Prosecutor gun bill advances in Minn.

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By Patrick Thornton
Dolan Newswires

MINNEAPOLIS — A bill that would allow prosecutors to carry firearms on duty has been misunderstood and misread, said Blue Earth County Attorney Ross Arneson.

It does not mean county attorneys and their deputies will be wearing a holstered firearm while giving a closing statement. The bill merely gives prosecutors the same rights as every other lawyer in the state.

“This is not about more guns in the courthouse or county attorneys packing heat,” he said. “It’s about personal safety because right now the way the law is written if I wanted to carry a gun, I can’t. All this bill does is give prosecutors the same rights as public defenders, court staff and the private bar. If a prosecutor knew of a threat to his or her own safety, they may want to be able to carry a gun. They shouldn’t be handicapped when it comes to personal safety.”

House File 1829 unanimously passed the House Public Safety Committee last week, but there was confusion among lawmakers and the public about what the bill did and didn’t do.

Arneson was one of the prosecutors to testify in support of the measure. All it does, Arneson said, is exempt county attorneys from a statute that prohibits county and city government employees from carrying firearms. It doesn’t give the OK for prosecutors to bring guns into courtrooms because most judicial districts have administrative orders from the chief judge that prohibit guns in the courthouse.

The bill would not supersede those prohibitions.

“The question that people ask about this bill is ‘should prosecutors be allowed to carry guns in the courtroom?’ That’s the wrong question. The right one is: ‘Should prosecutors be the only lawyers prohibited from carrying guns on duty?’” Arneson said. “If public defenders and court staff aren’t bringing guns into the courtroom there is no reason to expect the county attorneys are going to be following a different practice.”

Prosecutors could lock firearms in their office or check them with local law enforcement while they were in court and pick them up after the appearance, he said. Prosecutors would first have to get a permit to carry a gun and pass the same training as regular citizens and get permission from local law enforcement. Deputies would need their supervisors to sign off on them carrying weapons.

Both the Minnesota County Attorney’s Association and the Minnesota Sheriff’s Association testified in favor of the bill. The Minnesota District Judges Association has no official position on the proposal.

Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Good Thunder, the bill’s chief author, said he had been working on the bill before the December shooting in the Grand Marais Court House. Cook County Attorney Tim Scannell was injured in that shooting along with a potential witness in a sexual assault case. The incident brought home how dangerous the environment can be in the courts, Cornish said, adding that his bill was purposely written to contain the language that a prosecutor can carry a gun while “on duty.”

“You could make an argument that a county attorney is on duty 24/7; it’s a little harder to define what that means,” he said. “A prosecutor could be “on duty” duck hunting if their cellphone rings or at a conference in Duluth. We kept it simple and said if you are on duty, you can carry [a gun].”

Scannell testified at the hearing in support of another bill that added prosecutors to the list of protected occupations with police and corrections officers. The bill enhances penalties for assaulting or causing the death of a prosecuting attorney and also passed the committee.

He said that though he is not a gun owner, he could see why some prosecutors would want to carry one. He said prosecutors should not be precluded from carrying weapons and should have the same rights as regular citizens.

Assistant Blue Earth County Attorney Chris Rovney also testified. He told the committee that prosecutors are at an elevated risk for danger based on what they do for a living. He recounted a personal story of how in 2007 a gang member he was prosecuting conspired to murder Rovney, along with the judge assigned to the case and the head of the local drug task force unit. The gang member went so far as to offer to pay a man to commit the murders and start surveillance on the three targets.

The plot was stopped by a confidential police informant, Rovney said.

“This bill allows prosecutors to be a little safer,” he said.

The bill is ready to be voted on in the House. Cornish said he is optimistic that it will pass in both bodies but said he has had no conversations with Gov. Mark Dayton’s office about the proposal.

Cornish is a retired police chief and a vocal supporter of expanding and protecting gun rights in Minnesota. He said he wanted to include other gun provisions in the bill, like expanding the so-called Castle Doctrine, the principle that allows a homeowner to use deadly force against an intruder in his or her home in self-defense, to include nearby areas like a garage or patio. But he said he promised the county attorneys who approached him about House File 1829 that he would leave those provisions out to give the bill a better chance of passing.

“I would have opened it up further, but I knew I would lose support if I did,” Cornish said.

Protect Minnesota, a nonprofit group that works against gun violence, opposes the bill. Heather Martens, the group’s executive director, said she was pleased that judges would still be able to restrict guns in their courtrooms but said she would have preferred more clarity in the language.

“I feel a little better about [the bill] now,” she said. “The big issue for us is it’s a bad idea to have more guns in the courthouse. More people carrying guns is not a way to make people safer. The way to make people safer is to have a strategy that disarms the people who would go out and shoot a prosecutor in the first place.”