A 21-year-old man has been sentenced to 54 months in prison after getting busted with several firearms on the campus of an eastern Kentucky high school.
Based on the circumstances of his arrest, Landan Strong doesn't sound like the sharpest tool in the shed. According to prosecutors, Strong was going to buy a pistol in a private sale not far from the high school, and decided to park on campus so he could "feel safe when he exited his vehicle"; a vehicle that had a rifle, ammunition, and at least one other handgun in it at the time.
When he was walking back to his car, employees of Walton-Verona High School spotted him and his gun, and called police. When he was arrested, Strong was carrying a bag with pressed fentanyl pills, and when authorities searched his home, they found another gun and more fentanyl. A search of his cell phone revealed Strong was regularly trading in both guns and narcotics.
Given all of that, you might expect Strong's federal conviction to involve drug trafficking, illegally dealing firearms, or even possessing a gun in a school zone. It doesn't. Strong is headed to federal prison for more than four years because he possessed firearms while being an unlawful user of controlled substances. In fact, all three counts in his federal indictment alleged violations of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), but two of those charges were dropped in exchange for his guilty plea.
When the Supreme Court issued its decision in the Hemani case back in June, the justices made it very clear that they weren't invalidating the entirety of Section 922(g)(3), which makes it illegal to possess guns as an "unlawful" drug user. Instead, the Court concluded that as applied to Ali Hemani, who was accused of possessing guns as a regular user of marijuana, the statute was "inconsistent with the Second Amendment."
The decision still gives prosecutors broad leeway to charge illegal drug users who possess firearms, and the USAO apparently decided that was the most appropriate charge for Strong.
I don't have much sympathy for Landan Strong, even though U.S. District Judge Chad Meredith apparently does.
Meredith rejected the defense's request for for a sentence without incarceration but chose a prison term at the low end of what federal sentencing guidelines called for, noting Strong's challenging life circumstances leading up to the crime.
"This is a particularly difficult situation," Meredith said. "There's a lot more to you than just this offense."
Landan had a pretty rough childhood, including the death of his father before he was born and allegedly being the victim of sexual abuse. Still, there are plenty of people who grow up in similarly challenging circumstances who don't turn to a life of crime.
According to federal prosecutors, his life revolved around guns and drugs, and he apparently thought nothing of bringing multiple firearms and fentanyl onto school property. If that's the case, why wasn't Strong charged with trafficking fentanyl, illegally dealing firearms, or even possessing a gun in a school zone?
The decision to charge Strong with violating Section 922(g)(3) is particularly interesting given the Supreme Court's decision in Hemani.
To be fair, Strong's case is very different from Ali Hemani's. Strong admitted to being addicted to fentanyl, not just marijuana, and the government could make a considerably stronger argument that his drug use and behavior posed a danger to himself or others. The Supreme Court expressly left open the constitutionality of § 922(g)(3) prosecutions involving addiction, intoxication, or individualized evidence of dangerousness.
Still, there's something troubling about relying on a broadly worded prohibition against gun possession by unlawful drug users when the government's own account describes conduct that could potentially support more specific criminal charges.
If Strong was illegally dealing firearms, prosecute him for that. If he was trafficking fentanyl, prosecute him for trafficking. If he unlawfully brought firearms onto school property, charge him under the applicable law. Those offenses address identifiable conduct rather than relying on a prohibition that can also ensnare someone whose only offense is occasionally smoking marijuana while owning a gun.
If Strong preserved a Second Amendment challenge, he'll certainly have a much tougher case than Ali Hemani did. Prosecutors have plenty of facts they could point to as evidence that Strong wasn't merely a guy who smoked pot on a regular basis and who happened to own guns. Whether those facts are enough to sustain a § 922(g)(3) conviction after Hemani is a question for another day.
But that's also what makes the charging decision so strange to me. If the government's own account is accurate, Strong wasn't dangerous because he fit within the broad category of "unlawful drug users." He was allegedly dealing in guns and fentanyl, bringing both onto school property, and engaging in conduct that prosecutors themselves portrayed as dangerous.
Maybe there were evidentiary problems that prevented prosecutors from bringing those more specific charges. But based on what's been made public, I'd much rather see the government prosecute Landan for what is arguably his most dangerous conduct instead of relying on a constitutionally vulnerable statute.
