New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie Commutes Sentence of Man Sent To Jail For Owning Guns Legally
Dec 21, 2010 8 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
A man given seven years in prison after being found with two guns he purchased legally in Colorado has had his sentence commuted, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced Monday.
The case of Brian Aitken, 27, had become a cause célèbre among gun-rights advocates. On Jan. 2, 2009, Aitken, an entrepreneur and media consultant with no prior criminal record, muttered to his mother that life wasn’t worth living after a planned visit with son was abruptly canceled at the last minute. Aitken then left his mother’s home in Mount Laurel as she called police, who later found two locked and unloaded handguns in the trunk of his car.
Aitken had purchased the guns legally in Colorado, and he passed an FBI background check when he bought them, according to his father, Larry Aitken. Brian also contacted New Jersey State Police before moving back back to the Garden State to discuss how to properly transport his weapons. But despite those good-faith efforts, Larry Aitken said, Brian was convicted on weapons charges and sent to prison in August.
Judge James Morley would not allow the argument in trial earlier this year and Christie later declined to reappoint the judge due to an unrelated case.
According to an order for commutation of sentence released by Christie on Monday, Aitken was to be released from custody as soon as administratively possible. The order is subject to revocation at any time.
Prior to Monday’s announcement, Larry Aitken, who could not be immediately reached for comment on Tuesday, said he would not stop advocating for his son’s release.
“I don’t think there are words yet invented that could characterize the — I guess anger would be one word, but it’s a lot deeper than anger,” he told FoxNews.com this month. “Whatever the word is that’s a combination of anger, shock, disbelief, horror and a desire to expose all of this — that’s the word.
“This can’t happen. I won’t let this happen to my son.”
Brian’s relatives and his lawyer, Evan Nappen, believe he had a legal exemption to have the handguns in his car because they say he was in the process of moving from his parents’ home in Mount Laurel to Hoboken when the guns were found.
Nappen claimed the moving exemption issue was raised both during the trial and in a pretrial motion to have the entire case dismissed, but he said the jury was never given the exemption statute because Morley refused to provide it to them.
In an e-mail to FoxNews.com this month, Joel Bewley, a spokesman for the Burlington County prosecutor’s office, said “no evidence” was presented during the trial to support Aitken’s claim that he was moving at the time of his arrest. And despite an appearance on FoxNews.com’s “Strategy Room” in August 2009 to discuss his case, Aitken did not testify at his trial.
“However, his roommate testified that they had been sharing the Hoboken apartment since June 2008, and that he had seen the guns at the apartment in September 2008,” Bewley wrote. “[Aitken's] mother testified that he had been living in Hoboken and working in New York City since June 2008. This incident occurred in January 2009.”
Regarding Aitken’s interview on the case, Bewley wrote: “While we fully recognize the defendant has a right not to testify, it is difficult to understand why he would grant an interview on national television, yet choose not to explain his actions to a jury when his liberty was at stake.”
Nappen, meanwhile, said Aitken’s case “absolutely” shows how states’ differing gun laws can put well-intentioned gun owners at risk.
“There’s a wide patchwork of gun laws between various jurisdictions and, in some states, it can differ from a local town that passes an ordinance to another town,” Nappen told FoxNews.com this month. “That’s why it’s so Draconian in its application and how you end up with a Brian Aitken situation.”
FoxNews.com’s Joshua Rhett Miller and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The Judge was corrupt:
The exemptions allow New Jersey residents to have guns in their homes, while hunting or at a shooting range, while traveling to or from hunting grounds or a shooting range, and when traveling between residences. Brian Aitken claimed he was moving between residences, and there is pretty strong evidence that he was. Sue Aitken testified that her son was moving his belongings from her house to his. So did Aitken’s roommate. One of the police officers at the scene testified that Aitken’s car was filled with personal belongings.
Yet Judge Morley wouldn’t allow Aitken to claim the exemption for transporting guns between residences. He wouldn’t even let the jury know about it. During deliberations, the jurors asked three times about exceptions to the law, which suggests they weren’t comfortable convicting Aitken. Morley refused to answer them all three times. Gilbert and Nappen, Aitken’s lawyers, say he also should have been protected by a federal law that forbids states from prosecuting gun owners who are transporting guns between residences. Morley would not let Aitken cite that provision either.
In response to a query about why Aitken wasn’t granted the moving exception, the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office replied via email, “There was no evidence produced at the trial by the defendant that warranted such a defense.” Gilbert says that isn’t true. “We put on plenty of evidence that Brian was moving,” he says, “including testimony from his mother, his roommate, even the police officer who arrested him.”
In a telephone interview, Morley (who lost his job when Gov. Christie declined to reappoint him in June because of rulings in unrelated cases) says he didn’t allow the jury to consider the moving exception because “it wasn’t relevant.” Echoing the prosecutor’s office, Morley says: “There was no evidence that Mr. Aitken was moving. He was trying to argue that the law should give him this broad window extending over several weeks to justify driving around with guns in his car. There was also some evidence that Mr. Aitken wasn’t moving at all when he was arrested, but had stored the guns in his car because his roommate was throwing a party, and he didn’t want the guns in the apartment while guests were there drinking.”
Gilbert and Nappen say the story about the party came not from Aitken, his parents, or his roommate but from a faulty police report. In any case, Nappen adds, it was not Morley’s job to decide whether Aitken was moving. “That’s a question of fact, not law, and questions of fact are supposed to be determined by the jury,” he says. “The judge is supposed to instruct the jury on the law, and in this case he refused to let them even hear it. But besides that, for him to say there was no evidence presented that Brian was moving just isn’t true.”
Without the exception, the jury’s job was easy. In New Jersey, possession of a firearm without a permit is a felony, punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum of 10. Aitken was convicted and sentenced to seven.
