Posted on 04/26/2005 1:38:24 PM PDT by neverdem
WASHINGTON, April 26 - When Gary Small walked into a sports store in his hometown of Delmont, Pa., to buy a pistol, he probably did not see himself as the central figure in a Supreme Court case. But that is what he became.
Before walking out of the store with his 9-millimeter pistol on June 2, 1998, he filled out the mandatory federal form. It asked whether he had ever been convicted "in any court" of a crime punishable by a year or more in prison. Fatefully, he answered "no."
In fact, Mr. Small had never been convicted of any crime - in the United States. He had, however, run afoul of the law in Japan. The Customs authorities there became suspicious of him in 1992, when he shipped three electric water heaters from the United States to Japan, supposedly as gifts.
When he picked up the third water heater at the Okinawa airport, the authorities opened it and found two rifles, eight pistols and more than 400 rounds of ammunition, according to court papers. Mr. Small was convicted in Japan in 1994 of smuggling guns and sentenced to five years in prison there.
Paroled in the spring of 1998, he returned to the United States and his rendezvous with legal history.
His conviction in Japan turned up in a routine survey by the federal authorities of purchases at gun dealers. Not long after he bought the 9-millimeter pistol, a search of his southwestern Pennsylvania home, business premises and car turned up another pistol and more than 300 rounds of ammunition.
Indicted in 2000 on charges of making false statements and for possessing guns and ammunition as a convicted felon, Mr. Small moved through his lawyers to have the charges thrown out, arguing that the term "any court" meant any American court.
A federal district court rejected his argument, and Mr. Small entered a conditional plea of guilty, receiving an eight-month sentence but remaining free on bail while he appealed the district's court's refusal to dismiss the charge. The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, based in Philadelphia, agreed with the district court.
But today, the Supreme Court sided with Mr. Small, ruling 5 to 3 that the phrase "convicted in any court" applies only to convictions in the United States. "Congress ordinarily intends its statutes to have domestic, not extraterritorial, application," Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote for a majority that also included Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
To include foreign convictions, the majority reasoned, would raise the possibility of tainting a person who had been caught up in a legal system lacking American standards of fairness. Singapore imprisons people for up to three years for vandalism, the majority noted by way of example.
In dissent, Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy said, among other things, that "any" means what it says. "Indisputably, Small was convicted in a Japanese court of crimes punishable by a prison term exceeding one year," Justice Thomas wrote. "The clear terms of the statute prohibit him from possessing a gun in the United States."
As for foreign court procedures, the dissenters said, the majority "constructs a parade of horribles" and "cherry-picks a few egregious examples" like the Singapore vandalism law.
"And it is eminently practical to put foreign convictions to the same use as domestic ones," the dissenters said. "Foreign convictions indicate dangerousness just as reliably as domestic convictions."
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist did not take part in the case of Small v. United States, No. 03-750, which was argued last fall while he was undergoing treatment for cancer.
The Supreme Court accepted Mr. Small's case because federal circuit courts had come to different conclusions on the relevance of foreign convictions in cases like his. Today, the five justices in the majority resolved those conflicts - while noting that theirs might still not be the last word.
Even though they held that the phrase "convicted in any court" applies to any domestic court, the majority said, "we stand ready to revise this assumption should statutory language, context, history or purpose show the contrary."
"Congress, of course, remains free to change this conclusion through statutory amendment," the majority added pointedly.
His conviction in Japan turned up in a routine survey by the federal authorities of purchases at gun dealers.
We're in a brave new world now.
Are any of you familiar with this case? Was Small looking to sell these weapons for profit in Japan?
Wow. One of the few times I agee with Stevens and diagree with Scalia.
Why wasn't it 9-0? Why are the liberals on the court ignoring foreign countries' laws and courts, while the conservatives are the ones acting as though they have some kind of standing to affect our laws!???
Why does Soros and his convition in France keep coming to mind with this decision?
In all of these articles I read here, they always make it out to be such a huge deal that a person has several hundred rounds of ammunition (even when they have various guns of various calibers).
Who here buys ammo in LESS THAN 1000 round quantities? Well, ok... because we are all right-wing gun nuts, what "normal" person buys ammo in quantites less than 500 rounds? It's cheaper, and if you store it correctly it won't go bad.
Hell, I have several THOUSAND rounds of ammo for ONE of my guns in my bedroom closet!
Careful. Big Brother is watching. Best to keep some cards close to the vest.
These GUN Laws are against our Civil Rights as American Citizens. The Government doesn't have the right to control how many or what type of arms we own or where we purchase them. Osama can own an AK 47 but I cannot!!
How many AK-47's have been smuggled into this country already is anyone's guess, but one thing is for sure, they have been, especially with our open borders and inability to search the incoming trade goods!
I believe it was just last year that a shipping container was found with over 4,000 AK=47's in it, bound for the US!!
How many have slipped through?
It makes it even stranger when you consider who is in the majority and who is in the minority. The only way I can explain it is that the principles by which Souter, Stevens, and Ginsberg operate are dimunition of Federal penalties. Otherwise, how can you reconcile their concern with foreign laws with a view that the gun permits are concerned with American courts?
The case would have been easier if he'd been convicted overseas for something that was clearly not a problem in the US. Smuggling guns isn't looked upon kindly here. Would the vote have been the same from Scalia if he'd gotten two years for felony blasphemy in Saudi Arabia?
The nature of his past offense doesn't seem to have been addressed. It was just "all means all." I'd expect more from the guys who usually have it right--although that may not have been, as they say, "the question before the court."
I am not sure if there was proof that Small knew the guns were there. This oldtimers disease is playing hell with My memory.
Per the law Scalia was right.
"Any" means any.
"another pistol and more than 300 rounds of ammunition."
Poser...I keep 10x that amount of ammo at my buddies house...LOL
I don't know, I'm a little troubled that Scalia is kind of back-peddling on his stance that the rulings of foreign courts hold no sway on US. Yes, the law in this particular instance is clear that any courts is any courts, but by the same reasoning, someone who was arrested in say the former USSR on a weapon's charge, and then defected to the US wouldn't be allowed to purchase a handgun? Maybe I'm misreading the article.
The disturbing thing about this decision is the defendant violated the False Statements Act in saying he'd not been convicted. Even more, if a foreigner tried to smuggle weapons into this country, as the defendant did here to Japan, that foreigner would be guilty of a felony here, as this American was in Japan. Instead of smuggling, what if this man committeed a murder in Japan in furtherance of a drug smuggling conspiracy? Should he still be allowed to purchase weapons here in the U.S.? I doubt it.
The only way I can see a foreign conviction not being valid to deprive a U.S. citizen of his right to purchase guns is if it's for an act that would not be a felony here in the U.S., such as illegal weapons possession in England or Japan, when such possession would be entirely legal here. The majority should have narrowed its holding to this type of situation. Congress is going to have to clarify the statute.
I mean... Whoda thunk it? The Court's libs get one right while the conservatives completely blow it. A foreign conviction cannot be allowed to have force in an American court. There is no way to assure that a foreign court used proper procedures nor can we be sure that the rights of the accused were protected. In other words, what comes out of a foreign court is garbage. (It's just too bad that these same liberal justices couldn't keep that straight in the past!)
Amazing.Here we have Stevens et al effectively refusing to apply Japanese law to an American.
Wait, that's not what they did. What they actually did was to refuse to apply the plain text of American law, or to give credit to Japanese law and justice in order to do it. Now if it had been a Japanese court precedent, they would have wanted to follow that.
So you are all for the courts making up laws as they go?
The law was written "ANY" court. The SCOTUS just redefiend that law passed by congress to read "ANY US court"
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/26apr20050800/www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/04pdf/03-750.pdf
Here's the opinion. There may be something tricky here.
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