DMF,
Thanks for the info. I haven't had a chance to look at the link, but from the excerpt you gave, I have to admit that my non-lawyer brain has some difficulty wrapping itself around the logic of the finding re: the ex post facto issue. I am not saying your cites are inaccurate, clearly they are. And, you are quite obviously in a better position to judge the reasoning used by the various courts to come to their respective conclusions.
I hope you don't think I am trying to start some sort of pissin' contest here. I'm not. I am just trying to understand the logic of the courts and see if I am missing some major factor that makes it so unclear to me yet so obvious to all the courts that seem to concur with the decision. Thanks again for the info and the citations, as well as the willingness to share your expertise.
Aloha
Thanks for the info. I haven't had a chance to look at the link, but from the excerpt you gave, I have to admit that my non-lawyer brain has some difficulty wrapping itself around the logic of the finding re: the ex post facto issue. I am not saying your cites are inaccurate, clearly they are. And, you are quite obviously in a better position to judge the reasoning used by the various courts to come to their respective conclusions.
I assume this is the court speakingAgain we disagree.
This is where I start to loose the logic. Clearly both events in question, the crime (the assault) and the legal act of purchasing the gun, occured prior to passage of The Act. Furthermore, it both altered the "definition of criminal conduct" (before the act gun possession was legal) and increased the the punishment for the crime (removal of a civil right not previously impacted by the conviction) by prohibiting the possession of the gun."To fall within the ex post facto
prohibition, a law must be retrospective -- that is, it must apply
to events occurring before its enactment -- and it must
disadvantage the offender affected by it by altering the definition
of criminal conduct or increasing the punishment for the crime."
Lynce v. Mathis, 519 U.S. 433, 441 (1997) (citations and internal
quotation marks omitted).
Again, the logic seems to escape me insofar as prior to enactment of 922(g)(9) a person with a misdemeanor DV conviction could legally possess a firearm, it was the enactment of the statue that created the prohibition. To dismiss as immaterial the fact that both the events (assault/gun purchase) occured prior to enactment seems almost (again, to my non-lawyer brain) counter-intuitive.It is immaterial that Mitchell's firearm
purchase and domestic violence conviction occurred prior to section
922(g)(9)'s enactment because the conduct prohibited by section
922(g)(9) is the possession of a firearm.
I hope you don't think I am trying to start some sort of pissin' contest here. I'm not. I am just trying to understand the logic of the courts and see if I am missing some major factor that makes it so unclear to me yet so obvious to all the courts that seem to concur with the decision. Thanks again for the info and the citations, as well as the willingness to share your expertise.
Aloha