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A real sleeper of a Ninth Circuit en banc case

A real sleeper of a Ninth Circuit en banc case: Today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an order granting en banc review in the case of United States v. Nevils, No. 06-50485.

Back on November 21, 2008, I had the following post about the three-judge panel's divided ruling in the case:

Only in the Ninth Circuit? The Metropolitan News-Enterprise today contains an article headlined "Ninth Circuit Reverses Sleeping Felon's Firearm Possession Conviction" that begins, "A divided panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday reversed a man's felon-in-possession-of-firearms conviction because he was asleep when police officers found him on a couch in an abandoned apartment with one gun on his lap and another leaning against his leg."

News from earlier this month reminded us that passed-out people are at risk of being turned into a surface for often crude graffiti. And now we learn, courtesy of yesterday's ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, that sleeping felons may be used as a storage site for firearms.

Fortunately, at least two Ninth Circuit judges on the three-judge panel that produced yesterday's ruling were unwilling to see sleeping felons be found guilty of additional federal criminal charges for having been exploited in that manner.

The introduction to Circuit Judge Jay S. Bybee's dissent from the three-judge panel's ruling certainly makes for an interesting read.

Full post as published by How Appealing on June 16, 2009 (boomark / email).