7th Circuit Upholds Warrantless Entry, Seizure of Gun Rights Activist and Confiscation of Guns

Local news reports

Milwaukee police who forced their way into a gun rights advocate's home without a warrant, took her for an emergency mental evaluation and seized her gun were justified under the circumstances and protected from her civil rights claims, a federal appeals court has ruled.

Krysta Sutterfield, who twice made news because of her practice of openly carrying a handgun — at a Brookfield church and outside a Sherman Park coffee shop — drew police attention in 2011 after her psychiatrist reported a suicidal remark Sutterfield made during a difficult appointment.

Sutterfield, 45, claimed police violated her rights against unreasonable search and seizure and Second Amendment rights to keep a gun, but a district judge dismissed the case.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 75-page opinion analyzing existing law about when police may act without search warrants, upheld the decision but suggested there might be better ways to balance personal privacy rights in the context of emergency mental health evaluations.

According to the opinion:

Sutterfield's doctor called police after Sutterfield left an appointment by saying she might as well go home and "blow her brains out," after Sutterfield had gotten some bad news. Sutterfield was wearing an empty gun holster to the appointment, so her doctor assumed Sutterfield had a gun.

Sutterfield later disputed making the comment.

Police went to Sutterfield's home but didn't find her. Later, Sutterfield called her doctor and said she was not in need of assistance and to call off the police.

But officers returned to Sutterfield's residence that evening, some nine hours after her comment to her doctor. They found her at home. She told them she was fine, did not want their help and asked them to leave, and called 911 when they would not.

The officers forcibly entered, handcuffed Sutterfield and took her to the county's Mental Health Complex.

They also seized a handgun and several out-of-state concealed-carry licenses, found inside a locked CD case, and a BB gun that resembled a Glock firearm.

Sutterfield later sued.

Breaking Breivik News

This news headline certainly goes to the ongoing topic here of preventing the criminally insane, the dangerously crazy, shooters from getting guns.   I can't resist pointing out that part his inspiration for the terrible crime he committed was the Islamophobia promoted by the same Pamela Geller who circulated the misinformation about stealth Islamicization of America through secretly Halal Butterball turkeys 'sacrificed to Allah' nonsense, which I wrote about here and here.

We should realize that the same themes that prompted the extreme, the insane conduct by Breivik is what motivates the candidates and the base on the right to formulate and hold the political positions based on Islamophobia.  This is frequently factually inaccurate hysteria relating to fear of Sharia law (which is NOT a threat, there is NO danger of it becoming one), fear of the insane concept o9f stealth Islamicization, fear of other countries which are largely Muslim, like not ony Iran, but also Egypt, and even fear of our fellow Americans, like the right wing political evangelicals who would not allow Muslim Americans to serve in our military. They are alike in kind to Breivik, differing only in degree.  I would point out that the extremism of Breivik started out less extreme; it was fed and nurtured by the right.

I see parallels in the emotion based rather than fact based Islamophobia with the unreasoning fear of criminals descending at any moment on those who have a desperate need to carry their firearms wherever they go.  It is not objective, it is not reality based, it is a disproportionate fear to any real risks.

From MSNBC.com:

Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik is criminally insane, evaluation finds

Confessed killer could spend life in psychiatric institution rather than jail if court upholds assessment 

msnbc.com news services

updated 11/29/2011 7:56:27 AM ET

OSLO, Norway — Court-appointed psychiatrists concluded Tuesday that Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik is criminally insane and could be committed to a psychiatric institution indefinitely rather than face a jail term. Breivik has confessed to killing 77 people in a bombing in central Oslo and in a shooting spree at a Labour Party summer camp on an island in July, in the worst attacks committed in Norway since the end of World War Two.
The finding by the two forensic psychiatrists will help determine whether Breivik is sentenced to prison or psychiatric care. Prosecutor Svein Holden says the report shows Breivik was "psychotic" during the attack.
If that assessment is upheld by the court then Breivik cannot be sentenced to prison for the attacks.
Story: Norway mass killer Breivik admits July massacre Breivik, 32, denies criminal guilt, saying he's a commander of a Norwegian resistance movement opposed to multiculturalism.
Investigators have found no sign of such a movement and say Breivik most likely plotted and carried out the attacks on his own.
36 hours with Breivik The psychiatrists spent a total of 36 hours talking to Breivik and also watched recordings of police interrogations with him, said Torgeir Husby, one of the psychiatrists who evaluated him. He added that Breivik was cooperative.
The 243-page report will be reviewed by a panel from the Norwegian Board of Forensic Medicine, which could ask for additional information, Husby said.
The head of that panel told AP in July that it was unlikely that Breivik would be declared legally insane because the attacks were so carefully planned and executed.
In Norway, an insanity defense requires that a defendant be in a state of psychosis while committing the crime with which he or she is charged. That means the defendant has lost contact with reality to the point that he's no longer in control of his own actions.
If tried and convicted of terrorism, Breivik will face up to 21 years in prison or an alternative custody arrangement that could keep him behind bars indefinitely.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.