The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in United States v, Rozier upheld laws charging possession of a weapon by a convicted felon against Second Amendment claims.

Eenie Austin, the mother of Christopher Rozier’s child arrived at his house in time to see his current girl friend holding a butcher knife to Rozier’s neck. Austin joined the fray and threw a concrete statute, hitting him in the face. At this point he pulled out a gun to protect himself. The decision does not say who called the police but they arrived later in the day with a search warrant. They searched the residence and found crack cocaine, marijuana, and ammunition. A gun was found buried in the yard.

Rozier was charged with possession of a gun and ammunition by a convicted felon in violation of 18 United States Code Section 922(g)(1) and since he had three major prior drug convictions he was sentenced under the Armed Career Criminal Act to 210 months in prison.

In District of Columbia v. Heller the Supreme Court held that “the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.” But Heller also said, “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons . . . .” Based on this language the Eleventh Circuit found that certain classifications of people, include convicted felons may be denied Second Amendment rights.

James L. Green was convicted in Georgia State Courts of rape and related offenses involving two sexual assault on different victims. He appealed and eventually filed an in pro per petition for habeas corpus in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

One of the issues was the incompetence of counsel. Green argued that his counsel was incompetent for failing to move to suppress DNA evidence. The Court ruled that even though counsel should have moved to suppress the evidence due to misstatements in the affidavit supporting the search warrant, Green was not prejudiced by counsel’s failure since there was more than enough evidence to convict him even if the DNA evidence had been excluded. The victim testified that she knew Green prior to the attack and she recognized him when he raped her. Therefore counsel’s incompetence did not prejudice Green and the conviction was upheld with the exception of the aggravated sodomy conviction.

Under Georgia law aggravated sodomy is “any sexual act involving the sex
organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another that is committed with
force and against the will of the other person.” The only evidence to support the charge was one of the victim’s testimony that

while threatening her with a knife, Green forced her to perform oral sex on him and to lick his anus. She further testified: “He pushed me down on the bed and
raped me.

The court found this to be insufficient, as a matter of law, to convict Green on the charge. The jury could not assume based upon this testimony that Green’s penis touched the victim’s anus. Therefore the conviction on this count was reversed.

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction of Jose Lopez for (1) conspiring to encourage or induce an alien to enter the United States, (2) encouraging or inducing 17 aliens to enter the United States, and (3) and knowingly aiding or assisting an alien, who was inadmissible due to a prior aggravated felony conviction, to enter the United States.

In order to uphold the convictions the court found that “encouraging or inducing an alien” under 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv) included “helping” an alien to illegally enter the United States. Initially the trial judge refused the request of the government to define “encouraging or inducing.” But while deliberating, the jury sent a note requesting a definition and the judge gave the government’s proposed dictionary definition:

In response to your question concerning “encourage” and “induce,” I instruct you on the below dictionary definitions in conjunction with all of the Court’s instructions in your deliberations.

To “encourage” means to knowingly instigate, to incite to action, to give courage to, to inspirit, to embolden, to raise confidence, to help, to forward, and/or to advise.

To “induce” means to knowingly bring on or about, to affect, cause to influence an act or course of conduct, lead by persuasion or reasoning, incite by motives, and/or to prevail on.

The evidence at trial showed that Lopez accompanied two other men to the Bahamas, where they picked up 19 aliens. It did not show that Lopez at any time spoke with the aliens. Nor did it show that he went with the intent to bring aliens into the country or that he even knew that the aliens were illegal until after the boat left the Bahamas. It did show that while he did not own the boat he steered the boat most of the time.

But as the dissent points out to define “encourage” as “to help” allows Lopez to be convicted for steering the boat. Yet steering the boat is a violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1324(a)(2) which prohibits transportation of illegal aliens. Laws are to be read in such a way that one section of a law does not duplicate another. Furthermore since words should be given there normal meaning and since “to help” is one of the last in a series of definitions for “encourage” in most dictionaries the dissent by Judge Barkett states

The majority’s decision eschews the ordinary and common sense meaning of the word “encourage” in favor of the most general and least meaningful possible interpretation, namely, “to help.”