The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled Tuesday that the federal firearm-possession ban violated the Second Amendment as applied to a Pennsylvania man with a 2005 drunken-driving conviction, while upholding another man’s gun conviction based on his earlier conviction for threatening violence.
The October 13 decisions, Williams v. Attorney General and United States v. Bost, establish precedent for federal cases within the Third Circuit, which includes the District Court of the Virgin Islands. Both Pennsylvania cases were heard en banc, bringing the disputes before the broader appeals court rather than a customary three-judge panel.
Both cases concerned 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which generally prohibits firearm possession by people convicted of crimes punishable by more than one year in prison. Although commonly called the felon-in-possession law, it also covers certain state misdemeanors. The Pennsylvania convictions at issue in both cases carried maximum sentences of five years.
In Williams, the court affirmed a judgment declaring the prohibition unconstitutional as applied to Edward A. Williams. Circuit Judge Paul Matey concluded that the government had failed to establish a historical basis for continuing to disarm him because of his DUI conviction.
Williams entered a rehabilitation program after an earlier DUI offense in 2000. Following another arrest in 2004, he was convicted in 2005 of driving with a blood-alcohol concentration of at least 0.16 percent. Because it was a repeat offense, the maximum possible sentence triggered the federal firearms prohibition.
The majority opinion said Williams gave up his firearms after his attorney advised him in 2015 that the conviction barred him from possessing them. He filed his civil challenge in 2017 and won summary judgment in the district court, prompting the government’s appeal.
The appeals court concluded that Williams’s offense contained no threatening or violent elements and that historical restrictions on habitual drunkenness did not justify the continuing prohibition. Those earlier laws generally involved confinement, treatment or guardianship, often for limited periods, rather than a lasting loss of firearm rights after release.
The court also cited evidence that Williams had no addiction or violent tendencies and that nothing suggested he had used firearms dangerously. It rejected the government’s request for additional factfinding about his present dangerousness, explaining that the government first had to supply a sufficient historical analogy to justify the restriction.
In Bost, the court reached a different result because James Bost’s earlier conviction required a threat to commit violence with the intent to terrorize another person. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote that such a conviction could itself establish sufficient risk of firearm violence to withstand a motion to dismiss a gun-possession indictment.
“Those who pose a risk of physical violence from misusing guns can be disarmed before that risk becomes a reality,” Bibas wrote.
Bost’s conviction followed a 2002 carjacking in which he threatened to kill the driver unless she gave him money. He pleaded guilty to terroristic threats, criminal conspiracy, false imprisonment and simple assault and received four years’ probation.
Years later, after Bost failed to appear in court while on bail in another matter, U.S. marshals found him near a stolen .38-caliber pistol. He was federally charged with possessing a firearm despite his convictions and possessing a stolen firearm. After the district court rejected his constitutional challenges, he pleaded guilty while preserving his right to appeal.
The appeals court upheld that result, including the stolen-firearm conviction. Its principal holding addressed the threshold presented by Bost’s motion to dismiss: his threats conviction was sufficient to support the prosecution at that stage. The opinion left open what, if anything, could later rebut the presumption that a defendant poses a risk of firearm violence.
The decisions drew competing separate opinions. Judge Patty Shwartz and two colleagues maintained that the federal prohibition could constitutionally apply to all felons. In Bost, Judge Peter Phipps, joined by Judge Emil Bove, challenged presumptively permanent disarmament after completion of a sentence. In Williams, Judge Arianna Freeman and two colleagues favored additional findings about his present risk.
