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485 F.2d 199

Docket No. 73-1208.

United States v. Mostad

Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals

Submitted Sept. 13, 1973.

Decided Oct. 4, 1973.

Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals · decided 1973-10-04

2 counsel of record

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“§ 1201. Congressional Findings and Declaration “The Congress hereby finds and declares that the receipt, possession, or transportation of a firearm by felons, veterans who are discharged under dishonorable conditions, mental incompetents, aliens who are illegally in the country, and former citizens who have renounced their citizenship, constitutes— (1) a burden on commerce or threat affecting the free flow of commerce, (2) a threat to the safety of the President of the United States and Vice President of the United States, (3) an impediment or a threat to the exercise of free speech and the free exercise of a religion guaranteed by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and (4) a threat to the continued and effective operation of the Government of the United States and of the government of each State guaranteed by article IV of the Constitution.” § 1202. Receipt, possession, or transportation of firearms — Persons liable; penalties for violations (a) Any person who— (1) has been convicted by a court of the United States or of a State or any political subdivision thereof of a felony, . . . and who receives, possesses, or transports in commerce or affecting commerce, after the date of enactment of this Act, any firearm shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned for not more than two years, or both. (c) As used in this title— (2) ‘felony’ means any offense punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year, but does not include any offense (o”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 433 F. Supp. 1309 - United States v. Castellana

Applies MN 609 § 609.165

Relies on United States v. Synnes · Stevens v. United States · Wiley v. United States

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1973-10-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 42 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2003 · most notably Dickerson v. New Banner Institute, Inc. (1983), United States v. Potts (1975)

33 federal appellate · 4 district · 1 state decisions

3101973198019902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

¶1Jack S. Nordby, St. Paul, Minn., for appellant.

¶2Joseph T. Walbran, Asst. U. S. Atty., Minneapolis, Minn., Robert G. Renner, U. S. Atty., Minneapolis, Minn., was with him on brief, for appellee.

¶3Before HEANEY, STEPHENSON and WEBSTER, Circuit Judges.

¶4HEANEY, Circuit Judge.

¶5The defendant, Howard Wayne Mos-tad, was convicted on two counts of violating that provision of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 which prohibits possession of a firearm by one who has previously been convicted of a felony.1 He was sentenced to two years on each count; the sentences to run consecutively.

¶6Mostad contends that “it is fundamentally unfair under historical and prevailing notions of due process of law” to apply the prohibition of this statute to him *200under the circumstances revealed by the record in this case.

¶7Mostad was convicted in a Minnesota State District Court of a felony on October 26, 1967, and was thereafter placed on probation. On January 7, 1972, a Minnesota State District Judge ordered, pursuant to Minn.Stat.Ann. § 609.165,2 that he be “discharged from probation, restored to all civil rights and to full citizenship with full right to vote and hold office the same as if said conviction had not taken place.”

¶8Under § 1202(a)(1), the government need not prove specific intent to violate the law or knowledge on the part of the defendant that he is violating the law. It must prove that the defendant knowingly possessed the firearm. United States v. Wiley, 478 F.2d 415 (8th Cir. 1973); United States v. Crow, 439 F.2d 1193 (9th Cir. 1971), vacated on other grounds, 404 U.S. 1009, 92 S.Ct. 687, 30 L.Ed.2d 657 (1972). The government has met that burden here. Moreover, this Court upheld the eonstitutionality of this statute in United States v. Mancino, 474 F.2d 1240 (8th Cir. 1973), and in United States v. Synnes, 438 F.2d 764 (8th Cir. 1971), vacated on other grounds, 404 U.S. 1009, 92 S.Ct. 687, 30 L.Ed.2d 657 (1972).

¶9 The Act exempts from its provisions “ … any person who has been pardoned by the President of the United States or the chief executive of a State and has expressly been authorized by the President of such chief executive, as the ease may be, to receive, possess or transport in commerce a firearm.” 18 U.S.C. App. § 1203(2) (1968). The defendant is not such a person. He belongs to a general class of convicted felons whose civil rights have been restored by a statute that is silent with respect to the right of such persons to possess firearms. If the Congress desires to extend the exemption to persons in this class, it can do so; but we find no evidence of such intent in the language in the legislative history of the Act. See, Stevens v. United States, 440 F.2d 144 (6th Cir. 1971).3 This result *201may seem confusing and harsh, but the classification established by Congress is, in our view, a reasonable one and cannot be overturned by us.

¶10Affirmed.

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