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Gould Gold

By Melody Evans and Kirk Redmond

US v. Jay Hill is an important case for anyone with either gun cases or criminal history issues. Excellent win for Charles Dedmon (and Dave Phillips, who argued the case for Sparky), and a continuation of his good work started in US v. Norris.Here's the short version: Kansas felonies are measured by the maximum time that the individual defendant was exposed to at the time of sentencing, not the possible sentence for any defendant in that category. So, if the government did not seek an aggravating factor that increased the potential sentence to a prison term 'in excess of one year', and the personal criminal history did not expose her to more that, say, 11 months (grid box says 9, 10, 11), it is not a crime punishable by "in excess of one year," as required by the federal felon-in-possession statute, 18 USC 922(g)(1)...continue to full post

Full post as published by Kansas Federal Defender on January 18, 2008 (boomark / email).