Court Vacates Felon's Gun Conviction
PHOTO CAPTION: The Elbert P. Tuttle U.S. Court of Appeals Building in Atlanta, home of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
A federal appeals court has vacated the firearm conviction of a Florida man after ruling police did not have reasonable suspicion to stop him simply because they saw him carrying a concealed handgun.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit issued its decision Wednesday, Sept. 9, in the case of Olson Joseph, who had been sentenced to 46 months in federal prison for possessing a firearm and ammunition after a felony conviction.
The ruling does not invalidate the federal law prohibiting certain convicted felons from possessing firearms. The three-judge panel rejected Joseph's Second Amendment challenge to that law but separately concluded that the police stop that produced the handgun violated his Fourth Amendment rights.
The case began in October 2022, when two Miami-Dade police detectives were conducting surveillance near a house associated with previous drug complaints and the site of a fatal drive-by shooting roughly two weeks earlier.
According to the court, Joseph spent time around the house, including getting a haircut on the front lawn. When he later walked past one of the detectives' vehicles, an officer saw the backstrap of a handgun protruding from Joseph's hoodie pocket.
The detectives moved in with their guns drawn and ordered Joseph to put his hands up. Joseph complied, and police removed the handgun from his hoodie.
Only after taking the gun did officers conduct records checks and discover that Joseph had a prior felony conviction and did not have a concealed-carry permit. He was eventually charged under the federal felon-in-possession statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).
Joseph challenged both the federal firearm restriction and the legality of the stop.
A federal district court initially sided with prosecutors on the stop, finding reasonable suspicion based on the handgun, the area's history of crime and Joseph's proximity to a house connected to a recent homicide and suspected drug activity.
Joseph then entered a conditional guilty plea that allowed him to appeal the suppression issue. He was sentenced to 46 months in prison.
The appeals court reached a different conclusion.
At the time Joseph was stopped, Florida law treated possession of a concealed handgun differently than it had before a 2015 change in state law. The appeals court said that change made concealed firearm possession presumptively lawful unless authorities had reason to believe the person lacked the required license.
That meant seeing the concealed handgun alone wasn't enough to establish reasonable suspicion that Joseph was committing a crime.
The court also rejected the government's argument that the surrounding circumstances changed the equation. Judges noted that police did not see Joseph conduct drug transactions and had no evidence connecting him personally to the earlier drive-by shooting.
Joseph, the court said, had been engaged in otherwise ordinary activities while possessing a firearm that, based on what officers knew at the time, could have been legally carried.
The panel therefore ruled that officers violated Joseph's Fourth Amendment rights when they detained him.
Because the handgun was obtained through that unlawful stop, the appeals court ruled that it must be suppressed. The court vacated Joseph's conviction, reversed the lower court's suppression ruling and sent the case back for further proceedings.
At the same time, the court specifically rejected Joseph's argument that the federal felon-in-possession statute itself violated the Second Amendment.
That distinction makes the decision considerably narrower than simply ruling that a convicted felon had a right to carry the gun.
Florida's concealed-carry law has also changed again since Joseph's arrest. The state enacted permitless concealed carry in 2023, while Joseph's stop occurred under the version of the law in effect in 2022.
(Source: OAF Nation)
