- The North Carolina Supreme Court has granted a state government lawyer's request to block a recent court ruling protecting a homeless man's Second Amendment rights.
- A unanimous state Appeals Court panel threw out Joseph John Radomski III's conviction for possession of a gun on educational property. Radomski had guns in his parked car when he traveled to UNC Hospitals in 2021 for medical treatment.
- The state plans to appeal the appellate ruling. State lawyers sought a temporary stay and writ of supersedeas that would maintain the case's status quo as the case moves forward.
The North Carolina Supreme Court has granted the state’s request to block a recent court ruling protecting a homeless man’s Second Amendment rights.
The case stemmed from Joseph John Radomski III’s decision to bring guns with him to the University of North Carolina campus when he sought medical treatment at UNC Hospitals in 2021.
A three-judge state Appeals Court panel ruled in May that a state law banning guns on educational property was unconstitutional as applied to the facts of Radomski’s case.
State Special Deputy Attorney General Lindsay Vance Smith filed a petition Thursday asking the state Supreme Court to issue a temporary stay blocking the Appeals Court’s decision. The petition also seeks a more permanent order called a writ of supersedeas against the appellate ruling.
The high court issued an order Friday granting the temporary stay.
The stay and writ would maintain the case’s status quo as state lawyers pursue an appeal, Smith wrote.
Appellate judges voted in May to throw out Radomski’s conviction for possession of a gun on educational property.
“When the application of a statute impedes conduct protected by the plain text of the Second Amendment, it is presumptively unconstitutional,” wrote Judge Hunter Murphy. “To overcome this presumption, the State must demonstrate that its regulation is consistent with, or analogous to, this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
“The State failed to demonstrate that regulating Defendant’s possession of firearms, which were kept within a vehicle that was parked in the university hospital parking lot where Defendant was seeking emergency medical care, is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” Murphy added.
While homeless, Radomski kept all his possessions in his vehicle. Among those possessions were six guns stored in the vehicle’s back cargo area.
He parked in a university lot near a campus health building while seeking treatment in June 2021. Hospital officials contacted UNC police about a suspicious vehicle. During an investigation, a campus police officer talked to Radomski and learned about the guns.
The officer charged Radomski with possession of a firearm on educational property. A jury convicted him of the crime in September 2022. A judge suspended Radomski’s sentence of five to 15 months in prison and placed him on a year of supervised probation. Radomski appealed.
“We hold that the application of N.C.G.S. § 14-269.2(b) to Defendant’s case, where Defendant’s vehicle was parked in a parking lot of the university hospital where he sought treatment and his firearms remained within the vehicle, is unconstitutional,” Murphy wrote.
The state argued that “’laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools’ are constitutional,” Murphy wrote. “However, Defendant argues, and we agree, that the purpose of the ‘open-air parking lot situated between the emergency room entrance, a football arena, and another healthcare building’ is not educational in nature; rather, its function is to provide ‘parking access to the health care facilities in the area, including the hospital where [Defendant] was trying to be seen for significant kidney health concerns.’”
“Therefore, we disregard the State’s argument that N.C.G.S. § 14-269.2(b), as applied to the facts of Defendant’s case, merely forbids the carrying of firearms in an ‘obvious, undisputed, and uncontroversial’ ‘gun-free [school] zone.’” The judge added.
All three members of the Appeals Court panel agreed that the state law was unconstitutional as applied to Radomski’s case. But the panel split on a separate issue. Radomski argued that the state failed to show that he knew he had parked his car on educational property.
Murphy and Judge Jeff Carpenter agreed with the defendant. “The State failed to present any evidence, direct or circumstantial, as to which path Defendant took, what signs he saw, or any other indication of personal knowledge that he was on educational property,” Murphy wrote. “The State did not ‘prove by circumstantial evidence’ any fact from which the jury could infer Defendant’s knowledge.”
Chief Judge Chris Dillon disagreed.
“I agree in the majority opinion that the gun possession statute under which Defendant was convicted is unconstitutional as applied to him in this case,” Dillon wrote in a concurring opinion. “The evidence shows that Defendant is homeless; that everything in the world he owns, including his firearm, was in his car; and that he drove his car to UNC Hospital to seek emergency medical attention. There was no evidence that Defendant had the opportunity or means to store his firearm before proceeding to the hospital.”
“I do not agree with the majority’s conclusion that there was insufficient evidence that Defendant knew that he was on educational property,” Dillon added. “Indeed, there was evidence that Defendant would have passed signs indicating that he was on UNC’s campus. He was near Kenan Stadium, where UNC plays its home football games. The officer testified that Defendant told him that he ‘always forgot’ that the hospital was on UNC’s campus, suggesting that he has been there and/or at least was admitting that had known at some point in the past that the hospital was on UNC’s campus. One cannot forget what he did not once know.”
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include the state Supreme Court’s decision to grant a temporary stay.