The Supreme Court just ruled you can’t lose your gun rights for smoking weed. The real test is what happens to the people already locked up under that law. One of them gets out July 15.
When the Supreme Court ruled last week that you can’t lose your gun rights just for smoking weed, it answered one question and opened a bigger one. What about the people already sitting in prison for exactly that?
Alexander Ledvina is one of them. The Iowa man was 26 when federal agents arrested him in June 2023. He owned guns and, by his own admission, used marijuana five or six times a week. That was the case. He has been locked up ever since, serving a 51-month sentence, the same kind of charge that convicted Hunter Biden in 2024.
Ledvina is scheduled to walk out of a federal prison in Memphis on July 15, six days before his 30th birthday. Here is the part to get right: he is not getting out because of the Supreme Court. He is getting out on good-conduct and earned-time credits under the First Step Act, which were already in motion. As Reason’s Jacob Sullum reported, Ledvina actually wrote the letter laying all this out on the same day the court decided U.S. v. Hemani, before he even knew the outcome. The ruling won’t shorten his time. What it does is give him a real shot at erasing the conviction that will otherwise follow him for life.
The Door Hemani Opened
This is the part that did not make the first round of headlines. Hemani does not just limit future prosecutions. It opens a path to relief for people already convicted under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), the law that makes it a felony, up to 15 years, for an “unlawful” …
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Author: Javier Hasse / High Times
