Local chancery court judges face a challenge in the Mississippi Supreme Court over the right of citizens with enhanced concealed carry permits to take weapons into a courthouse.
Firearms instructor Rick Ward, of Collins, filed a petition with the Supreme Court in June 2016 arguing three local judges had violated state law by passing an order banning guns from courthouses in their seven counties — including Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay and Noxubee. As the case waits for the Supreme Court’s ruling, more parties are weighing in on both sides of the argument, from chancery judges around the state to the National Rifle Association of America.
Chancery judges in the 14th Chancery Judicial District Jim Davidson, Kenneth Burns and Dorothy Colom signed the order banning guns in 2011 after the Legislature passed a law allowing citizens with enhanced concealed carry permits to take firearms into courthouses.
Citizens with enhanced permits must complete at least eight hours of firearms training in Mississippi.
The judges’ order redefines the boundaries of the courtroom and bans guns within 200 feet of courtroom doors — “in essence making the courtroom the courthouse,” said Davidson, who drafted the order.
“You can’t separate the courtroom from the courthouse,” he said. “You can’t have people with guns roaming those halls, no matter how well intentioned they are. It’s just setting people up for disaster.”
Ward — a firearms safety instructor who has frequently blogged for gun advocacy websites — learned about the order and last summer filed a motion in Lowndes County Chancery Court to have it dismissed. When the judges refused to rescind the order, Ward appealed to the state’s highest court.
“All I’m asking for, and have asked for since the beginning, is that the judges not issue the order in violation of the law,” Ward said.
Both the state Attorney General’s Office and the NRA weighed in to support of Ward’s position. The AG’s Office specifically says in a brief to the Supreme Court that judges have only “authority to restrict the carrying of firearms in the courtroom, but not generally throughout the courthouse.”
The brief added judges have a “role in assessing” courthouse security in particular court cases.
The NRA filed a brief backing the AG’s position but representatives with the organization did not respond to a call from The Dispatch by press time.
Guns in the courthouse
In their order, the chancery judges argue anyone other than law enforcement carrying weapons in the courtroom creates an unreasonable danger to the public.
Davidson raised the example of a mother battling for custody of a child who knows her ex-husband has brought a handgun into the courthouse.
“She’s already emotional about the situation,” Davidson said. “And her ex-husband’s sitting there with a .45 on his belt, kind of pats it and says, ‘Well we’ll see you in court.’ What kind of chilling effect does that have on her ability to concentrate and present her best case?”
Ward disagrees. He raised the example of a circuit court defendant wrestling a gun from a police officer in the courthouse. A trained concealed carry permit holder who happens to be in the courthouse can add to security, he argued.
Moreover, he said, enhanced permit holders are less likely than police officers to commit crimes. In the first eight months of 2015, 44 law enforcement officers were arrested for felonies, he said. But since the Legislature passed the law back in 2011, not “one single” enhanced permit holder has lost their permit or right to carry a gun because of commission of a crime.
“You’ve got to ask yourself, who can we trust more, police officers or permit holders?” he said.
Davidson, however, argues creating greater opportunity for problems might very well generate them.
“I had someone tell me, ‘We haven’t had a shooting in the courtroom in my lifetime,'” he said. “Well, we’ve never allowed weapons in the courthouse either.”
Support from chancery judges
But this summer several chancery judges throughout the state threw their support behind Davidson, Burns and Colom. James Persons, chancery judge in the Eighth Judicial District, filed a brief in which he raised multiple real-world examples of violence throughout the country that have occurred just outside courtrooms.
He added training in firearms proficiency won’t necessarily keep a permit holder from becoming “overcome by the emotions of the moment and use his firearm, for example, if his or her daughter loses custody of her child or if his son is sentenced to 20 years in the penitentiary for DUI death.”
Neither Davidson nor Ward know whether the Supreme Court justices will ask to hear oral arguments before ruling on the case, but Ward hopes they will.
“I want the court to understand that permit holders are not a threat,” he said.
Separation of Powers
Part of Ward’s argument is the judges are infringing on both executive and legislative authority because it’s the county’s sheriff, a member of the government’s executive branch, who is in charge of courthouse safety.
But Davidson argues state law prevents the sheriff from doing that.
“So by passing this statute to (allow) guns in the courthouse, the Legislature, in our opinion, has overstepped its bounds and is now impeding … the executive branch,” he said.
He added sheriffs are “hamstrung” by the law because if they post a sign banning weapons from the courthouse, they could be sued. Mississippi law doesn’t allow sheriffs to use public funds for their defense in these types of cases, meaning the sheriffs would have to pay for their attorneys out-of-pocket.
Some local sheriffs have said they disagree with the law allowing enhanced permit holders to take guns in the courthouse anyway.
“Any time court’s in session, either circuit or chancery, we don’t want any weapons in the courthouse,” Clay County Sheriff Eddie Scott said.
Emotions run high in court cases, he said — particularly chancery cases where there tends to be less security by law enforcement but which deal with tense issues like divorces and child custody cases.
Oktibbeha County Sheriff Steve Gladney agreed.
“I certainly don’t (want guns in the courthouse) with court going on,” he said. “I don’t think you should be able to walk in a courthouse (when) you’ve got a murder trial going on. You’ve got … retaliation, all kind of things that could happen.”
Lowndes County Sheriff Mike Arledge did not respond to calls and messages for comment by press time.
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