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Gun Possession

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ManOnFire

Junior Member
What is the name of your state? Kentucky, arrested in Ohio
Hi I'm 23 yrs old, have not been arrested ever in my whole life, until a few days ago. Me and a friend of mine were driving back to Kentucky after being pulled over for not having a license plate. I showed the cop my plate (I had it in the back seat). After a little bit the cop asks "have you guys been smoking marijuana? I can smell it strongly". My friend admitted he smoked some and the cop searched our car and found an ashtray with joint roaches on it and a small bag with about a gram in it. My friend admitted it was his so I was not charged. He also found a loaded pistol in my friend's denim jacket he had laying on the floor that I DID NOT know was there. My friend did not confess to the gun and we were both cited with unlawful possession of a firearm and took to jail. I was bailed out and hired an attorney ASAP. What can I do? How can I convince the judge I did not know the gun was there? Or that it is not mine? I am a poor college student and this is not looking good for me or my reputation. I am not a violent person and would NEVER use a gun or even own one. Please help.

(By the way, I TRIED to tell my friend not to even bring the dope but he did not listen to me and started smoking it while I went into a pizza place to pick up our orders)
 


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Shay-Pari'e

Senior Member
ManOnFire said:
What is the name of your state? Kentucky, arrested in Ohio
Hi I'm 23 yrs old, have not been arrested ever in my whole life, until a few days ago. Me and a friend of mine were driving back to Kentucky after being pulled over for not having a license plate. I showed the cop my plate (I had it in the back seat). After a little bit the cop asks "have you guys been smoking marijuana? I can smell it strongly". My friend admitted he smoked some and the cop searched our car and found an ashtray with joint roaches on it and a small bag with about a gram in it. My friend admitted it was his so I was not charged. He also found a loaded pistol in my friend's denim jacket he had laying on the floor that I DID NOT know was there. My friend did not confess to the gun and we were both cited with unlawful possession of a firearm and took to jail. I was bailed out and hired an attorney ASAP. What can I do? How can I convince the judge I did not know the gun was there? Or that it is not mine? I am a poor college student and this is not looking good for me or my reputation. I am not a violent person and would NEVER use a gun or even own one. Please help.

(By the way, I TRIED to tell my friend not to even bring the dope but he did not listen to me and started smoking it while I went into a pizza place to pick up our orders)[

So the car smelled like weed, yet you didn't know he had weed? Roaches in the ashtray that you didn't notice.

You hired an attorney, so let him/her do their job
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ManOnFire

Junior Member
Shay-Pari'e said:
So the car smelled like weed, yet you didn't know he had weed? Roaches in the ashtray that you didn't notice.

You hired an attorney, so let him/her do their job
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I did but not until I came back to the car from getting the pizza. He had asked me if he could bring it as a vacation thing before we left but I told him no, I don't want that stuff around me. So basically he sneaked that and the gun in. The gun was news to me when the cop found it.

And I'm asking here, too, because the attorney thing is too expensive for me to handle very long. Like mentioned, I'm just a poor college student.
 
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Dart

Junior Member
Maybe your attorney can have the gun finger printed and if you know nothing of the gun and have never touched it then your prints (or dna) would not be on it. However, your friends prints may be all over it. (Prints are very hard to obtain from a firearm). Someone put it there. Is the gun registered? Can the attorney find who the last legal owner of the gun is through federal records?
 
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outonbail

Senior Member
I'm really baffled by this post. It is either not entirely true, or the very first sentence is nothing short of amazing.

I just can't begin to imagine, how anyone who is foolish enough to drive around smoking a joint, with a loaded gun on board, in an out of state vehicle, without a rear license plate attached, has managed to avoid being arrested, for twenty three years?

Driving under those same conditions in California, you wouldn't even make it twenty three minutes, before the fingerprinting process got underway.

You say the gun was found in you're friend's jacket. Did he admit to being the owner of the jacket? Are you both the same size? In other words, does this jacket fit the both of you equally well? Do you have any photographs of you're friend in which he's wearing this jacket? Do you know if this gun was originally purchased by you're friend or a member of his family? Would there be a local sporting goods store where you're friend has purchased ammunition for this gun and when doing so, provided his identification, which the store would have a record of?
Where exactly was this denim jacket sitting on the floor, in front of the passenger, or in the back seat next to the license plate?
 
CdwJava

CdwJava

Senior Member
ManOnFire said:
Hi I'm 23 yrs old, have not been arrested ever in my whole life
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That just means that you've been fortunate - not that you're innocent.

I showed the cop my plate (I had it in the back seat).
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Bad place for it to be.

After a little bit the cop asks "have you guys been smoking marijuana? I can smell it strongly". My friend admitted he smoked some and the cop searched our car and found an ashtray with joint roaches on it and a small bag with about a gram in it.
Click to expand...
You're lucky. if they found a usable amount in the astray, they could have charged you both - regardless of his admission. Obviously you knew it was there and he'd been smoking it in your car.

I was bailed out and hired an attorney ASAP. What can I do?
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What does your attorney say?

How can I convince the judge I did not know the gun was there? Or that it is not mine?
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You don't have to. The state has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the gun was yours or that you knew of its presence.

I suggest finding witnesses who can testify that the jacket was your friend's and not yours.

(By the way, I TRIED to tell my friend not to even bring the dope but he did not listen to me and started smoking it while I went into a pizza place to pick up our orders)
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You shoulda just booted him out of the car then and there. Instead, you decided to keep driving around (without a license plate). Bad call.

- Carl
 
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gawm

Senior Member
Why was your possession of the fire illegal? Ohio has pretty lax gun laws, Was it because it was concealed?
 
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outonbail

Senior Member
gawm said:
Why was your possession of the fire illegal? Ohio has pretty lax gun laws, Was it because it was concealed?
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Sure sounds like it was. Since he claims he didn't even know the firearm was in his car, it must have been hidden well.
Of course it isn't likely that the judge will believe he didn't know the gun was there if he decides to use the same line of BS about not knowing the marijuana was there because he told his friend not to bring it. Until Shay pointed out that the officer said he smelled marijuana strongly and he had roaches and a bag of weed in his ash tray, so how could he not have known?

So if a judge catches him lying about the weed, I don't think there will be any doubt in the judges mind that he is lying about the gun as well.

The only thing he knew of in the car, was that the license plate was in the back seat. This in itself is laughable. If I knew my license plate was in the back seat, I wouldn't drive out of my driveway without first transferring it to rear of the vehicle where it belongs. But this poor college student proceeds to drive out of state without it attached to his car???

Rule number one for not getting busted because of stupidity, NEVER BREAK TWO LAWS AT THE SAME TIME!
 
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gawm

Senior Member
outonbail said:
Rule number one for not getting busted because of stupidity, NEVER BREAK TWO LAWS AT THE SAME TIME!
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That sounds A LOT like my golden rule:
Don't do anything illegal while you are doing something illegal.;)
If people only followed that rule, they would be able to experiment with stupidity at half the risk.:)
 
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outonbail

Senior Member
gawm said:
That sounds A LOT like my golden rule:
Don't do anything illegal while you are doing something illegal.;)
If people only followed that rule, they would be able to experiment with stupidity at half the risk.:)
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Yes, if people would just follow this simple rule, the courts wouldn't have to deal with half as many cases as they do presently. There was a case here recently where some idiot was delivering ten kilos of cocaine to his partners house. Now you would think that anyone who was transporting that quantity of drugs from point A to point B, would have the sense to do it as legally and inconspicuously as possible. Well not this guy. because an officer sees him pass another vehicle in a no passing zone, so he pulls behind this guy and when he does, he notices the registration was expired on the guys vehicle. Long story short, he pulls idiot over, smells a joint the idiot was in the process of smoking, because it was still smoldering in the ash tray and well, you know how the rest of the story went from there.

I just shake my head and think, "WTF was this person thinking? Is his brain so fried from consuming chemicals, that he thought nothing of transporting a million dollars of illegal drugs in a vehicle that obviously wasn't legally permitted to be driven on a public road or highway? And just in case the police didn't notice his expired registration, he thought he'd break a few traffic laws and draw a little more attention to himself?
Then to his complete surprise, he sees red flashing lights in his rear view mirror and is so puzzled at why they would be pulling him over, that he completely forgets that he's in the middle of smoking a joint.

As far as I'm concerned, the officer pulling him over needs to just draw his gun and shoot the poor ba$tard to put him out of his misery.
 
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ManOnFire

Junior Member
Outonbail, you're changing what I said completely. Where did I ever say I did not know there was marijuana? I DIDknow it was there when the cop pulled me over. I did not know he had it WHEN WE LEFT. I DID know he had it once I came into the car from the pizza place and smelt it. The license plate should have been where it belonged, yes, but it was not there because someone had stolen my plate a few weeks ago and I had just gotten a new plate the day we left to go to Ohio. I did not have time to get the stuff to put it on or anything because I was running late to the funeral as it was (hence why we went to Ohio). The gun, however, I DID NOT know had it. I WOULD NEVER allow a gun EVER under ANY circumstance.
My friend and I are not violent people, why he had the gun, I don't know. He's paranoid schizophrenic and goes through a lot of weird stages like that.
 
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gawm

Senior Member
What statute were you charged with exactly?. I'm being practical, anything short of your friend confessing at your trial that the gun was his and you did not know about it, I don't think you're going to convince anyone you did not know about it.
 
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miminaka

Junior Member
Good luck! And stop calling him your friend, he's not. If he's paranoid schizo they wouldn't sell him a gun, unless he lied on the appliction. Try to find out who the gun is registered to. I am not a lawyer or anything of the sort, just another person on here who has never had any trouble with the law, trying to get some insight on the predicament that I am in. I hope everything turns out ok for you if you are truly innocent. I hope that someone on this site can give you some info that will help. Trust God if you believe, if not Trust Him anyway.
 
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ManOnFire

Junior Member
Neither of us had a license for carrying concealed weapon in Ohio so were charged with felony illegal possession of a firearm.
 
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ManOnFire

Junior Member
miminaka said:
Good luck! And stop calling him your friend, he's not. If he's paranoid schizo they wouldn't sell him a gun, unless he lied on the appliction. Try to find out who the gun is registered to. I am not a lawyer or anything of the sort, just another person on here who has never had any trouble with the law, trying to get some insight on the predicament that I am in. I hope everything turns out ok for you if you are truly innocent. I hope that someone on this site can give you some info that will help. Trust God if you believe, if not Trust Him anyway.
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I pretty much call everyone a friend, it's just my nature. After growing up Quaker, it is just a habit, and he's been my "friend" since age six so it's hard to get out of the habit.

Also they did a search on the gun and it was found to be registered to someone he knew (that I did not know), so this could really help me. He claims he does not know the guy and is trying to put it on me. They cannot get a hold of the owner as he is overseas right now apparently. It is being fingerprinted tommorow.
 
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