Conflicting legal obligations in Illinois:
An Alton woman embroiled in a divorce case spent more than four hours in jail for contempt of court after she refused a Madison County’s judge’s order to return a handgun to her ex-husband, a convicted felon.
Elizabeth “Beth” Ritchie, 30, said that complying with Associate Judge Ellar Duff’s order, delivered at a hearing on Thursday, would have required Ritchie to commit a crime herself.
It is a felony in Illinois for a felon to possess a firearm, and for anyone to transfer a gun to a felon.
Duff said in an interview Friday that she did not learn until after the hearing that Ritchie’s ex-husband was a felon, and that she then ordered Beth Ritchie released from the Madison County Jail.
Ritchie said she tried to explain the situation to Duff in court but was ignored.
“I was being ordered by the law to break the law,” Ritchie said. “And when I wouldn’t, I got thrown in jail.”
(Paul Hampel, “Justice misfires over gun”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jul. 22)(& welcome Crime & Federalism, Wave Maker readers).
More: reader Mickey Ferguson asks whether Ritchie could have avoided the predicament by volunteering to the gun over to the court itself, as in a case of escrow, with the court then free to turn it over or not to the felon. Good question, but I for one don’t know the answer.
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