SEATTLE — A man who was convicted as a 13-year-old boy for molesting his younger sisters can possess guns now that he’s been rehabilitated, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The man pleaded guilty to felony child rape in 2000, five years before he graduated from high school. In 2007, a King County Superior Court judge determined that he had completed his treatment and no longer needed to register as a sex offender.
But that judge and a state appeals court refused to let him have firearms after prosecutors argued that under state law, no one convicted of a felony sex offense can ever have their gun rights restored.
The high court reversed those decisions in a 7-2 opinion. Writing for the majority, Justice Gerry Alexander cited another law, one that states a person shall not be precluded from possessing guns if his or her conviction has been the subject of a “certificate of rehabilitation or other equivalent procedure.”
The finding by the lower court that the man no longer had to register as a sex offender met that standard, Alexander wrote.
The majority found it unnecessary to consider the man’s argument that a lifetime firearm ban for an adult who was convicted of a felony as a juvenile violated the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees the right to bear arms. The man comes from a family of avid hunters.
Alexander was joined by Justices Charles Johnson, Mary Fairhurst, James Johnson, Tom Chambers, Debra Stephens and Susan Owens.
In dissent, Chief Justice Barbara Madsen and Justice Charlie Wiggins agreed with the state’s argument that the law prohibits a person convicted of a sex offense from even petitioning for restoration of gun rights. If state courts are barred from considering giving those rights back, it makes no sense that judges would be allowed to make findings “equivalent” to rehabilitation that would result in those exact rights being restored.
“The majority’s conclusion is implicitly contrary to legislative intent,” Madsen wrote.
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