Yesterday when cleaning out my garage I came across an old news article about a guy I know who was arrested for selling drugs and he was convicted and sent for prison for his crime. But there's more to the story. According to the feds the guy was machine gun Kelly or something similar. You can find the story from the local newspaper here:
redacted news story
Some of the things you might notice if you sift through this pile of garbage is that saying you might go to prison if you had a machine gun turns out to be knowing where to get a machine gun when you get to trial. Ain't it funny how that works. I knew this guy pretty well. No doubt he had a big problem and prison was the best thing that ever happened to him. But he served almost 5 years for a totally bogus charge. You'll notice they did find a machine gun in his possession or at least it appeared to be a machine gun. No one really knows if it would work. It was a WWI machine gun from an eastern European country that didn't build working machine guns when they tried. They failed almost instantly. And then there's the fact that you couldn't get ammo for it since none had been made for about 70 years. I suppose you could make your own cases, cast your own bullets and do all the testing it takes to make a machine gun operate but it would be much easier to get a Class III license and just buy a machine gun. No matter. The "machine gun" was sent to Washington for testing but unfortunately it was stolen by a package company employee according to the news article. Yeah right. It was stolen by the state policeman who investigated my friend. That LEO died a few years later and surprise it was hanging on his mantle during his estate auction. His wife actually got in trouble until they figured out it wasn't a working machine gun. Funny how they didn't figure that out when my friend was sentenced to prison because of it. I believe that was the straw that broke the back for his appeal. He was let out not long after the discovery of that machine gun and the charge against him was dropped. He still had a few more years to serve on that charge but he got out of them. The thing is he shouldn't have had to serve any time for that "crime" at all. He was railroaded plain and simple.
You might notice other things in the article including implications that he was a gangster because he had a silencer (yeah I know - a suppressor - I'm just repeating what the paper said). I went to his trial BTW. They said terrible things about him only about 10% of which were true. Yes he was a drug dealer but no he was not a gangster. He was supporting his own habit which is plenty bad enough. Don't get me wrong. He deserved to be arrested and sent to jail. But he didn't deserve to be sent up for that "machine gun". If he did then that cop's wife should have been sent away too. She was still in possession of that gun after the LEO died. It doesn't matter how you get a machine gun if you have one illegally.
I try to be a law abiding citizen. But when I see stuff like this it makes my blood boil. Going to jail for what you did is one thing. Going to jail because the cops and the feds think you should be sent up forever is another thing. It's just wrong.
Don't think they can't do this to you. They made up awful crap about my friend and charged him with it. Just having a gun they don't like might be reason enough for them to railroad you next.
I have no idea how common this is. I just know what I saw. And it was wrong. I'm sure my friend could have been charged with lots of stuff that he got away with. I'm sure they thought that too and wanted him sent up for as long as possible. But this is America. They have to play be the rules or we have nothing. If they wanted to send him up longer they just needed to make more drug buys. I'm sure it wouldn't have been hard to do. But to get a big sentence they had to convince the jury the guy was ready to mow down half the town with that "machine gun". And that was BS.
redacted news story
Some of the things you might notice if you sift through this pile of garbage is that saying you might go to prison if you had a machine gun turns out to be knowing where to get a machine gun when you get to trial. Ain't it funny how that works. I knew this guy pretty well. No doubt he had a big problem and prison was the best thing that ever happened to him. But he served almost 5 years for a totally bogus charge. You'll notice they did find a machine gun in his possession or at least it appeared to be a machine gun. No one really knows if it would work. It was a WWI machine gun from an eastern European country that didn't build working machine guns when they tried. They failed almost instantly. And then there's the fact that you couldn't get ammo for it since none had been made for about 70 years. I suppose you could make your own cases, cast your own bullets and do all the testing it takes to make a machine gun operate but it would be much easier to get a Class III license and just buy a machine gun. No matter. The "machine gun" was sent to Washington for testing but unfortunately it was stolen by a package company employee according to the news article. Yeah right. It was stolen by the state policeman who investigated my friend. That LEO died a few years later and surprise it was hanging on his mantle during his estate auction. His wife actually got in trouble until they figured out it wasn't a working machine gun. Funny how they didn't figure that out when my friend was sentenced to prison because of it. I believe that was the straw that broke the back for his appeal. He was let out not long after the discovery of that machine gun and the charge against him was dropped. He still had a few more years to serve on that charge but he got out of them. The thing is he shouldn't have had to serve any time for that "crime" at all. He was railroaded plain and simple.
You might notice other things in the article including implications that he was a gangster because he had a silencer (yeah I know - a suppressor - I'm just repeating what the paper said). I went to his trial BTW. They said terrible things about him only about 10% of which were true. Yes he was a drug dealer but no he was not a gangster. He was supporting his own habit which is plenty bad enough. Don't get me wrong. He deserved to be arrested and sent to jail. But he didn't deserve to be sent up for that "machine gun". If he did then that cop's wife should have been sent away too. She was still in possession of that gun after the LEO died. It doesn't matter how you get a machine gun if you have one illegally.
I try to be a law abiding citizen. But when I see stuff like this it makes my blood boil. Going to jail for what you did is one thing. Going to jail because the cops and the feds think you should be sent up forever is another thing. It's just wrong.
Don't think they can't do this to you. They made up awful crap about my friend and charged him with it. Just having a gun they don't like might be reason enough for them to railroad you next.
I have no idea how common this is. I just know what I saw. And it was wrong. I'm sure my friend could have been charged with lots of stuff that he got away with. I'm sure they thought that too and wanted him sent up for as long as possible. But this is America. They have to play be the rules or we have nothing. If they wanted to send him up longer they just needed to make more drug buys. I'm sure it wouldn't have been hard to do. But to get a big sentence they had to convince the jury the guy was ready to mow down half the town with that "machine gun". And that was BS.
