Michigan Open Carrier Wins Big, Beats False Charges By Cops, Now Aims to Win Civil Case

03 Apr, 2015 by Warner Todd Huston

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A gun owner in Michigan just won a big victory beating a false gun charge leveled against him by local police. Now he wants to take his case to a civil court and he will likely win that case, too.

The way John David McMorris was arrested was 100% bogus. And a judge has now agreed with him.

A Michigan judge apparently had the same thought, and acquitted open carrier John David McMorris in a directed verdict:

A man who claimed he was wrongfully arrested while legally open-carrying his pistol has been acquitted of a felony gun charge that stemmed from a Christmas Eve police stop in Flint Township.

John David McMorris was found not guilty Thursday, April 2, after a trial on a single charge of carrying a concealed weapon following his Dec. 24, 2013, arrest.

Jury selection in the trial began Wednesday, April 1, but the case never made it to deliberations because Genesee Circuit Judge Archie Hayman issued a directed verdict after prosecutors were unable to meet their burden to obtain a conviction.
The basis for the arrest by the unnamed Flint Township officer was a steaming pile of bovine excrement in the first place.

The officer who made the arrest claimed that he saw McMorris when he drove by 15 minutes earlier while responding to another call, and that he didn’t see McMorris have a gun, but that when he came back by and hit his lights, he saw then a gun. Therefore, the officer surmised that McMorris must have illegally concealed the handgun hidden the first time the officer drove by.

That the officer simply didn’t observe the firearm for any number of valid and utterly logical reasons (such as the gun being on the opposite side of McMorris’ body, in the dark, while the officer was focused on responding to a call for assistance) never crossed his mind.

It is good McMorris beat this false charge against him. Let’s hope he wins his next round, too.