PHILADELPHIA – The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has ruled that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania cannot maintain possession of a firearms cache it seized from the family of a man who committed a murderous attack against a state police barracks in 2014.
Eugene Michael Frein and Deborah Frein of Canadensis first filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania on June 10, 2020 versus the Pennsylvania State Police of Harrisburg, plus the Pike County District Attorney’s Office, Pike County District Attorney Ray Tonkin and John/Jane Does I-V, all of Milford.
The plaintiffs are the parents of Eric Frein, who shot and killed Pennsylvania State Trooper Byron K. Dickson II and wounded Pennsylvania State Trooper Alex Douglass on Sept. 12, 2014, at a Pennsylvania State Police barracks in Blooming Groove.
After 48-day manhunt, Frein was captured at an abandoned airport in the Poconos on Oct. 30, 2014.
On April 19, 2017, Frein was found guilty on the slew of charges he faced, which included first-degree murder and attempted murder, and then on April 27, Frein was formally sentenced to death by lethal injection. Frein now awaits execution on death row at SCI-Greene, a maximum security state prison.
The plaintiffs’ lawsuit hearkens back to Sept. 16, 2014, when the Pennsylvania State Police executed a search warrant at their Monroe County home, in Canadensis.
During the execution of the warrant, authorities seized a long list of weapons and technology belonging to the plaintiffs – including 19 pistols, 25 rifles, two shotguns, ammunition and reloading supplies, camera memory cards, compact discs, two IBM laptops, one VHS camcorder and videotape.
“The aforementioned property had no evidentiary value in the criminal case against Eric Frein and was not used in his criminal trial. Even if such evidence were utilized, Eric Frein has lost his direct appeal. The United State Supreme Court has denied review. This property belongs to plaintiffs, not Eric Frein,” the suit stated.
“This property was not contraband and was legally obtained, owned and used by plaintiffs. As of the filing of this complaint, defendants continue to hold the aforementioned property, despite requests for its return. Defendants have provided no compensation to plaintiffs as a result of taking their property. Defendants all continue to object to the return of plaintiffs’ property for no lawful or valid reason.”
The Pike County District Attorney’s Office and Tonkin filed a motion to dismiss the Freins’ lawsuit on Aug. 3, contending that the possessions were seized in the course of serving a lawful search warrant, and thus no violation of the law occurred.
The Pennsylvania State Police additionally filed a motion to dismiss the complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted, on Aug. 18.
According to the state police, the Freins did not show that their Constitutional rights were violated and such claims should fail as a matter of law – and thus, the case in its entirety should be dismissed.
U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania Judge Malachy E. Mannion threw the case out on March 29, ruling to grant the defendants’ dismissal motions.
“Although the plaintiffs attempt to distinguish the facts of this case from those of the cases relied upon by the defendants and this court, the property relevant to this action was seized pursuant to a valid search warrant,” Mannion said.
“The Third Circuit has on more than one occasion found that the seizure of property pursuant to a valid search warrant does not constitute a ‘taking’ under the Fifth Amendment because “items properly seized by the government under its police power are not seized for ‘public use’ within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. Because the court finds that the defendants’ seizure of the property at issue does not constitute a ‘taking’ under the Fifth Amendment, the court will grant the defendants’ motions to dismiss this claim.”
Mannion dismissed the Fourteenth Amendment claim for unlawful seizure, since the Freins were provided a method of redress for their grievances – even though they ultimately were not granted the relief they sought.
“Here, Pennsylvania law provides a process to request the return of seized property. Pennsylvania Rule of Criminal Procedure 588 provides an adequate remedy when police seize property pursuant to an investigation,” Mannion stated.
“In this case, the plaintiffs took advantage of the process available under Pennsylvania state law when they filed a motion for the return of their property pursuant to Rule 588(A). Although they were denied the relief they sought, the plaintiffs received the process they were due. Thus, the plaintiff’s Fourteenth Amendment claim will also be dismissed.”
Finally, Mannion said that no Second Amendment violations took place, since the Freins were only prevented from possessing the firearms that were seized, and not prevented from possessing any firearms at all.
“Plaintiffs contend that the seizure of all of their firearms and failure to return them to this point infringes on their Second Amendment rights. However, whether the defendants seized one weapon or forty-six, their actions do not impose a burden on plaintiffs’ right to keep and bear arms generally, but rather only their right to bear the particular weapons that were seized,” Mannion said.
“The plaintiffs present no evidence that they could not obtain other firearms for their self-defense. Given this, the defendants’ motions to dismiss the plaintiffs’ Second Amendment claims will be granted.”
After the case ended, the plaintiffs appealed to the Third Circuit on April 26, 2021.
UPDATE
Third Circuit judges Stephanos Bibas, Paul B. Matey and Peter J. Phipps ruled on Aug. 30 that the Commonwealth could not keep the weapons it secured from the Freins. Bibas authored the Court’s opinion in this matter.
“Although police may seize potential evidence using a warrant, they may not keep it forever. Yet they did that here. After a man assassinated a Pennsylvania State Trooper and injured another, troopers seized his parents’ guns. The government never used the guns as evidence. And eight years after the crime, once the son lost his last direct appeal, the officers still refused to return them – even though the officers do not claim that the parents or the guns were involved in the crime,” Bibas said.
“Because the parents were never compensated, they have a takings claim. And because they lawfully owned the guns, they have a Second Amendment claim too. But since they had a real chance to challenge the government’s keeping the guns, they got procedural due process.”
Bibas added that while the seizure of the firearms was “understandable” at the time, the failure of the authorities to return them, after not using them in Eric Frein’s prosecution or charging his parents with a crime, was wrong under the law.
“The police understandably seized the parents’ guns in 2014 while a killer was still at large. But he has long since been captured and convicted, and his conviction has been affirmed. The judicial warrant does not authorize keeping the guns past this point. The Constitution requires the officials who are holding on to the guns to pay the parents just compensation and bars them from keeping the guns indefinitely. So we will reverse the District Court’s dismissal of the Takings and Second Amendment claims. But because the parents got enough process, we will affirm the dismissal of their procedural due process claim,” Bibas said.
The case was then remanded to the District Court, in light of this ruling.
The plaintiffs are represented by Cornelius J. Rotteveel and Curt M. Parkins of Comerford Law, in Scranton.
The defendants are represented by Jonathan M. Blake of the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office in Harrisburg, and David J. MacMain of MacMain Law Group, in Malvern.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit case 21-1830
U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania case 3:20-cv-00939
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com