An excerpt from Friday's long decision in State v. Brown, written by Ohio Court of Appeals Judge Pierre Bergeron, joined by Judge Jennifer Kinsley:
In 2023, a grand jury indicted Mr. Brown on one count of robbery …. The court released Mr. Brown on bond with an electronic monitoring unit ("EMU") ankle monitor, but it did not place any restrictions on his ability to possess a firearm. During a home visit by the EMU team, they located a loaded firearm in his apartment. This discovery spawned a new indictment pursuant to R.C. 2923.13(A)(2) for having a weapon under a disability.
The State's robbery case against Mr. Brown eventually collapsed, which led to the dismissal of those charges against him. But …. the weapons under a disability case was still at play ….
[Under Bruen], we ask whether the disarmament imposed by R.C. 2923.13(A)(2), as applied in this case, falls within our Nation's historical tradition of firearms regulation…. [T]he State offers no evidence of any specific historical tradition, dating back either to the founding or reconstruction era, of categorically disarming individuals based solely on the fact of their indictment—either in general, for violent crimes, or for robbery in particular….
Instead, the State tries to broaden the aperture, insisting that felonious behavior justifies a determination that someone cannot be trusted with firearms. In other words, the State suggests that history and tradition grant the states the power to disarm any person found to have engaged in felony conduct.
But … Mr. Brown … had only been indicted for a felony offense when the State charged him with possessing a weapon under a disability…. [A]ny categorical felon-disarmament rule would necessarily rest on the disarmed individual's conviction. And a felony conviction, to the founding generation, meant at least two things: (1) trial by jury, and (2) a heightened burden of proof, understood today as proof beyond a reasonable doubt….
