Can the wife/husband of a felon posess a legal handgun?
If the gun is in the home of a felon is it in his posession? What about confiscation?
How about legal weapons owned by someone else in the household of a meth dealer?
IANAL
yes, relatives and friends are not punished
convince the jury. If the felon is the only one living in the house and there is a handgun on the coffee table, he is in trouble. He might be able to convince the jury that his friend “forgot it” and is on the way back for it, but I doubt it. If the wife has a handgun permit and is there with the gun, it should be OK; again you have to convince the jury. Think of it as being in a car with other people with a gun, or drugs. The jury gets to decide who is in possesion
legal is legal
I know a guy who had some serious issues with this problem last year. My father, who is a lawyer, hooked him up with another lawyer who got him off on just this issue. They never had him in actual physical possession of any firearm, they just found them on the property and hauled him off to jail. It was successfully argued (in Oklahoma, no less, where we’re pretty tough on convicted felons) that his wife was the owner of the firearms in question.
I remember hearing that G. Gordon Liddy uses this approach to keep firearms in his house. Apparently, as a felon, he can’t possess, but his wife can.
The key is not simply ownership, but possession. A convicted felon may not possess a firearm, even if someone else owns it.
If the spouse of the felon owns the firearm, and it’s simply in the house, that may, as a matter fo law, be insufficient to establish exclusive constructive possession. Obviously, if the felon is wearing it in his waistband, he’s out of luck. But if it’s in the cabinet in the den, he’s probably safe.
- Rick