He’s A Ramblin’ Man – Update for July 31, 2025

We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.

POT MAKES YOU TALK TOO MUCH

Aldo Cordova Perez led police on a merry chase when they tried a buy-bust on his drug dealing. After Aldo’s escapade was cut short by a concrete post impaling the front of his getaway car, police cuffed him… and he started to ramble.

Aldo congratulated the gendarmes on the car chase. He admired their physicality in tackling him. He told them he smoked marijuana daily, and that he had a .22 rifle on a shelf at home.

Oh, Aldo. You should know that remaining silent isn’t just a right, it’s a pretty good idea. Aldo’s freely volunteered information about his gun at home tipped the locals that they should call the Feds. The Feds ran with Aldo said, and they charged him with being an illegal drug user in possession of a gun, a violation of 18 USC § 922(g)(3).

Amazingly, the jury acquitted him on drug trafficking – the “large quantity of methamphetamine in a box on the front-passenger-seat floorboard” did not impress the jurors – but they convicted Aldo of the § 922(g)(3) offense.

Aldo appealed, arguing that § 922(g)(3) violated the 2^nd Amendment as applied to the facts of his case. Last week, the 8^th Circuit agreed.

Citing its decision in United States v. Cooper, the Circuit said, “[W]e have already held that without more, neither drug use generally nor marijuana use specifically automatically extinguishes an individual’s 2nd Amendment right… And the government here did not provide enough evidence to show that marijuana use alone could reasonably be seen to make any user ‘an unacceptable risk of dangerousness’ to others by merely possessing a firearm. Indeed, defining a class of drug users simply by the suggestion that they might sometimes be dangerous, without more, is insufficient for categorical disarmament…

The 8^th remanded the case for the trial court to determine “either individually or categorically, and either on the trial record or, to the extent necessary, via an evidentiary hearing—whether Cordova Perez’s marijuana use: 1) caused him to ‘act like someone who is both mentally ill and dangerous’; or 2) would or did make him ‘induce terror, or pose a credible threat to the physical safety of others with a firearm.’” The Circuit said, “We believe the district court is best positioned to reassess Cordova Perez’s as-applied challenge in light of Cooper.”

United States v. Perez, Case No 24-1553, 2025 USAppLEXIS 18095 (8th Cir. July 22, 2025)

United States v. Cooper, 127 F.4th 1092 (8th Cir. 2025)

~ Thomas L. Root