United States v. Ryno

675 F.Supp.3d 993

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Joel Michael RYNO, Defendant.

Case No. 3:22-cr-00045-JMK

United States District Court, D. Alaska

Filed May 31, 2023

Signed May 30, 2023

Christina M. Sherman, William Arthur Taylor, Kelly A. Cavanaugh, Assistant U.S. Attorneys, U.S. Attorney's Office, Anchorage, AK, for Plaintiff.

Daniel Poulson, Gary George Colbath, Public Defenders, Federal Public Defenders, Anchorage, AK, for Defendant.

ORDER ADOPTING REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION

JOSHUA M. KINDRED, United States District Judge

Before the Court at Docket 30 is Defendant Joel Michael Ryno's Motion to Dismiss. The United States of America (the "Government") responded in opposition at Docket 31. The motion was referred to Chief Magistrate Judge Matthew M. Scoble. At Docket 49, Judge Scoble issued his Final Report and Recommendation, in which he recommended that the motion be denied. In light of the Fifth Circuit's decision in United States v. Rahimi,¹ at Docket 50, Judge Scoble withdrew his Final Report and Recommendation and ordered supplemental briefing. The Government and Mr. Ryno provided their supplemental briefing at Dockets 51 and 53, respectively. At Docket 54, Judge Scoble issued his Final Report and Recommendation, in which he again recommended that the motion be denied. Mr. Ryno objected to the Final Report and Recommendation at Docket 55.

The matter is now before this Court pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1). That statute provides that a district court "may accept, reject, or modify, in whole or in part, the findings or recommendations made by the magistrate judge."² A court is to "make a de novo determination of those portions of the report or specified proposed findings or recommendations to which objection is made."³ But as to those topics on which no objections are filed, "[n]either the Constitution nor [28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(1)] requires a district judge to review, de novo, findings and recommendations that the parties themselves accept as correct."⁴

Before turning to Defendant's objection, the Court recognizes the unique historical analysis now required by the Supreme Court's decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen.⁵ Without a determinative test, federal district courts must evaluate and compare developments in American legal history to the modern regulation. The Court thanks the parties for their thoughtful and well-researched briefing on the issues posed here, as well as Judge Scoble for his well-considered recommendations. Additionally, the Court gives special thanks to its local Circuit Librarian for her assistance in locating many of the historical primary sources cited in this order and required for this review. Amidst a quickly evolving and changing area of law, these cumulative efforts have greatly assisted the Court.

I. Defendant's Objection

Title 18 United States Code section 922(g)(9) strips an individual "convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence" of their Second Amendment right to bear arms. In passing this statute in 1996, Congress intended to ensure that individuals convicted of domestic violence crimes would be unable to possess firearms.⁶ The legislative history reflects an intent to reduce intimate partner homicides and firearm related violence;⁷ and therefore, classifies domestic violence misdemeanants as a class of individuals, unable to responsibly maintain their Second Amendment rights.⁸ Section 922(g)(9) is a gender neutral regulation, but the legislative history reflects lawmakers' intent to address disproportionate effect of domestic violence on women.⁹ The Court takes judicial notice of this disproportionate effect as well as the reported overall decline in intimate partner violence crimes from 1993 to 2010.¹⁰

The Second Amendment to United States Constitution provides that "[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Bruen analysis "requires courts to assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment's text and historical understanding."¹¹ From that framework, historical analogies must be presented, tested, and evaluated as "relevantly similar."¹² When analyzing the relevant similarity of regulations, courts at minimum must assess "how and why the [the modern and historical] regulations burden a law-abiding citizen's right to armed self-defense."¹³ The Government need only show a "well-established and representative historical analogue, not a historical twin."¹⁴

Bruen guides that "unprecedented societal concerns or dramatic technological changes may require a more nuanced approach."¹⁵ Although the meaning of the Second Amendment is fixed "according to the understandings of those who ratified it, the Constitution can, and must, apply to circumstances beyond those the Founders specifically anticipated."¹⁶ "[T]he right to keep and bear arms in public has traditionally been subject to well-defined restrictions governing the intent for which one could carry arms, the manner of carry, or the exceptional circumstances under which one could not carry arms."¹⁷

Defendant objects to the constitutionality of § 922(g)(9) in an as-applied challenge, arguing that the Government failed to offer examples of historical firearm regulations that are "distinctly similar" to 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9).¹⁸ However, Bruen does not require the Government to identify a "distinctly similar" historical firearm regulation.¹⁹ Rather, a "distinctly similar" historical regulation is "relevant evidence" for a court to consider in its overarching analysis.²⁰ Defendant's objection overstates the Government's burden.

In analyzing whether the regulation is "consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation," the Court must consider the relevant legal frameworks in place at the time the Amendment was ratified.²¹ Here, the lack of a distinctly similar firearm regulation stems from two American historical roots: (1) the societal norms accepting domestic violence; and (2) the limited legal frameworks for addressing domestic violence.

To begin, the Court must first address the past societal convention and common law doctrine of coverture. Under coverture, once a woman married, her legal rights and obligations were subsumed by her husband.²² As a feme covert, she no longer existed as her own entity, but as a dependent to the adult male head of household.²³ From the English common law well into the modern era, coverture remained a stricture on most American women's rights and lives.²⁴

Domestic violence has been a long-recognized occurrence, but women had few legal protections against it until the modern era.²⁵ The English common law addressed domestic violence as a breach of the King's peace, a crime against the community and crown.²⁶ However, there were limited remedies for a such claims; courts could only attempt to negate future harm through surety and public scrutiny.²⁷ Adopting and adapting the English common law, the American Colonies also largely addressed violence and marital discord through common law breach of peace claims, with surety as a remedy.²⁸ Colonies, in now the modern states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, enacted laws against wife beating,²⁹ but the codified laws resulted in few prosecutions.³⁰

The American Revolution offered a brief hope to restructure a woman's place in a new American society. As Abigail Adams implored to John Adams:

in the new Code of Laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands. Remember all Men would be tyrants if they could.³¹

However, her entreaty to "put it out of the power of the vicious and the Lawless to use us with cruelty and impunity" did not come to pass.³² American women remained excluded from political participation, their legal rights subsumed by their husbands.³³

After the Revolution, the States continued to adjudicate the threat of domestic violence as a common law breach of the peace claim using surety as the remedy.³⁴ However many courts viewed violence occurring within a family unit as a private matter unsuitable for public scrutiny.³⁵ The 1824 Mississippi Supreme Court resoundingly held that "whether a husband can commit an assault and battery upon the body of his wife" should not be adjudicated by courts, dismissing the violence as mere "Family Broils and dissentions."³⁶ With similar reasoning, North Carolina Supreme Court refused to adjudicate domestic violence as assault and battery, so that it would "not inflict upon society the greater evil of raising the curtain upon domestic privacy, to punish the lesser evil of trifling violence."³⁷ Some courts expressly endorsed a husband's legal right to use physical violence.³⁸ Other courts excluded wives and children as entire classes of victims for assault and battery.³⁹ Even when a wife, separated from her husband, was able to procure an indictment for assault and battery, as in State v. Black, the case was roundly rejected on the grounds that:

unless some permanent injury be inflicted, or there be an excess of violence, or such a degree of cruelty as shows that it is inflicted to gratify his own bad passions, the law will not invade the domestic forum or go behind the curtain. It prefers the parties to themselves, as the best mode of inducing them to make the matter up and live together as man and wife.⁴⁰

Thankfully, society changed.⁴¹ States began to criminalize "wife beating."⁴² Women gained the right to vote.⁴³ The doctrine of coverture faded away.⁴⁴ States criminalized acts of domestic violence in gender neutral terms and outside the bounds of marriage.⁴⁵ No longer in the shadows of the home, domestic violence gained national attention and federal legislative support.⁴⁶

Bruen instructs that "when a...