. The statement that the regulation of guns is not a liberty issue is pretty much the exact point Brady is trying to make, they just take it further to actively try to stop it where ACLU is content to simply make the statement. That is not ambivalent, they have clearly taken a side.

I'll support state organizations that take the view that a violation of one's Second Amendment rights is a civil liberties issue, like the Louisiana ACLU has done here and the Texas ACLU has done in the past, among many of the other state groups.
 
The day the ACLU directly attacks the second amendment, or any other of our rights, is the day they will lose my support. Of course, that will never happen, as that is not how the ACLU operates
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What form of cognitive dissonance allows you to NOT view this as directly attacking the RKBA and the Second Amendment:
The ACLU interprets the Second Amendment as a collective right. Therefore, we disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision in D.C. v. Heller. While the decision is a significant and historic reinterpretation of the right to keep and bear arms, the decision leaves many important questions unanswered that will have to be resolved in future litigation, including what regulations are permissible, and which weapons are embraced by the Second Amendment right that the Court has now recognized.
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They - the national organization - are clearly stating that they are not proponents of the RKBA. That statement is very consistent with their past statements on the issue.

They are, and have been, very public opponents of the RKBA. As such, they lost my support a long time ago.

I have gone so far in my past to write them and explain how I could not reconcile their support for other civil liberties (which I laud) against their dismissal of those civil liberties that are at odds with their personal beliefs. I stopped short of calling them hypocrites, but I clearly outlined my concerns.

I received in turn a series of letters that essentially said, 'Tough noogies. We're smarter, and we're the ACLU, and we don't like guns, and you can't make us. So there!".

I am very glad that, at the state level, the 'little ACLU' is still occasionally populated with reasoning human beings. I am VERY grateful that there are organizations willing to act as legal watchdogs upon our freedoms. I value such things very highly.

I am unconvinced that 'the big ACLU' is worth more than a bucket of warm spit.
 
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