USA Today: Scores in N.C. are legally 'innocent' (of gun charges) yet still imprisoned

[petronius]

A USA TODAY investigation, based on court records and interviews with government officials and attorneys, found more than 60 men who went to prison for violating federal gun possession laws, even though courts have since determined that it was not a federal crime for them to have a gun.
...
The legal issues underlying their situation are complicated, and are unique to North Carolina. But the bottom line is that each of them went to prison for breaking a law that makes it a federal crime for convicted felons to possess a gun. The problem is that none of them had criminal records serious enough to make them felons under federal law.
...
These cases are largely unknown outside the courthouses here, but they have raised difficult questions about what, if anything, the government owes to innocent people locked in prisons.
...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-06-13/innocent-incarcerated-prisoners/55585176/1

There's a longer explanation later in the article; it seems like a quirk that's pretty specific to NC. The men in question aren't particularly sympathetic victims, and it seems like a situation where mere innocence is taking a back seat to bureaucracy and getting the 'right' result...

[Kennah]

1. I am led to wonder about the racial makeup of these jailed innocents, and if this is BWB

[Meiko]

3. I don't really think

that is the issue here. It seems at least to me that we have overzealous prosecutors who are throwing people in jail that have not committed a crime. I am wondering why the defense attorneys for these men didn't discover the discrepancy that put their clients in jail, seems pretty careless to me. It speaks volumes about our legal system.

Adding insult to injury these men have to sit in jail knowing they did not commit a crime. All the while their case files sit on some attorneys desk awaiting action.

[petronius]

4. The defense attorneys couldn't have known at the time of conviction,

it was only later that the Court realized that the definition of felon being used was incorrect. Still, those attorneys must know now - I wonder if there is or ought to be a duty to follow up with a client in this situation...

[Meiko]

6. Thanks, I get it.

I would hope that all of these cases would be provided some expediting since we have men sitting in jail that haven't done anything in regards to the eligibility portion of the law.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

5. There's the story of the man who...

...lost his wallet, he was walking around the street looking under each street light when a cop asks him what he was doing. The man explains that he lost the wallet between his car and front door. The officer asked where he had parked and the man pointed across the street to a gray sedan. The cop asked if he has looked around the car yet. The man said no and that the light was better on this side of the street.

Frequently we all take the path of least resistance; we take routes driving because they have less traffic and are less frustrating. Maybe the justice departments, state and federal, pursue convictions that are just easier to win.

I would suggest that the underlying federal law is unconstitutional, under the 2nd, 9th and 10th Amendments.

While it seems a no brainer that serious criminals should be disallowed from firearms possession, the issue of where to draw the line on who is a serious criminal is less clear. It's obvious that in the justice system a felony is the most serious level of a crime. Misdemeanors that include specific violent acts can get you on the NICS prohibited list, also. I personally don't see why someone with a criminal trespass conviction should be trusted with a gun and someone with a forgery conviction should not.

How can it be acceptable to apply laws where the state and federal definitions of a felony differ and imprison someone on the basis of the tighter standard?

[Meiko]

7. Well said

With the desire to keep guns out of the hands of criminals everyone gets swept into the same pile.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

8. There's a quote from Edmund A. Opitz

"No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words 'no' and 'not' employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights."

One of the principles guiding our justice system is that it is more important for the innocent to protected from wrongful conviction than for the guilty to be convicted. I think the saying is, "Better that 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted." How can that type of injustice mentioned in the article not be the top priority of our system?

[Kennah]

9. Certainly economic bias, if not racial bias

[unc70]

2. Eastern district of NC was GOP run

That district was run by Bush appointee George Holding until last year's indictment of John Edwards. Holding is now GOP candidate for Congress in newly gerrymandered safe GOP district.

Race possibly a factor, but not the only one.