# United States v. Theodore Albert Geyler

> Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit · May 13, 1991 · 932 F.2d 1330

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9481614

## Case

- **Full name:** UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Theodore Albert GEYLER, Defendant-Appellant
- **Court:** Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
- **Decided:** May 13, 1991
- **Citations:** 932 F.2d 1330; 117 A.L.R. Fed. 665; 91 Daily Journal DAR 5521; 91 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 3519; 1991 U.S. App. LEXIS 9314; 1991 WL 74245
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Fletcher
- **Judges:** Fletcher, Lively, Reinhardt
- **Cited by:** 19 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9481614

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- noting that “the rule giving effect to a state’s restoration of a federal felon’s rights is more cumbersome to administer than one in which only the federal government could take action affecting federal convictions”
- holding that defendant may look to state where federal conviction occurred for restoration of civil rights

## Opinion text

FLETCHER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. As the majority recognizes, supra, at 1335, Congress *1333 amended section 921(a)(20) in response to Dickerson v. New Banner Institute, Inc., 461 U.S. 911 , 103 S.Ct. 1887 , 76 L.Ed.2d 815 (1983), which denied any effect to state expunctions, pardons or civil rights restorations related to state convictions for purposes of the federal firearms laws. In my view — and the majority does not appear to disagree — Congress’s purpose in passing the amendment was to enable states to determine the effect of their own convictions. The amendment was not intended to give states the ability to restore to federal felons rights impaired by federal convictions.
The majority’s reading of the words “any conviction” as allowing states to determine the effect of federal convictions creates the Dickerson problem in reverse. While I do not believe that the first sentence of the amendment (specifying that what constitutes a “conviction” is to be determined in accordance with the law of the jurisdiction in which the proceedings were held) is dis-positive of how to read the second sentence, as suggested by the government, I do think it must inform our reading of the words “any conviction.” * Read in context, it is not plain to me that those words signify that a state’s restoration of a federal felon’s rights previously suspended by the state determines the vitality and significance of the federal conviction vis-a-vis federal firearms laws.
Where the language of the statute is ambiguous, as I believe it is here, we look to legislative history and Congress’s broader purpose in passing the amendment. Both, in my view, support reading the amendment to mandate federal deference to states’ treatment of their own convictions, but not state control over the consequences of federal convictions under the federal firearms laws.
" '[I]n expounding a statute, we [are] not ... guided by a single sentence or member of a sentence, but look to the provisions of the whole law, and to its object and policy.’ ” Massachusetts v. Morash, 490 U.S. 107 , 109 S.Ct. 1668 , 104 L.Ed.2d 98 (1989) (quoting Pilot Life Insurance Co. v. Dedeaux, 481 U.S. 41, 51 , 107 S.Ct. 1549, 1555 , 95 L.Ed.2d 39 (1987)).

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9481614. Public record. Not legal advice.