The story of Patrick "Tate" Adamiak is one of the more puzzling ones I've talked about here. The US Navy sailor was convicted of possessing and selling machine guns and destructive devices, namely RPGs, back in 2022. When he was convicted, I wrongly assumed everything in the case was up to snuff. After all, he was convicted in a trial by a jury of his peers.

Despite my loathing for the ATF, I figured none would be so brazen as to lie before a court of law in some manner that couldn't be disputed by opposing counsel. Innocent people aren't supposed to go to prison.

Since then, I've written a lot about Adamiak. Lee Williams has done amazing work exposing this injustice, and I'm really just trying to amplify his voice on this.

And just when I think things have hit the peak of possible ridiculousness, something comes that makes me rethink the limits of human stupidity.

For example, the RPGs Adamiak supposedly possessed? We know they were demilled. They weren't functional RPGs. Yet I figured that somehow, the court was unaware of that fact. They couldn't know about it and still convict him of possessing destructive devices, right?

Well, it seems that isn't the case, as Williams points out.

Were it not for the additional charges and prison time he received for possessing two inert rocket launchers, Patrick “Tate” Adamiak would likely be a free man.

“More than likely, I would have received no more than six years if it weren’t for the RPGs,” Adamiak said Sunday from his federal prison in New Jersey. “The guidelines say I would have received a 70-month sentence range, had I not been convicted of the RPGs.”

His sentencing guidelines included a 15-point enhancement for the two inert RPGs, but if they weren’t charged, Adamiak would likely have received a five-year sentence, as opposed to the 20-year sentence he is currently serving.

“I would be home now,” Adamiak said.

...

Federal District Judge Arenda Wright Allen oversaw Adamiak’s trial. Afterward, she wrote an eight-page document called a “Statement of Reason,” or SOR. The document includes the judge’s reasoning behind Adamiak’s two-decade sentence, since she could have sentenced him to even more time behind bars.

“Mitigating factor: Performed well on bond, did not possess all parts of destructive devices. Showed remorse during allocution,” Judge Wright Allen wrote in her SOR.

For those fluent in federal firearm law, the judge’s comment “did not possess all parts of destructive devices” is simply unbelievable. It damns the prosecution, their ATF “expert” and the judge herself.

Exactly.

"[D]id not possess all parts of destructive devices" translates to "didn't have a destructive device." 

A destructive device is one of those things that either is or isn't. It's either a functional RPG or it's an inert tube that was demilled prior to being imported and is easily obtainable through sites like eBay.

Adamiak did not have any RPGs. He had demilled tubes, and the judge essentially acknowledges this. She admits explicitly that he didn't possess all parts of any destructive device, which, as I've just pointed out, means he didn't have a destructive device. She knew it, acknowledged it, and still sentenced him accordingly.

The judge had the power to throw out that charge entirely. She could have dismissed it. She didn't.

That's not getting into the other BS that Adamiak was convicted of--legal firearms or non-firing replicas that were heavily modified to fire a single round, then determined to be machine guns--because the judge didn't admit those charges were essentially BS. They are, but it doesn't appear she said so.

It's one thing to want the laws on the books to be upheld. We can agree or disagree on that, even if we universally disagree with the laws in question.

But no one should stand by while anyone is prosecuted and convicted of those laws when they broke none of them. The fact that the judge tacitly acknowledges this fact, yet still sentenced Adamiak as if he'd done everything he was accused of.

This is a travesty and should not be tolerated in any society, much less one that prides itself on freedom and justice for all.