Dexter Taylor Sentenced 10 Years for Building His Own Firearms After Judge Banned Mentions of Second Amendment
“She told us, ‘Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.'”
Judge Abena Darkeh sentenced Dexter Taylor, a Brooklyn software engineer, to ten years in prison for building firearms in his apartment. Officials labeled them as “ghost guns.”
The jury found him guilty of:
- Second-degree criminal possession of a loaded weapon
- Four counts of third-degree criminal possession of a weapon
- Five counts of criminal possession of a firearm
- Second-degree criminal possession of five or more firearms
- Unlawful possession of pistol ammunition
- Violation of certificate of registration
- Prohibition on unfinished frames or receivers
What part of the Second Amendment is so hard to understand? “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Every gun law is unconstitutional. The amendment lacks the words and phrases “except for,” “unless,” or “but.”
Speaking of the Second Amendment…Darkeh didn’t allow anyone to mention it.
Infuriating, especially since Darkeh forbade anyone from bringing up the Second Amendment. From RedState:
The judge disrupted [Taylor defense attorney Vinoo] Varghese’s opening statement multiple times as he tried to set the stage for Taylor’s defense. Even further, she admonished the defense to refrain from mentioning the Second Amendment during the trial. Varghese told RedState:
She told us, ‘Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.’
Varghese said he had filed the appropriate paperwork to “preserve these arguments for appeal” but that the judge “rejected these arguments, and she went out of her way to limit me.”
Taylor began gunsmithing during the COVID lockdown. He turned it into a business, legally buying all the parts from different companies.
“He ended up building, I believe it was eight pistols and five rifles or six rifles, AR-style rifles, and then eight or nine Glock pistols that he built,” said Varghese.
Taylor previously told RedState:
I found out that you can actually legally buy a receiver and you can machine that receiver to completion, and you buy your parts and you put them together and you’ve got a pistol or a rifle. And once I saw that I was hooked. I was like, ‘This is the coolest thing ever. This is the most cool thing you could possibly do in your machine shop.’
Darkeh sounded awful from the start:
During jury selection, Darkeh attempted to “rehabilitate potential jurors” who had shown “clear bias” against Taylor and his attorney.
Taylor also pointed out that the judge would sustain objections when none were given by the prosecution. “That happened multiple times, at least a dozen or more times during the trial, where she would simply say ‘sustained’ without the prosecution having lodged an objection.”
The engineer recounted what he felt on the day he was convicted.
In my mind, I just thought that this was something we prepared for. This was something that we were prepared to happen. It was always nice to think that we might get a jury that decided to nullify, but it was expected. I’ll say that. It wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t a happy occasion, but it was expected.
Darke’s attitude soured more during the sentencing, “‘whining about the fact that she was mocked by people’ on social media.”
Varghese asked for three and a half years. Darkeh said no and gave Taylor ten because he “knew he was breaking the law and that she did not care about his political views.”
Taylor said the cops who escorted him couldn’t believe what just happened, acknowledging he has “a God-given right to keep and bear arms.” A sergeant told him the whole thing “was a travesty.”
Taylor’s family started a GiveSendGo to help with legal fees.
The fight isn’t over. They’re all prepared to go to the Supreme Court.
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Comments
He should have shot a few people, and some woke judge would have cut him loose.
Maybe he could have started with DarkDay.
Sorry. Spell check got the spelling of the judge wrong. I submitted it before I could fix it.
And yet, it’s a fabulous example of an “aptronym”.
I had to look that up!
Thanks.
Even at my age, I like learning new things each day.
Did this judge get her law degree from a Cracker Jacks box?
It is just another example of the judiciary usurping the power of the legislature by making laws , as well as a comment on New York State’s respect for the Constitution.
I’m sure she is a recent graduate of Harvard. That’s the law factory that turns out these crazies for the organized crime family masquerading as theDemocraticParty.
In yet another case, a prosecutor asked for $30,000 bail for accused gunpoint robber Oluwasean Are, 20, but Manhattan Judge Abena Darkeh let him go free.
Of course she did.
Don’t assume its gender; put a (?) after she, woman etc.
the judge went on:
also the first amendment has no place in this courtroom as that is wht supremacy
Judge Abena Darkeh, there is nothing honorable about her, she should be removed.
just curious what his plans for those weapons were
Does it matter?
In the liberal hive, only one gun is needed, only one bullet is needed, and only one shot is needed.
So, in cooking, only one pot is needed. Only one cup of water is needed. Only one plate is needed. Only one bowl is needed.
How many plates does a cook need?
from a legal pov
no
but from a curious pov
yes
I have four cars. Are you curious why I need them?
only if the possibility exists that you might sell them to people who will use them to exclusively commit crimes
I always ask how many clubs you need to golf, because you have only two hands, right?
What is 14, Alex?
😏
That makes you better than a good deal of quiz players I know. 😉
Reply is non-responsive. One needs only one club to play golf. The rules of golf restrict a player to 14 clubs, though fewer may be carried. Also, the use of golf as a verb is a modern bastardization. Many people who have only one arm play golf–there are even tournaments.
Driver, three wood, 8 iron, wedge and putter 95% of the time for me.
I prefer the hand wedge over the toe wedge any day!
Don’t leave out your mashie niblick.
“only one pot is needed. Only one cup of water is needed. Only one plate is needed. Only one bowl is needed.”
Sounds like the Marxist utopia that Democrats are so desperate to achieve. Meanwhile, live is a nightmare for the whole of society.
Nunya.
Government has no right to know if, how, when, or where you decide to exercise any of your fundamental human/constitutionally-guaranteed rights. We need to stop pretending that it does have such authority, because it can’t be trusted with such knowledge and must be stopped from collecting it or making a right’s exercise conditional upon the information’s provision (reducing the “right” to “permission,” under such circumstances). No master asks permission of his servants. The state’s attitude towards these matters is indicative of an inversion of the proper orientation of the master/servant relationship.
I’m also curious as to what he was planning on using them for. Building one or two is a hobby but the list is fairly long especially in NYC where there is no place to use them.
Keeping and bearing them is the correct answer, and frankly that’s all that matters.
I have at least fifteen Mercedes Deisel cars from the 1960’s through ’80’s. some run some don.t
I have a collection of over 150 old European made wooden box coffee grinders, dating back to the 19th Century., and about four tonnes of green coffee to roast and grind in them.
I have two tandem road bikes, three fixed gear/track bikes, and about twenty other high end road bikes built between 1958 and 2012, made in England, France, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Mexico, and the USA.
Other “groups” of “items” also can be found in my possession. I will not say whether or how many firearms I may or may not possess, as some corrupt seditious excuse of a “judge” and/pr LE pervert might decide I should be brought before a court like this innocent man was.
This judge needs to be impeached. Utter refusal to follow established rules of evidence, unlawful exclusion of evidence and argumentsbased on existing law (if the Secind article of Ammendment is not part of the Law of this land, what is besides this twisted creature’s nightmares made public?
These questions make my head spin. First, it’s no one’s business but his.
well Ovomit did say that due process can be pushed aside ( when sending “threatening” messages to colleges to forget due process and just say males are guilty of se x crimes)
“This is New York” …. So all a judge has to do is declare this or that part of the Bill of Rights doesn’t exist in that court room and that is that. “This is New York and the decisions of SCOTUS don’t apply here.” Nothing like putting the “dread’ in Dredd Scott V2.0.
Intelligent, law abiding people live in NYC at their own risk.
All six of them.
Time to run…
I will not go there. Nor will I even book an airplane flight that might land anywhere near any part of that state (or New Joisey) I’ve read some accounts……. nuff sed.
Look at the Trump trials in NYC and how his rights are abridged
Under that design, no laws are enforceable in New York, since the Constitution is the law of the land and according to the “Queen” the Constitution doesn’t exist.
The, the judge, and not the jury determines what the law is.
The jury’s purpose is to make factual determinations, not legal ones.
For some insights, review NY final jury instructions.
https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https%3A%2F%2Fnycourts.gov%2Fjudges%2Fcji%2F5-SampleCharges%2FCJI2d.Final_Instructions.docx&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK
Yeah, that’s what judges want you to believe. It’s a lie.
Juries exist primarily to prevent judicial tyranny, no matter what the law says. They judge the law and they judge the judge. If they didn’t do that, they’d be entirely unneeded.
There are a few juries that made their way into history books as heroes. William Penn, John Peter Zenger, dozens of fugitive slaves. What did they have in common? They said F the “law” and F the tyrant judge. That’s why we have juries, no other reason.
Fija.org has all the relevant history.
(Of course, these were jurors with independent brains and balls, not brain-dead NY drones.)
Jury nullification used to be widely known to be within the authority of a jury. Then it was decided that although jurors have a right to nullify bad law or an unjust prosecution, they have no right to be informed of it. That has since morphed into “the jury has no such right,” the courts and other authorities believing that nullification has been sufficiently memory-holed to be able to insist on this, and to discipline attorneys for mentioning it, as if it is an established fact
fwiw – that is the standard in every jurisdiction in the US. where the judge has the sole provence of determining the law. With the jury limited to deciding the facts.
Its one of the reasons I have never served on a jury. I have stated that I have an ethical obligation of understand the law and then to determine if the law applies to the facts.
That is not accurate. At least in my state, the jury has the right to determine the law.
The Indiana Constitution provides:
Article 1, Section 19. In all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts.
https://indianaconstitution.org/
https://www.in.gov/history/about-indiana-history-and-trivia/explore-indiana-history-by-topic/indiana-documents-leading-to-statehood/constitution-of-1851/article-1-bill-of-rights/
Nope. Not at all. Per US Law and standing precedent, the JURY have full liberty to find andor rule on every point of fact AND law. They can say New York’s restrictions on gun possession are null and void, just because they say so. READ your copy of the US Constitution. Its right tere.
Further, the jury MUST be a jury of the accused’s PEERS. From what I’ve seen, no ore thanTWO of Trump’s New York case jurists are anywhere near being his “peers”.
“A jury of one’s peers” does not appear anywhere in the Constitution or other founding documents. It is from the Magna Carta. The sixth amendment uses the phrase “impartial jury.”
Dexter should have immediately moved out of nyc to a different city and declared he left nyc and moved to America.
Why shouldn’t this conduct be considered contempt of court (referring here to SCOTUS’ recent decisions concerning the 2nd Amendment, this judge certainly aware of what it was she didn’t want introduced to her court)? A refusal to uphold fundamental law should result in near immediate impeachment.
The 2nd amendment doesn’t exist in her courtroom? It sounds like the 1st amendment might not get much of a go either.
So are there any other parts of the constitution that don’t apply because she doesn’t like them? Does she produce a list of them, or maybe a pamphlet so participants can be forewarned?
Is this judge appointed or elected? Because she needs to be removed ASAP one way or another and made a well publicized example of.
She’s not significant enough for someone to have bothered writing an article about her on Wikipedia.
In any Democrat controlled polity, functionally the Constitution is void at the will of the Party.
Subotai Bahadur
She seems to also have little regard for the 5th Amendment’s guarantee of “due process of law.” You can’t ignore anything else in the Constitution without running afoul of the 5th.
Legal aliens, becoming naturalized, learn that the Constitution is the “Supreme law of the land.”
Illegals, and apparently most Democrats, including J.D.’s from Hofstra never learn that.
The only way to stop this – or at least dissuade this kind of judicial behavior – is for the federal government to bring to bear all of its prosecutorial might against such judges in the exact same way Biden’s administration has gone after J6ers. If Trump is fortunate enough to win reelection (perhaps for the 2nd time), he needs to have an AG who isn’t only unafraid to push and stretch the legal boundaries to defend freedom, but someone who lives for it. Democrats have made their bed. It’s up to Trump’s lieutenants to make that bed as uncomfortable as possible.
Question for any lawyer here: How can a judge tell a defendant what defense he can use?..The accused’s freedom is on the line and I believe that he should be able to use any defense he so chooses, including the Flip Wilson defense
IANAL, but judges typically do have some oversight of how and when affirmative defenses are employed by the defense. In federal law, there are specific rules and robust case law that control the use of affirmative defenses. State law of NY is likely no different. But, even if the judge (under NY law) has the authority to disallow an affirmative defense based on unconstitutionality of the statute, what this idiot judge said is WAY beyond the pale. She’s not exhibiting the temperament of a fair and impartial judge.
I hate to say it, but this is NOT the first time I have heard of a judge telling a defendant that he is not allowed to mention the Second Amendment in his courtroom. However, that was in pre-MacDonald Massachusetts, where state case law had already “established” that the Second Amendment was not an individual right.
The judge is supposed to ensure that the jury doesn’t hear irrelevant testimony (such as everything Stormy Daniels had to say). And if a defense is legally invalid, and thus irrelevant, the judge is supposed to prevent the jury from hearing it.
Democrat activists in robes don’t care.
She got her conviction. She will face ZERO consequences for her blatant destruction of law and the constitution, while the defendant will have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to overturn this joke.
Judicial immunity needs to end. Democrats are making a mockery of the legal system because they know they’re immune from consequences.
Perhaps it is time for The People to abrogate their support for the Federal and State experiment, and start fresh.
There is no immunity for judicial misconduct. Refusing to recognize the fundamental law of the land is judicial misconduct. Gun owners in New York should file a class action-type ethics complaint against her.
Actually judges, like prosecutors, have absolute immunity for everything. So she can’t be sued. The only recourse is a complaint to the Judicial Conduct Commission, which anyone can file. There’s no such thing as a “class-action-type” ethics complaint.
Even if judges could be sued, there would be no class action available here, since she only harmed one person, so it would be Mr Taylor alone as the plaintiff. If she’s done it more than once, the people she did it to could sue together.
Thank you
At this writing, three down ticks for stating fact.
Yep. A surprising number of folks seem to substitute their opinions, often based on nothing more than emotion, for facts and become upset, confrontational or as here use a down tick but offer no argument to support their opinion….just as some turds misuse Yelp or other ratings to diminish a business who delivered what was paid for but left the Karen customer upset over some self entitled BS.
The answer to these judges and prosecutors is the Democrat party solution. If the GOP wins in Nov appoint a massive task force of prosecutors and find some laws whether state or Federal that these tyrants have violated. Comb through all there financial and real estate transactions particularly if they have second homes in red states or counties. Since there is a major conflict of interest in the blue cities have them tried in rural counties a good distance from the city to have a chance at objective judges and juries rather than the leftist mob.
You can’t move the trials. They have to be tried in the same district as the crime is alleged to have happened.
Where did you ever get that idea? Of course they can be moved to a new venue.
No, they cannot. “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.”
They can be moved if the judge grants a motion for change of venue or change of venire.
There is a high-profile case in Minneapolis that just got moved to a different county. Myron Burrell’s sentence was commuted by the Gov. following pressure from Minneapolis progressive DA since he became a changed man in prison after converting to Islam. He was arrested again for felony charges and will be prosecuted in Dakota County since he was a paid staffer for the MSP county DA. The legal powers decided that relationship was a conflict of interest.
I suspect that an aggressive team of investigators and prosecutors could find plenty of conflicts in the relationships of the lawfare judges and prosecutors.
No, they cannot. The constitution says the accused has a right to a jury of the vicinage. No judge can override that right; only the accused can waive it.
That is a state prosecution, as evidenced by your reference to “county”. So it’s governed only by whatever the state constitution says, if anything. But we’re talking about federal prosecutions, since our discussion is premised on what should be done if the GOP wins in Nov. Federal prosecutions cannot be moved unless the defendant waives his right.
He got off lucky! The head of Little Rock airport operations was shot in the head and killed in his own home by the ATF. His crime, a gun collector and possibly too many (?) private gun sales.
yeah read that
And nothing, nothing has been done about this
It just gets worse, I know it can get even much worse, but somehow it seems we are already there
People praying are put in jail after FBI raids their homes at 5 am, puts guns in their kids faces, churches closed down but gay bars opened with their glory holes, Jan 6 protesters abused endlessly
Children having breasts cut off, dicks made into vaginas
And here we sit
Just for the record – is Taylor one of the handful of “civilized” blacks you grudgingly admitted exist on a previous post?
thats why I wondered what his motive was
him being black only matters to your dating life
You would find racism in a cast iron skillet.
Why look there? He could look in a mirror, or just scratch his skin.
And you just HAD to work something gay into this. Why?
Supreme Court?! This belongs with the Judicial Conduct Commission.
the judge has some sort of affiliation with Ghana and how they want to link
the usa and ghana
I read that the judge’s parents emigrated here from Ghana in the 1960’s. She was born here, but obviously received a piss-poor education regarding our legal system.
her belonging to group(s) that state they want to make a connection ( legal?) between ghana and the usa is interesting
No, it isn’t. It’s no different from the hundreds of such immigrant associations that promote relations between the USA and their country of origin.
except when those immigrants dont want to have western culture as their foundation but to stay as the old country ways especially regarding tribalism
What I think should happen to that judge is something just can’t legally say here. But it would involve guns.
You can legally say anything here. It may be against LI policy, in which case the moderators will delete it, but there’s nothing you can possibly think should happen that you can’t legally say. The Supreme Court has been clear that “mere advocacy”, no matter of what, is 100% protected speech. Even advocating the president’s assassination or the violent overthrow of the United States is protected speech, which is why the Occupy, BLM, and Hamas movements are allowed to exist.
You mean one of the reasons the Founding Fathers put the second amendment in place for in the first place?
‘Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.’
This judge needs to be in prison awaiting punishment for treason against the USA.
Unless or until these domestic enemies against the USA are hunted down and eliminated, it’s merely **clown world** where this unconstitutional crap will always happen again and again.
“Hunted down and eliminated.”
When you encourage a lawless state where progressive “values” are substituted for actual law, that’s exactly what will eventually happen. This is why we have a written constitution. This is why we have a Bill of Rights. This is why we have the rule of law instead of the rule of man.
“This is why we have the rule of law instead of the rule of man.”
Not for a long time.
See Sanddog’s reply here, dumbass.
You idiots always act surprised when you burn down centuries of law and legal precedent and this stuff starts happening.
Get out of here, you idiot. You’re worse than King Bart and Junior.
Legally speaking, of course.
She should be transferred to a position appropriate to her intelligence in the drive-thru window.
No, it’s not treason. The constitution says so — the same constitution that she thinks doesn’t apply in NY.
We could possibly see to it she ends up before a judge with a similarly dismissive attitude to the Constitution. It would be interesting to see her reaction. Do you think she’d shrug and say, “What goes around, comes around.” Or would she object vociferously to the court’s disregard for the law? I’m going with the latter, because, as I’ve mentioned here before, progressives have no sense of humor, no sense of irony, and no sense of self-awareness.
She’d play the race card. I guarantee it.
Redux of the Aloha Spirit which is the supreme law of Hawaii, the land where the Constitution does not exist.
That is not true, and no matter how many times it is repeated it will remain untrue. The HI Supreme Court never denied that the 2nd amendment is in full force in HI, and overrides all state laws and all provisions of the state constitution. Anyone who claims it did is lying.
Unfortunately LI was part of that outrageous misreporting.
LI is right, Milhouse is wrong. In a 5-0 vote, the Hawai’i Supreme Court denied the right for individuals to carry guns. in direct violation of extant Supreme Court rulings and the plain text of the 2nd.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/hawaii-top-court-upholds-gun-laws-criticizes-us-supreme-court-2024-02-08/
Tregard, that is just not true at all. Have you read the decision? I have, and it is 100% correct, and does not say what LI claimed it did.
The Reuters story you linked doesn’t say that either, though it’s so sloppily written that it wouldn’t surprise me if the writer also didn’t bother reading the decision, and was under the same false impression as the LI poster. But at least the Reuters story doesn’t contain any outright falsehoods, at least as far as I could tell from a quick scan. It just spends a lot of time on irrelevancies and misses the key parts.
The HI decision was that the HI state constitution protects only the state’s right to have an armed militia, and does not protect an individual RKBA. It acknowledged that the 2A does, and that it applies in HI and overrides the state constitution. It pointed out that SCOTUS explicitly said licensing laws don’t infringe that right.
PS: When I say that the decision is 100% correct, I mean the bottom line only. There a crapload of dicta shoved in there, which is wrong, both factually and ideologically. But that is just dicta. All the substantive parts of the decision are correct, i.e. that
1. the relevant clause in the Hawaiian constitution, although it is directly copied from and phrased identically to the 2A, does not mean the same thing, and does not protect an individual RKBA. Therefore the petitioner’s challenge based on the state constitution fails.
2. The US constitution does, because SCOTUS says it does, but it permits the states to have licensing laws, so HI’s law is entitled to a presumption of validity. Since the petitioner never applied for a license, he has no standing to challenge it, so that challenge fails as well. To have standing someone would have to apply for a license and be rejected.
I work in DC. A judge just let a guy who fired 26 shorts at a car with 4 people in it out on his own recognizance while he waits to go on trial. This guy gets 10yrs for making guns.
yeah read that one and THAT judge was a proud member of the in yo face blm agenda
The DOJ will have to do a complete investigation of the entire New York State Judiciary as so many are morons
Tyranny and disregard for the rule of law, the Supreme Law of the Land, as exhibited by this so-called judge is exactly why the 2A. was included in the first place.
I hope his defense attorney objected to the Judge saying the 2nd amendment doesn’t exist in her court, that has got to be grounds for a appeal.
Frankly, I don’t understand why the defense team didn’t take it to a higher court right after she vomited fourth such a moronic statement.
Interlocutory appeals are rare. Generally you have to wait till the trial is over before appealing. In part because until the trial is over there’s a chance that the defendant might be acquitted, in which case there will be nothing to appeal.
Not sure who downvoted. Interlocutory appeals ARE extremely rare, and an acquittal DOES mean there’s nothing to appeal.
This is the correct answer, whether we like it or not.
“In part because until the trial is over there’s a chance that the defendant might be acquitted, in which case there will be nothing to appeal.”
In other words, juries often pull judges’ chestnuts out of the fire, and egregious misbehavior by said judges continues due to a lack of corrective review.
Yup. That’s how it works. Judicial misconduct can still be reported to the Judicial Conduct Commission (or its equivalent in other states). But appeals are only to change the bottom line, not decisions made along the way.
“Taylor began gun smithing during the COVID lockdown. He turned it into a business, legally buying all the parts from different companies.”
*****
What was his business? If manufacturing and selling firearms without proper Federal license, serial numbers, etc., then should have been a Federal case.
Yet the feds declined to prosecute.
I understood that he was assembling weapons for people who bought kits but didn’t have the time or talent to put them together.
The whole point of buying a kit is that you are legally allowed to assemble it yourself. If somebody puts it together for you, his status is equivalent to a gun dealer.
Is he? Why isn’t he just your agent? Suppose you have the parts yourself at home, and hire him to come to your home and put it together for you. He never takes possession of it, nor transfers it to you at the end, just does his job, gets paid, and leaves.
I don’t think that’s accurate. Now if this guy bought the various components then assembled them then TRANSFERRED them to another person that might be a ‘dealer’. Then the question would turn on how many/how much $ he was making to determine if he passed the threshold from unregulated hobbyist/private seller who occasionally sells to become a regulated ‘dealer’ who engages in this commercial activity with goal of a substantial money making enterprise. Unfortunately the ATF has recently blurred the line with new regulation/definitions on this point.
When a car dealer services your car, you do not transfer ownership to the dealer during the repair job and then transfer ownership back when the repair is done.
Unfortunately, there’s really little risk for this judge. She delivered a progressive result that will be very popular with the powers that be in NY. It doesn’t matter that she’ll be overturned because he’ll lose his home, his income and perhaps his life waiting for this to wind it’s way through the judicial system. For leftists, the process is the punishment. I don’t know how we continue as a country with proggies in position of power. The rule of man is the only thing that matters to them.
Once regulation of the industry began, it was only a matter of time before they started to impose similar restrictions on the private/personal making of firearms. Certainly, they did not forget that the reason they didn’t go directly to such regulations is because firearms ownership is a right, and beyond the state’s ability to regulate as it regulates commercial activity. The state waited until the presumed legitimacy of such regulations became an excepted fact, and only then began imposing similar rules on private acts.
The ratification of the 18th Amendment should be sufficient evidence that 1.) even under the authority to regulate commerce, the outright banning of common articles of trade (such as alcohol and firearms) is beyond any native/original authority granted by our constitutions (and Congress knew this, otherwise they would have simply enacted legislation and an amendment to the Constitution would have been unnecessary); and 2.) that even when granted the explicit authority to ban alcohol, the laws regulating alcohol’s manufacture and distribution didn’t apply to alcohol produced for private consumption by family and friends of the producer (as well as their having been cut-outs for the production and sale of alcohol for use in religious services) because the particular authority established over alcohol had to be interpreted within the existing limits inherent in the authority to regulate commerce (and the cut-outs had to be created to accommodate rights related to religious observance, providing a precedent that even specific authority must be exercised with respect for fundamental rights). Firearms ownership, being a right, perforce includes the right to make/build firearms for personal use, unfettered by laws more suitable, and strictly applicable to, the commercial manufacture, distribution, and sale of same.
The 18th amendment doesn’t prove that, because at the time it was made the interstate commerce clause was understood very differently. It was before Wickard, so it was understood to apply only to goods that actually traveled between states, and sold in the same condition as they were imported.
Therefore, under the dormant commerce clause, dry states could not ban the sale of imported alcohol sold in its original packaging; you would go into a bar and buy an unopened bottle, and then the barkeeper would open it and pour it for you, and there was nothing the state police could do about it.
The modern understanding of the commerce clause is enough to support a federal ban on alcohol without any need for an amendment.
Cf the income tax. Under the modern understanding of “direct taxation”, the 16th amendment is probably unnecessary, and repealing it would probably have no effect. (Of course even then, the income tax on wages was constitutional without an amendment; the challenge was only to the tax on income from dividends, interest, and capital gains.)
Repeal of the 16th amendment would, IMO, require the income tax to be constructed under the framework of ‘apportionment’; IOW yes the Feds could have an ‘income’ tax but the tax would have to fall equally upon residents so in essence it would be a head tax.
No, that’s what the Supreme Court said at the time (as to income derived from property, but not as to salary or wages). That’s why they amended the constitution. But the understanding of “direct taxation” has changed since then, and nowadays a tax on income derived from property would probably be regarded the same way as a tax on wages and salaries, and thus perfectly constitutional.
I disagree. The CT was clear about the distinction between wage income and income derived from ‘events’. Further I would submit that a whole host of ‘modern’ interpretation of particular statutes under our Constitution become untenable when the logic of Bruen is applied to them….as it surely will be. One example would be ‘Cruel and unusual’ punishment. Under the logic of Bruen the State Laws and practices at the time of the founding and shortly thereafter would form the basic contours of what was/is in fact NOT cruel or unusual precisely b/c those punishments were usual and not considered to be cruel.
The court was clear — back in 1895. That is not how “direct taxation” is understood nowadays, so if the 16th were repealed today’s court would probably still uphold the income tax on property-derived income. (The tax on wages was never under challenge.)
Is the NY judiciary TRYING to be a national joke?
Not “trying.” Succeeding.
One extremely junior judge is not “the NY judiciary”. The NY Supreme Court is the lowest level state court, and she’s only on it as a temporary appointment to fill a vacancy. Her actual judicial appointment was to the NY City criminal court.
Interesting point, thanks
and yet she made a major legal faux pas
so you protecting her //defending her non western culturalism is nil and void
He stated fact. He did not defend HER.
Destroy, I’ve long suspected that English is not your native language. Is that correct?
NY is becoming the hell hole that CA has become with a sick liberal legislature and judges who are nothing but political activists. Can any sane person even think of moving to NY?
Isn’t there a Federal judge, with jurisdiction, who could issue an arrest warrant for Judge Abena Darkeh for a “Civil Rights Violation”?
No, because she did not violate any law. There’s no such thing as an abstract “civil rights violation”; there are only specific violations of specific statutes, none of which she seems to have violated. She’s guilty of judicial misconduct, but that’s not a crime.