Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sentencing Law and Policy

Criminal Law

: Sentencing Law and Policy

Notable new Alaska appellate decision on denying gun rights to non-violent felons

By Douglas A. Berman

Thanks to this post at Volokh, I learned of an interesting new Alaska Court of Appeals decision in Wilson v. Alaska (available here) addressing whether nonviolent felons have any rights under the state's Constitution.  Here are basic parts of the opinion for the court: The thrust of Wilson?s argument is that the statute prohibiting a felon from possessing a concealable firearm violates article I, section 19 of the Alaska Constitution because it does not differentiate between violent and non-violent felons, and thus is not narrowly tailored to achieve the State?s compelling interest in preventing violent crime. Wilson argues that article I, section 19 guarantees an individual?s right to keep and bear arms, and therefore any law that restricts that right must be narrowly tailored to protect a compelling government interest...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on May 22, 2009 (boomark / email).