Maryland District Court Rejects Bid to Dismiss Convictions in Illegal Firearm Exporting Case
The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in a Dec. 22 opinion denied three Maryland men's post-trial motions seeking dismissal of their convictions, among other things, pertaining to their efforts to illegally export arms and ammunition to Nigeria. The court said Wilson Tita of Owings Mills, Eric Nji of Fort Washington and Wilson Fonguh of Bowie failed to prove that the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen rendered unconstitutional the defendants' conviction on a charge of transporting a firearm with an obliterated serial number (U.S. v. Wilson Nuyila Tita).
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The three were charged in August 2021 with conspiring with others to export weapons identified on the U.S. Munitions List and the Commerce Control List without getting a license. The men sought to export firearms, ammunition, reloading materials, rifle scopes and other equipment, concealing them in heavily wrapped packages and duffel bags and inside sealed compressor units. They placed those items in a shipping container heading for Nigeria while falsifying export information to the U.S.
A jury in the Maryland district court found Tita, Niji and Fonguh guilty of conspiracy, transporting a firearm with an obliterated serial number and smuggling, though the defendants were absolved of charges of violation of the Arms Export Control Act and Export Control Reform Act. The trio then submitted post-trial motions looking for alternative relief, "including dismissal of their convictions, judgments of acquittal, and/or a new trial."
Judge Richard Bennett denied the motions, finding the U.S. gave enough evidence to support the guilty verdicts. The three said the fourth count, pertaining to the transport of a firearm without a serial number, should be tossed, given the SCOTUS decision in which the court said "a New York law which predicated a person's right to carry a firearm on 'proper cause' violated the protections of the Second Amendment." The Supreme Court ruled that when the Second Amendment's text covers an individual's conduct, the "Constitution presumptively protects that conduct," so that when the government regulates gun control, it must show that the regulation is consistent with the country's tradition of firearm regulation.
The defendants argued at the Maryland court "that the Second Amendment protections are implicated in the transfer of firearms, and the right to bear arms 'would be meaningless if it did not also include the right to obtain or transfer firearms.'" Bennett disagreed, finding the prohibition on the transportation of a firearm without a serial number does not infringe on an individual's right to bear arms in instances of self-defense or confrontation. "Alternatively, even if transport and possession of guns with obliterated serial numbers are deemed to be within the Second Amendment's ambit, analogous conduct has been historically regulated such that 18 U.S.C. § 922(k) is constitutional," he added.