[AuntB]

“The defendants were convicted for assault, discharge of a weapon in the commission of a crime of violence,”

That is still BS. I can only take the word of the authors of this legislation, it was not meant to use against LEO’s carrying a gun for their JOB. If it was why is this the ONLY case?

I give up.

[calcowgirl]

From the decision: "At the scene, Compean was asked by a supervisor if he had been assaulted and responded that he had not been."

I believe this is absolutely false.

[TKDietz]

Congress needs to rewrite the law so there can be no mistake about who it applies to. This is a common problem though, prosecutors misapplying laws. They do it all the time, and there isn't a whole lot we can do about it except get our legislators to rewrite a law, something they rarely do unless it somehow scores them political points. Anytime you have a law like this with a stiff mandatory minimum sentence, prosecutors will try to figure out ways to stretch the meaning of the statute to make it apply to conduct the drafters of the law never thought about when they wrote it. Prosecutors like big hammers like this to use to get people to shut up and plead. If these two would have agreed to a plea deal I bet the prosecutor would have agreed to drop this 10 year mandatory minimum charge. They chose to take it to trial, so they got the shaft. That's the way our system works.

[CharlesWayneCT]

On page 30 of the court ruling, they specifically note that this law has been applied to LEOs at least two other times within this same circuit, so the statement that this is the only case of the law ever being applied to LEOs is incorrect:

The defendants therefore advance the argument that the application of the statute to the facts of this case is novel, i.e., did not provide them with fair warning, because its application here frustrates the statute’s legislative purpose, has no support in the cases of this circuit, and makes for bad public policy. But cases in our circuit have permitted application of § 924(c)(1)(A) to police officers. See, e.g., United States v. Williams, 343 F.3d 423 (5th Cir. 2003); United States v. Winters 105 F.3d 200 (5th Cir. 1997).