Court of Appeals Rejects Second Amendment Challenge to Possession of Firearm by an Ineligible Person

State v. Craig, Minn.Ct.App., 12/5/11, petition for further review, GRANTED, 2/14/12.    Police responded to a domestic abuse call and learned that the alleged abuser had left in a maroon car.  Police eventually stopped a maroon car that Mr. Craig was driving.  Officers conducted an inventory search of the vehicle and found a gun.  Mr. Craig was not authorized to be in possession of a gun because of a prior drug conviction.  Following his conviction of possession of a firearm by an ineligible person, Mr. Craig raised these issues on appeal:

I. Does Minn. Stat. § 624.713, subd. 1(2), as applied to appellant, violate the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution?

II. Did the district court err in denying appellant’s motion to suppress the firearm as the product of an illegal search of the vehicle?

III. Did the district court commit reversible error by accepting appellant’s stipulation to an element of the charged offense without obtaining a proper waiver of appellant’s right to a jury determination of that element?

IV. Did the district court abuse its discretion by admitting evidence of appellant’s prior felony controlled substance conviction for impeachment purposes?

V. Did the district court abuse its discretion by denying appellant’s request to challenge the credibility of hearsay statements that were made to the police by an unavailable witness?

VI. Did the district court err by requiring appellant to make a copayment for the public defender without first determining his ability to pay?

The gun possession by an ineligible person statute establishes a life time prohibition; Mr. Craig argued that this violated the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 595, 128 S. Ct. 2783, 2799 (2008).   Mr. Craig argued that this statute cannot survive strict-scrutiny analysis.  The court of appeals, however, elects for an intermediate level of scrutiny which looks to see if the statute is “substantially related to an an important governmental objective.”  Clark v. Jeter, 686 U.S. 456, 461, 108 S. Ct. 1910, 1914 (1988).  Under this analysis, the court of appeals rejects Mr. Craig’s Second Amendment challenge.

The Minnesota Supreme Court has accepted review of this issue.