State law lets felon with gun go free

Last weekend, police caught a convicted sex offender driving around Cape Girardeau with a loaded gun, an extra magazine of ammunition and a stun gun, and promptly took him into custody.

On Monday, they had to let him go.

Under Missouri law, the man had done nothing wrong.

Missouri's law concerning felons in possession of a firearm contains a list of charges that constitute dangerous felonies. The man's Illinois convictions, which were for sexual abuse of a 13-year-old girl and failure to register as a sex offender, were not among the felonies outlined by the statute, so he could not be charged with a crime on the state level.

The man's 2000 conviction also fell outside of the state law's requirement that the felony must have occurred within five years of when the felon was caught with a gun.

"The state law has so many loopholes that a criminal has to be really unlucky to get caught," said Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle.

On average, only 10 cases per year are prosecuted on the state level in all of Missouri, Swingle said.

If the law was shaped more like federal statutes, Swingle's office could prosecute 20 to 30 cases per year, he said. With the law as it is, he was unable to file any cases in the past year.

In just the Eastern District of Missouri, federal prosectors file about 40 of those types of cases per year under the much more stringent federal law, said assistant federal prosecutor Keith Sorrell.

Unlike its state counterpart, the federal law contains no time restrictions.

"The time limit means nothing to us," Sorrell said.

Under federal law, prosecutors need only show that the defendant is a felon or was convicted of a crime carrying a sentence of more than one year, and that they were in possession of a firearm.

"It's relatively simple for the government to prove these kinds of cases," Sorrell said.

Another loophole in Missouri law is the requirement that the firearm in question must be of an easily concealable nature, Swingle said.

"A murderer could get a shotgun the day he gets out of prison and he's not violating state law," he said.

bdicosmo@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 245