SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES (PDF ATTACHED, 11 PAGES)
JAIME CAETANO v. MASSACHUSETTS
on petition for writ of certiorari to the supreme judicial court of massachusetts
No. 14–10078. Decided March 21, 2016
Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas joins, concurring in the judgment.
After a “bad altercation” with an abusive boyfriend put her in the hospital, Jaime Caetano found herself homeless and “in fear for [her] life.” Tr. 31, 38 (July 10, 2013). She obtained multiple restraining orders against her abuser, but they proved futile. So when a friend offered her a stun gun “for self-defense against [her] former boy friend,” 470 Mass. 774, 776, 26 N. E. 3d 688, 690 (2015), Caetano accepted the weapon.
It is a good thing she did. One night after leaving work, Caetano found her ex-boyfriend “waiting for [her] outside.” Tr. 35. He “started screaming” that she was “not gonna [expletive deleted] work at this place” any more because she “should be home with the kids” they had together. Ibid. Caetano’s abuser towered over her by nearly a foot and outweighed her by close to 100 pounds. But she didn’t need physical strength to protect herself. She stood her ground, displayed the stun gun, and announced: “I’m not gonna take this anymore. . . . I don’t wanna have to [use the stun gun on] you, but if you don’t leave me alone, I’m gonna have to.” Id., at 35–36. The gambit worked. The ex-boyfriend “got scared and he left [her] alone.” Id., at 36.
It is settled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms that applies against both the Federal Government and the States. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570 (2008); McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U. S. 742 (2010). That right vindicates the “basic right” of “individual self-defense.” Id., at 767; see Heller, supra, at 599, 628. Caetano’s encounter with her violent ex-boyfriend illustrates the connection between those fundamental rights: By arming herself, Caetano was able to protect against a physical threat that restraining orders had proved useless to prevent. And, commendably, she did so by using a weapon that posed little, if any, danger of permanently harming either herself or the father of her children.
Under Massachusetts law, however, Caetano’s mere possession of the stun gun that may have saved her life made her a criminal. See Mass. Gen. Laws, ch. 140, §131J (2014). When police later discovered the weapon, she was arrested, tried, and convicted. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the conviction, holding that a stun gun “is not the type of weapon that is eligible for Second Amendment protection” because it was “not in common use at the time of [the Second Amendment’s] enactment.” 470 Mass., at 781, 26 N. E. 3d, at 693.
This reasoning defies our decision in Heller, which rejected as “bordering on the frivolous” the argument “that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment.” 554 U. S., at 582. The decision below also does a grave disservice to vulnerable individuals like Caetano who must defend themselves because the State will not.
The events leading to Caetano’s prosecution occurred sometime after the confrontation between her
A subsequent bench trial established the following undisputed facts. The parties stipulated that Caetano possessed the stun gun and that the weapon fell within the statute’s prohibition.2 The Commonwealth also did not challenge Caetano’s testimony that she possessed the weapon to defend herself against the violent ex-boyfriend. Indeed, the prosecutor urged the court “to believe the defendant.” Tr. 40. The trial court nonetheless found Caetano guilty, and she appealed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.
TheSupreme Judicial Court rejected Caetano’s Second Amendment claim, holding that “a stun gun is not the type of weapon that is eligible for Second Amendment protection.”
Although the Supreme Judicial Court professed to apply Heller, each step of its analysis defied Heller’s reasoning.
The state court repeatedly framed the question before it as whether a particular weapon was “ ‘in common use at the time’ of enactment of the Second Amendment.” 470 Mass., at 781, 26 N. E. 3d, at 693; see also id., at 779, 780, 781, 26 N. E. 3d, at 692, 693, 694. In Heller, we emphatically rejected such a formulation. We found the argument “that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment” not merely wrong, but “bordering on the frivolous.” 554 U. S., at 582. Instead, we held that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding.” Ibid.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/14-10078