<![CDATA[felon in possession]]>

Iowa woman gets probation after shooting man in hospital ER

July 9, 2022 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

It’s actually worse than the headline might lead you to believe. The woman in question is a convicted felon, which means she wasn’t allowed to possess that firearm at all, much less use it to shoot someone.

Yet despite those inconvenient facts, a judge in Davenport, Iowa gave 21-year old G’Sani Natric Bogan one heck of a deal when she appeared in court this week after pleading guilty back in April to charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm and reckless use of a firearm.

On Wednesday, Judge Mark Fowler sentenced her to five years in prison on both charges and ordered the sentences to run concurrently, or at the same time. The judge then suspended the prison sentence and placed her on three years of probation, court records show.
Bogan will not have to serve the prison sentence if she completes probation.
… Also Wednesday, Fowler revoked Bogan’s deferred sentence in an unrelated heroin case and sentenced her to a suspended 10-year prison sentence and placed her on three years of probation. The sentence will run concurrently to the sentences in the shooting case, court records show.

Seriously? How much heroin are we talking about that Bogan was eligible for a ten-year sentence; twice as long as the one she received for shooting a guy in the leg with a gun she wasn’t legally allowed to possess?

I guess it doesn’t really matter, since the end result was a total of three years probation for all charges.

The gun charges stemmed from a fight in the lobby of a Davenport hospital emergency room back in March. Witnesses reported that Bogan and a man identified as 20-year old Fahsheed Rush were fighting, and after Rush punched Bogan in the face, she responded by shooting him twice in the leg. Rush was originally charged with misdemeanor assault, but the charges were dropped. Given that there was surveillance footage of the fight, it sounds like the video evidence demonstrated that Bogan was the initial aggressor.

Iowa has pretty good laws when it comes to protecting the Second Amendment, but it has the same problems as every other state when it comes to the criminal justice system; too many plea deals resulting in too many violent offenders walking away with a slap on the wrist.

There’s also a big difference between state and federal court. While Bogan, for instance, was avoiding time behind bars after shooting someone in the leg with a gun she wasn’t allowed to own, a Waterloo man who accidentally shot his neighbor’s garage while he was on probation for robbery learned that he’ll will be spending the next couple of years in federal prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Judge C.J. Williams on Friday sentenced Seyveion Marchelle James Hayes, 22, to two years and three months in federal prison on a charge of felon in possession of a firearm.
The sentence is to run consecutive to any sentence handed down in the probation revocation hearing.
Authorities allege Hayes was at a friend’s house at 1818 Mulberry St. on May 23, 2020, and was looking at his friend’s guns – a 7.62 mm Russian Mosin Nagant bolt-action rifle, a 7.62 mm Century Arms VSKA military-style rifle and a 12-gauge Stevens 320 shotgun.
He was also handling the shotgun in the backyard and accidentally triggered the weapon, which damaged the neighbor’s garage, according to court records.

Now, Hayes also compounded his trouble by getting caught with a stolen handgun a year later, but as far as I know he didn’t actually shoot anyone with it. Because federal courts tend to take these types of cases more seriously, though, he’s going to prison while Bogan, whose case wasn’t referred to federal court, is walking free.

Gun control activists in Iowa, meanwhile, are bleating about the state’s Constitutional Carry law and trying to defeat a change to the state’s constitution that would offer more protection to the right to keep and bear arms rather than demand “reasonable” and “commonsense” actions to ensure that violent criminals face actual consequences for their misdeeds. Cases like Bogan’s aren’t even on their radar, because their primary target are the state’s legal, law-abiding gun owners.

California cop killer got probation instead of prison after being caught with gun, drugs

June 16, 2022 by Cam Edwards Leave a Comment

If you’re a regular viewer/listener to the Cam & Co podcast, you know that every day on the show we have a segment called the “Recidivist Report” that highlights a soft sentence or sweetheart plea deal that allowed a violent criminal to return to the streets instead of spending some quality time behind bars. These stories are a counter to the argument that “we need more gun control laws to keep us safe”, because they demonstrate the unwillingness or inability to actually enforce the laws that are already on the books.

The murder of two police officers in El Monte, California on Tuesday is, sadly, yet another example of this phenomenon. According to records, Justin Flores, who shot and killed Cpl. Michael Paredes and Officer Joseph Santana as they responded to reports of a stabbing at a local motel, was charged with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, ammunition, and methamphetamine in 2020, but instead of taking the case to trial Los Angeles County prosecutors offered Flores one hell of a plea deal.

Arrested in 2020 and charged with possessing methamphetamine, a handgun and ammunition, Flores pleaded no contest in February 2021 to possessing a firearm as a felon, records show. Prosecutors dropped the other charges.
Flores, who previously served two prison terms for burglary and car theft, had been prohibited from carrying a gun since 2011.
Though the gun conviction alone could have sent him to prison for three years, Flores was instead sentenced to two years’ probation and 20 days in jail, which he’d already served, a prosecutor said at a plea hearing. Flores was ordered not to possess any weapons, including guns, ammunition and knives, a transcript of the hearing shows. He was warned that if he breached these terms, he could be sent to prison for up to three years.
On Monday, a day before the shooting, Flores’ probation officer filed a request in court for a revocation hearing, listing the reason as “desertion.” Two law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation said his girlfriend reported he had assaulted her last week, triggering a probation violation, but Flores was not taken into custody. A hearing was set for June 27.
Asked why Flores wasn’t arrested on the violation, Karla Tovar, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Probation Department, said the agency was “currently investigating the matter further.”

Expect a similar non-answer from Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon’s office about why Flores was offered a plea deal that resulted in no prison time despite the fact that he could received a three-year sentence if he’d been convicted. If Gascon had referred Flores’ case to federal court the sentence could have been even more substantial; up to ten years in federal prison.

Instead, Gascon’s office helped the criminal justice system give Flores a slap on the wrist and a kiss on the cheek before they set him loose. This is the same Gascon, by the way, who thinks we need more gun control laws on the books, most of them aimed squarely at legal gun owners. Of course this is also the same Gascon who’s probably going to face a recall election this November because even some liberal and progressive Los Angelenos have had enough of his soft-on-crime policies.

None of California’s vaunted gun laws stopped Flores from illegally obtaining a firearm, but prosecutors failed to do anything about it when they had the change. Instead, they cut him loose, and unfortunately the second time police found him with a gun he used it to take the lives of two officers.

Paredes started as a cadet with the department and in July 2000 was sworn in as a full-time officer. He is survived by his wife, daughter and son. Ancona described him as a nearly 22-year veteran “who went through our El Monte schools” and who was “excited to be on the force.”
Santana served for three years as a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy before transferring to the El Monte Police Department less than a year ago. Before joining law enforcement, he worked as a maintenance worker for the city of El Monte for six years and graduated from El Monte High School. He’s survived by his wife, daughter and twin boys.

California doesn’t need another gun control law. In fact, they need to take several dozen of them off the books. But they also need prosecutors who will take their job seriously, who don’t elevate criminals above their victims, and who don’t bloviate about doing more on gun control when they’re failing to enforce the laws already in place.