LAPD officer acquitted on gun exporting charges

[alp227]

A federal court jury last week acquitted a Los Angeles police officer of attempting to illegally export guns to Belize for a private security business he owned.

Federal prosecutors had alleged that LAPD Officer Johnny Augustus Baltazar illegally shipped a safe packed with firearms and ammunition to Belize in July 2007. The cache included eight .40-caliber handguns, two 9-millimeter handguns and more than 1,500 rounds of ammunition. Baltazar had bought most of the weapons at the LAPD police academy store for his Belize business, Elite Security.

Amanda Bettinelli, the assistant U.S. attorney on the case, could not be reached for comment.

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At trial, Baltazar's lawyer, Humberto Diaz, a deputy federal public defender, discounted the charges against his client as technical violations of a complex series of regulations.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-guns-20100906,0,5625451.story

[AtheistCrusader]

1. Hmmmm. Private security?

Could be legit, could be really, really bad.

[one-eyed fat man]

2. A juror summed it up.

Juror James K. Pierson III said the evidence presented by the government revealed a set of laws on gun shipping that were hard for even the investigators to follow.

"All of the agents on the stand were confused. Nobody knew what the law was," Pierson said. "How could they hold this man to that higher standard and convict him of a felony when they couldn't explain the law?"

When Homeland Security, Customs, the BATFE, and the State Department all have conflicting rules and requirements to the point where none of their agents could explain the law any less than acquittal would be a travesty.

The other question is how much will the bad publicity, aggravation and hassle cost him? How much of his retirement got burned up in legal fees? The government can drag you to court and still bankrupt you even though you win.

[Euromutt]

3. The main injustice is that this kind of acquittal doesn't happen more often

As I've pointed out ad nauseam on this forum, for the maxim that "ignorance of the law is no defense" to hold true, the law has to be readily comprehensible to the layman. When even the people enforcing the rules don't can't agree what the rules actually are and/or what standards to apply (and this is a problem endemic among federal agencies, even between field offices of a single agency), how can you expect the average citizen to know he's breaking the law?