New York takes unpermitted gun possession seriously; so much so that merely possessing a pistol without a license is considered a violent felony all by itself. A conviction for criminal use of a firearm in the second degree comes with a mandatory minimum sentence of at least 3 1/2 years, or at least it's supposed to.
As it turns out, though, while guys like Dexter Taylor and Charles Foehner are stuck behind bars because they possessed unpermitted firearms (in Taylor's case, only in his home), celebrities and their kin can get special treatment in court.
Last Friday, Declyn “Dex” Lauper was in a Manhattan court room facing charges of criminal possession of a weapon and possession of a controlled substance stemming from a 2024 arrest in Harlem after police found him with a gun and drugs. Though Lauper was facing at least seven years behind bars if he was convicted, he walked out of the courthouse a a free man after getting a remarkable plea deal.
He received one year of interim probation for the bust, which came when cops found the gun on him after his pal was shot in the leg in Upper Manhattan on Feb. 7, 2024. He had been facing up to seven years in prison if convicted on the firearms charge.
... As part of the plea deal, Lauper will have to receive substance abuse treatment and remain arrest free for one year.
If he completes the program with no problems, he would then be allowed to plea to the lesser charge of criminal possession of a firearm and receive a three-year conditional discharge, according to the terms accepted by Judge Sara Litman.
The resolution comes more than two years after cops caught the pop scion with a loaded Glock .47 caliber handgun on 112th Street in Harlem, near where his 24-year-old pal had just been shot in the leg by a group of five gunmen, prosecutors have said.
Essentially, Lauper was allowed to enter into a diversion program after pleading guilty to a crime that carries a minimum 42 months in prison, and if he keeps himself out of trouble for twelve months he won't even be on probation afterwards.
Keep in mind that this isn't even Lauper's first run-in with the law. In 2022, Lauper also managed to dodge incarceration after being caught behind the wheel of a stolen Mercedes Benz. He somehow was able to plead down to disorderly conduct, and in return was sentenced to a whopping five days of community service.
I'm of two minds here. Yes, New York's law treating unlicensed possession of a loaded firearm as a violent felony that demands more than three years in prison is, in my opinion, a flagrantly unconstitutional law. That being said, it is also a law that is commonly enforced, and plea deals like the one Lauper received appear to be extraordinarily rare.
They certainly weren't offered to Dexter Taylor, who ended up being convicted of convicted of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon and related charges for building his own unlicensed firearms that he kept in his home. Taylor was sentenced to ten years, and is currently serving his sentence in a maximum security prison in upstate New York.
Charles Foehner, a New York City doorman who defended himself against a crazed attacker by shooting the man with an unlicensed firearm, wasn't charged for the shooting. He was, however, charged with second-degree criminal possession of a weapon for his collection of unlicensed firearms, and faced more than two decades behind bars if convicted. Instead, he took a deal and pled guilty to a single count, and in return the 67-year-old was ordered to prison for four years.
Neither Taylor nor Foehner had a previous criminal history, nor were there any allegations of substance abuse in their cases. So why weren't they offered the same deal that Lauper received? Was it because they possessed more than one firearm, was it because they don't have any famous relatives, or is this just another case of Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg going easy on "violent" criminals?
I suspect all three of those factors played a role in Lauper's sweetheart plea deal and slap on the wrist. Under Bragg, plea deals involving gun possession cases have dramatically increased, though they typically involve reducing the charge from a felony to a misdemeanor before sentencing. The Brooklyn and Queens D.A.'s also clearly wanted to make an example out of Taylor and Foehner, while Bragg didn't shine any kind of spotlight on Lauper after his arrest and ahead of his plea bargain.
Maybe Lauper still would have gotten this deal if his mom was Cindy Hopper, not Cyndi Lauper, but I can't help but think that any kind of deal would have been structured to include at least some time behind bars given his previous criminal history.
If Lauper deserves his freedom, then Tayor and Foehner do too. And if New York's draconian gun laws that treat mere possession as a "violent" felony can be bypassed based on a prosecutor's ideology or the nepo-baby status of a defendant, then that's all the more reason to repeal that law and replace it with something that's more constitutionally compliant and can be applied fairly across the board.
