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Plaxico Burress indicted
Yesterday, the NY Times had this story. His attorney notes that Burress could face 3.5 years prison time for having an illegal gun (its really stupid handling is a different matter), whereas another football player got 30 days for killing someone while driving drunk. But Paul Helke of Brady Campaign says he should get "at least" the 3.5 years.
Today comes this report that he has been indicted.
Here's another NY Times piece, with details on local politics. It seems he choose a bad time for his foulup: Mayor Michael Bloomberg was gearing up for re-election and "Cracking down on gun violators is virtually a sacred cause for the mayor."
Hat tip to reader Jack Anderson....
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Scott Greenfield over at Simple Justice has a NY criminal defense attorney's take on the case. He indicates that the next step could be to challenge the underlying constitutionality of the gun possession law.
If I were in Brafman's shoes, my next attack would be to challenge the underlying prohibition against carrying a handgun for self-defense under Heller. I'm betting that Ben and Mark Baker have already thought of this. Far stronger than the felon in possession argument, no one suggests that Burress had the gun to commit a crime, making this a great test case on the facts since this case presents the rarely seen "clean defendant" subjected to laws that were never quite meant to apply this way.
http://blog.simplejustice.us/2009/08/04/plaxico-burress-tries-the-option-play.aspx
Burress is going to jail. The only way he walks is if carry is ruled to be a fundamental right, and that's not going to happen any time soon.
If he has any chance at all it would be due to the fact that NY law doesn't distinguish between open carry and concealed carry. So if, by some miracle, carry is ruled a right then the constitutionality of NY’s prohibition will likely lay with the Court’s determination of the constitutionality of NY’s licensing laws.
It is "Helmke", not Helke. He used to be my mayor (of Fort Wayne, Indiana). He's been an advocate of gun control all along. Statist shill....
TWD