A five-time convicted felon facing a mandatory 15-year prison sentence for his latest weapons offense in Chicago was instead allowed to walk free — because a federal judge ruled it unconstitutional to bar criminals from owning guns.
Glen Prince, 37, already had three armed robberies and aggravated battery of a police officer on his record when he was arrested for robbing three men on a Chicago train in September 2021, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Police found him with cocaine, a stolen credit card, several bullets and a fully loaded Smith and Wesson, despite a federal law banning convicted felons from owning guns.
But his case was dismissed earlier this month by federal Judge Robert Gettleman, who ruled that laws prohibiting felons from owning guns violate Second Amendment rights, citing a landmark Supreme Court decision last year.
The judge readily coincided that “violence plagues our communities and that allowing those who potentially pose a threat to the orderly functioning of society to be armed is a dangerous precedent.”
However, he said prosecutors failed to prove that felons are excluded from “the people” protected under the Second Amendment.
“Although there are strong policy reasons for doing everything possible to keep guns off our streets and out of communities, this court can find no such historical analog,” Gettleman wrote in his decision.
He claimed that the federal ban on felons owning guns was a greater threat to liberty than a 1791 law that took guns from colonists refusing to declare loyalty to the new republic. He said he searched rulings as far back as Rhode Island in 1677 and the New Netherlands in 1639 and found no precedent for the ban.
The judge concluded that the law “imposes a far greater burden on the right to keep and bear arms than the historical exclusions from the people’s Second Amendment right.
“The government has not demonstrated why the modern ubiquity of gun violence, and the heightened lethality of today’s firearm technology compared to the Founding justify a different result.”
Prince was ordered released from prison following the ruling, but was rearrested by Chicago police on separate charges accusing him of being an armed habitual criminal.
He is now being held without bond in the Cook County Jail, as federal prosecutors appeal the judge’s ruling, the Tribune reported.
But Prince’s case is just one of more than 600 similar cases filed by the US attorney’s office over the past five years where investigations by Chicago police and other local law enforcement are later sent to federal court.
At least 50 people have been charged in 2023 alone with violating the federal felon with a firearm ban, according to the Tribune.
Those in favor of leveraging the federal law often see it as a way to ensure the most violent and repeat offenders remain off the streets.
By ruling the ban unconstitutional, “you’re going to see another uptick in crime,” Bill Kushner, a police affairs consultant, told ABC 7 Chicago.
He also refuted Gettleman’s argument that there is no historical precedent for the ban.
“The federal law prohibiting possession of firearms by convicted felons goes back to the 1930s, and in 1961 it was broadened for a blanket lifetime ban on firearm possessions for all convicted felons,” he said.
Kushner added that “the carjackings, the shootings, these are not just demonized youth, these are people that feel they have a free hand to do whatever they want without fear of repercussions.”
Violent crime in the Windy City is now up more than 20% from the same time last year, according to the Chicago Police Department.
Motor vehicle thefts have more than doubled during that time period, and the number of robberies is also up 25% from last year.