Court Opinion

ID: 9945773
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-28 16:04:32.433512+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:25:40.075101
License: Public Domain

FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL
                STATE OF FLORIDA
                 _____________________________

                        No. 1D2022-2356
                 _____________________________

SHAWN MARTESE GULLEY,

    Appellant,

    v.

STATE OF FLORIDA,

    Appellee.
                 _____________________________

On appeal from the Circuit Court for Escambia County.
Jennie Kinsey, Judge.

                        February 28, 2024

PER CURIAM.

     AFFIRMED. See Edenfield v. State, 1D22-290, 2023 WL
3734459, *3–4 (Fla. 1st DCA May 31, 2022) (rejecting the
argument that Florida’s statute prohibiting felons from possessing
firearms is unconstitutional under New York State Rifle & Pistol
Ass’n v. Bruen, 142 S. Ct. 2111 (2022)), review denied, No. SC2023-
1106, 2023 WL 8710101 (Fla. Dec. 18, 2023).

NORDBY, J., concurs; BILBREY, J., concurs with opinion;
TANENBAUM, J., concurs in result with opinion.
                 _____________________________

    Not final until disposition of any timely and
    authorized motion under Fla. R. App. P. 9.330 or
    9.331.
               _____________________________

BILBREY, J., concurring.

     We are correct to affirm Appellant’s conviction for possession
of a firearm by a convicted felon based on Edenfield v. State, 48
Fla. L. Weekly D1113, 2023 WL 3734459 (Fla. 1st DCA May 31,
2023). Like Edenfield, Appellant had previous convictions for
violent felonies before he possessed the firearm in this case.

      In his concurrence Judge Tanenbaum argues, citing New York
State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022),
that the opinion in Edenfield “unnecessarily pursues an
inapplicable Bruen analysis.” He may be correct, but until the
United States Supreme Court provides more clarity on the issue,
the law is unsettled. At least one federal court of appeals has held
the “references to ‘law-abiding, responsible citizens’” in Bruen and
previous United States Supreme Court cases “were dicta.” Range
v. Attorney General United States of America, 69 F.4th 96, 101 (3d
Cir. 2023) (en banc). Two judges in Simpson v. State, 368 So. 3d
513, 524 (Fla. 5th DCA 2023) (Pratt, J., concurring, joined by Jay,
J.), also considered this language from Bruen and previous cases
to be dicta.

     The court in Edenfield refused to adopt the holding in Range.
48 Fla. L. Weekly D1533, 2023 WL 4924150 (Aug. 2, 2023) (on
amended motion for rehearing, rehearing en banc, and
certification of a question of great public importance). But the
United States Supreme Court may conclude in the future, like the
court in Range and Judge Pratt’s concurrence in Simpson, that
Bruen’s analysis must be applied to all persons claiming a violation
of the right to keep and bear arms. See Bruen, 597 U.S. at 19
(“[T]he government must affirmatively prove that its firearms
regulation is part of the historical traditions that delimits the

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outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.”). So until the
courts get clarity, even if a defendant is not a law-abiding,
responsible citizen, Florida trial and appellate courts are correct
to conduct the historical traditions analysis provided by Bruen in
considering whether a law conflicts with the right to keep and bear
arms.

TANENBAUM, J., concurring in result.

     Shawn Gulley is a convicted felon. On review in this appeal is
a judgment of conviction for his possessing a firearm while in that
status, in violation of section 790.23(1)(a), Florida Statutes. His
only defense here is that the statute is facially unconstitutional
because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in New York State
Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022).
According to Gulley, Bruen gives him a right under the Second and
Fourteenth Amendments to possess a firearm as a citizen of the
United States.

     The Supreme Court, however, has rejected this position, in
passing, at least thrice—instead, limiting the scope of the Second
Amendment’s protection to “law-abiding citizens.” See Bruen, 597
U.S. at 24, 31–32 (applying the Second Amendment’s presumptive
protection to conduct of “ordinary, law-abiding, adult citizens”
(emphasis supplied)); Id. at 8–10 (noting the Court’s recognition in
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and McDonald
v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), “that the Second and Fourteenth
Amendments protect the right of an ordinary, law-abiding citizen
to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense” and holding
“consistent with Heller and McDonald, that the Second and
Fourteenth Amendments protect [that same] individual’s right to
carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home” (emphasis
supplied)); Id. at 15, 31–32 (highlighting that the petitioners “are
law-abiding, adult citizens” (emphasis supplied)); Id. at 29 (“While
we do not now provide an exhaustive survey of the features that
render regulations relevantly similar under the Second
Amendment, we do think that Heller and McDonald point toward
at least two metrics: how and why the regulations burden a law-
abiding citizen’s right to armed self-defense.” (emphasis
supplied)); Heller, 554 U.S. at 626–27, n.26 (noting as part of its
analysis of the Second Amendment that “nothing in our opinion

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should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the
possession of firearms by felons,” which it characterized as
“presumptively lawful regulatory measures”); Id. at 625 (“We
therefore read Miller to say only that the Second Amendment does
not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding
citizens for lawful purposes, such as short-barreled shotguns.”
(emphasis supplied)); Id. at 635 (noting that the Second
Amendment “surely elevates above all other interests the right of
law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth
and home” (emphasis supplied)); McDonald, 561 U.S. at 786
(plurality) (“We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not
cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as
prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the
mentally ill . . . . We repeat those assurances here.” (internal
quotation and citation omitted)); cf. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 80–81
(Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (highlighting point that Supreme
Court made in Heller and McDonald that the Second Amendment
does not reach prohibitions against convicted felons possessing
firearms).

     Gulley, then, cannot claim that section 790.23(1)(a) deprives
felons of a fundamental liberty interest without due process—the
liberty to possess firearms (à la the so-called “substantive due
process” analysis)—because, as the Supreme Court repeatedly has
recognized, only law-abiding citizens have that liberty under the
Second Amendment. A convicted felon like Gulley, by definition, is
not a “law-abiding citizen.” See Hawker v. People of New York, 170
U.S. 189, 196 (1898) (explaining that a criminal “conviction is, as
between the state and the defendant, an adjudication of the fact”
that the defendant is “lacking in good moral character” and
operates as a “conclusive adjudication of the fact that the man has
violated the criminal law, and is presumptively, therefore, a man
of such bad character as to render it unsafe to trust the lives and
health of citizens to his care”). That is, upon being convicted of a
felony, a citizen’s legal status changes.

     With this adjudicated change in status, the citizen
automatically loses several liberties—through disqualification as
a law-breaker—including the liberty to possess a firearm, but only
after being afforded due process. Cf. Lewis v. United States, 445
U.S. 55, 60–61 (1980) (characterizing felon-in-possession statute

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as “impos[ing] a firearm disability [on convicted felons as class of
persons] until the conviction is vacated or the felon is relieved of
his disability by some affirmative action, such as a qualifying
pardon or a consent from the Secretary of the Treasury”); Id. at 66
(“This Court has recognized repeatedly that a legislature
constitutionally may prohibit a convicted felon from engaging in
activities far more fundamental than the possession of a firearm.”);
De Veau v. Braisted, 363 U.S. 144, 158–60 (1960) (cataloging
various civil “disqualification[s] of convicted felons”).

     I in turn agree with Judge Long that “Heller, McDonald, and
Bruen expressly permit” the prohibition found in section
790.23(1)(a). Edenfield v. State, Case No. 2022-290, 48 Fla. L.
Weekly D1113, 2023 WL 3734459, *4 (Fla. 1st DCA May 31, 2023),
reh’g denied, 48 Fla. L. Weekly D1533 (Fla. 1st DCA Aug. 2, 2023),
and rev. denied, SC2023-1106, 2023 WL 8710101 (Fla. Dec. 18,
2023) (Long, J., concurring). We should affirm on the authority of
those Supreme Court decisions, rather than on Edenfield, which
unnecessarily pursues an inapplicable Bruen analysis to reach the
same conclusion. See id. (Long, J., concurring) (“Because the
Supreme Court’s decisions clearly answer the constitutional
challenge presented, we should affirm and need not say more.”).
                  _____________________________

Jessica J. Yeary, Public Defender, and Tyler Kemper Payne,
Assistant Public Defender, Tallahassee, for Appellant.

Ashley Moody, Attorney General, and Michael L. Schaub,
Assistant Attorney General, Tallahassee, for Appellee.

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