by Aitken.
Now the cops and prosecutors who arrested him and brought the charges need to be either severely disciplined or canned for idiocy and misuse of taxpayer funds.
Update: it's been pointed out that this still leaves him a convicted felon, which means his 2nd Amendment rights are gone; yeah, Christie could have done more. Looks like he wanted to split the difference, which means screw him if he runs for higher office.
I know there's argument this allows appeal to whack the law itself; I don't know. I do know that the police and prosecutors and the judge involved need to be punished for their actions.
2 comments:
Not quite. He commuted his sentence, which gets him out of jail, but left him a felon, which effs him on his gun rights.
And the only difference between the two is a stroke of the pen by Christie and little testicular fortitude on his part.
I am very disappointed.
The judge was already out of a job; based on some of his earlier decisions, Christie had already decided not to re-appoint him when his term ended. AFAIK, the cops and DA are local government employees and it isn't within Christie's power to dump them. I hope he at least sent a scorching letter to the bar association's disciplinary committee - but don't expect that to amount to anything. The DA and judge ought to permanently lose their licenses to practice law, but fellow lawyers hardly ever impose any real penalty...
As for the halfway pardon, it is possible that Aitken chose that so he could continue with an appeal. Or it's possible that Christie just lacks testicles...
There are two problems with continuing the appeal. One is that even if victory was sure, Aitkens will be a "convicted felon" for years while the case works it's way through the courts. The second is that Aitkens will probably win at some level in the courts without even putting a dent in that unconstitutional law.
The law provides an affirmative defense for transporting guns in your car when moving into the state, but Aitken was not allowed to present this defense to the jury. Whether Aitken's situation qualified sure looks to me like a factual issue which should have been determined by the jury, not the judge. So either the appellate judges are gun bigots who never get past "guns, bad" to actually apply the law and the constitution, or they reverse and remand for retrial on just the "in transit" defense issue, and don't have to look at the law's constitutionality. It's a basic principle of appellate judging that you start with the easiest issue, and only move on to the hard ones if necessary...
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