Opinion ID: 215896
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Michael Wyman

Text: In 2002, Michael Wyman pled guilty in the Waldo County Superior Court to simple assault against his live-in girlfriend, Betsy Small. The criminal complaint, like the complaint filed in Booker's assault case, alleged that Wyman did intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly cause bodily injury or offensive physical contact to Small. The court sentenced Wyman to seventy-two hours' incarceration in county jail and imposed a $10 fine. Roughly six years later, in 2008, Wyman again ran afoul of the law. Wyman and Small were in the process of breaking off their relationship and had arranged for Small to stop by Wyman's house to pick up her belongings. Small arrived with three friends, her fourteen-year-old son, and an infant daughter. The presence of Small's friends angered Wyman, who emerged from the house intoxicated, yelling, and carrying a loaded shotgun. After Wyman fired the gun into the trees, Small and her companions quickly departed. Wyman called 9-1-1 and reported that he had fired a gun at the back of his house to encourage Small and her friends to leave. Two county sheriffs were dispatched to Wyman's house, where Wyman readily admitted to firing the shotgun and was placed under arrest. Before they left, Wyman asked one of the sheriffs to stoke his wood stove and turn off the lights in his house. Inside the house, the sheriff noted a gun rack containing several firearms, and Wyman identified the shotgun that he had used to drive off Small and her friends. The sheriff secured and seized the shotgun. In August 2008, a federal grand jury indicted Wyman on a single count of knowing possession of a firearm by an individual convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9). Wyman pled not guilty, and filed a motion to dismiss the indictment on grounds identical to those asserted by Booker: that (1) a conviction pursuant to Maine's simple assault statute, which reaches reckless as well as intentional conduct, does not necessarily involve a sufficient mens rea to categorically qualify as a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence under § 922(g)(9); and (2) § 922(g)(9)'s prohibition on possession of firearms is in derogation of the Second Amendment. The district court denied the motion. Wyman entered into a conditional plea agreement in March 2009, reserving his right to appeal the district court's order denying his motion to dismiss the indictment. In September 2009, the court entered judgment and sentenced Wyman to incarceration of a year and one day, with three years' supervised release to follow.