By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
Special to Liberty Park Press
It now appears that all of the government’s quiet off-the-record admissions that Patrick “Tate” Adamiak would somehow be freed from his 20-year prison sentence because he did nothing wrong, or that he was a victim of Joe Biden’s out-of-control ATF, were bunk.
Adamiak’s appeal is scheduled for this Friday.
Regardless of the complete insanity of this case and the broken promises of government officials, Adamiak’s appellate attorney, Matthew Larosiere, has formed a simple strategy: He plans to tell the truth.
According to documents he sent to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit over the weekend, Larosiere takes apart a case the government is citing to support its argument: United States v. Bridges, which involved convictions for the “possession of actual, operable machineguns.”
“They therefore do not resolve the issues presented in this appeal, which concern destroyed, inoperable relics,” Larosiere argues in a letter sent to the court Saturday.
Adamiak had only legal guns and a host of gun parts, the evidence has shown, He did not own or possess a single machinegun—not one. In fact, ATF’s own “technical expert,” Firearms Enforcement Officer Jeffrey R. Bodell, went to great lengths to turn Adamiak’s legal gun parts into machineguns, but he was unable to achieve any fully-automatic fire.
“The government’s letters only underscore Appellant’s point: by continuing to equate inert relics with functional weapons, the government collapses materially distinct categories of objects and conduct. That conflation highlights the vagueness and overbreadth concerns identified in Appellant’s briefing,” Larosiere argued.
In her response sent to the court yesterday, Jacqueline R. Bechara, the Assistant United States Attorney handling the appeal, backed her lone courtroom expert, Bodell, by claiming that Adamiak possessed machineguns because Bodell said they were machineguns.
“Based on trial testimony that the 7 receivers were receivers of weapons which could be readily restored to shoot automatically, and Bodell’s report classifying 22 firearms recovered from Adamiak’s house as machineguns, the district court did not clearly err in finding these items were machineguns. Thus, all the firearms were NFA firearms relevant to Adamiak’s possession of an unregistered machinegun and unregistered destructive devices,” Bechara wrote.
Bechara never mentioned that this was Bodell’s first trial, or that Bodell has issues with his conduct and the truth. Bodell’s incredible deceptions have become almost legendary. For this case, he actually turned toys and inert objects into firearms and destructive devices, and legal semi-autos into machineguns.
- Bodell inserted a real STEN action and a real STEN barrel into Adamiak’s toy STEN submachinegun and got it to fire one round, even though the toy’s receiver wouldn’t accept a real STEN magazine. Bodell actually classified the toy, which are very popular, as a machinegun.
- Bodell fired five of Adamiak’s very expensive and extremely collectible legal semi-autos, which fire from an open bolt. All the ATF technician could achieve was semi-auto fire, but that didn’t stop him. He classified all five highly sought after firearms as machineguns.
- Bodell ruled that several receivers that had been cut in half were actually machineguns. The same parts are still legally sold online and do not require an FFL or any paperwork to purchase.
- Bodell actually rebuilt three of Adamiak’s inert RPGs, which had holes drilled into their receivers and were stripped of internal parts. Bodell even added parts from real RPGs until they would fire a single 7.62x39mm round. As a result, he classified the RPGs as destructive devices.
“Bodell’s extensive alterations have never been mentioned much less fully examined by either the ATF or the courts.”
Larosiere cites United States v. Simmons, in which the Fourth Circuit vacated a sentence where enhancements were imposed without proof that the firearms counted were relevant to the offense of conviction.
“This decision directly supports Appellant’s contention that the district court erred by enhancing his sentence based on thirty firearms—none of which were unlawful, and at least twenty-five of which do not even qualify as “firearms” under 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(3). Moreover, in Appellant’s case the government did not even attempt to show that the alleged “firearm receivers” satisfied the unambiguous statutory definition of a receiver. Instead, it merely asserted legal conclusions, without evidence or argument in the record establishing that those inert or incomplete items fell within § 921(a)(3). Under Simmons, such unsupported conclusions cannot justify counting those items for guideline purposes,” Larosiere wrote.
He closed his letter by stating the inappropriateness of relying upon Bodell’s testimony and other problems with the State’s case.
“Finally, the supplemental authorities leave untouched the separate grounds for reversal pressed in this appeal, including the defective indictment, the improper jury instructions, and the constitutional infirmities in treating inoperable objects as firearms,” he wrote. “Appellant submits the government’s continued reliance on inapposite authority underscores the absence of precedent supporting its position here.”
Takeaways
If Adamiak’s conviction is allowed to stand, millions of law-abiding American gun owners will be put at risk. Anyone who owns an inert RPG, an expensive semi-auto that fires legally from an open bolt, a PPSh-41 that’s been chopped in half, a toy STEN submachine gun or any other destroyed, inoperable relic, could become an ATF target and, like Adamiak, forced to spend decades behind bars.
Unless Adamiak’s conviction is overturned, the case gives the ATF an incredible amount of power—at a time when even the President of the United States wonders publicly whether they should even continue to exist.
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