US to Appeal National Security Case Imperiling Gun-and-Drugs Law

The Justice Department will appeal a ruling that tossed a firearms charge against an Iranian American with suspected ties to terrorism, six months after prosecutors conceded the case should be dismissed.

Federal prosecutors informed the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Thursday that they’ll be renewing their case against Ali Hemani, who’d been indicted last year under a federal law criminalizing firearms possession while using illegal drugs. When the department abandoned the matter in August, a day before they were set to argue at a hearing the charge was valid, it reserved its right to appeal on the grounds that a separate Fifth Circuit decision declaring the gun-and-drugs statute unconstitutional was wrongly decided.

Hemani was under surveillance since 2019 after federal agents said they found evidence he might be plotting a financial crime with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—a US-designated terrorist organization. He was then detained following his February 2023 indictment, but was released in August. That’s when prosecutors acknowledged his charge couldn’t withstand the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit’s decision that the law criminalizing the act of possessing a firearm while using illegal and controlled substances violated the Second Amendment under the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision permitting hand guns in public.

The US asked the Supreme Court in October to take up the Fifth Circuit ruling, a petition that’s still pending before the justices.

Meanwhile, an appeal in Hemani’s proceeding will bring new life to what played out last year as a potentially significant yet low-profile prosecution at the intersection of the Second Amendment and national security.