(June 2003) We'd like to introduce you to Edgar Nelson Bonilla of Gaithersburg. He'll help you understand the misplaced priorities of prosecutors in Montgomery County, which is a real problem in need of reform.

Señor Bonilla was charged with a first degree sex offense soon after coming to the US, and in 1990 pleaded guilty to a sex crime. Last year he was back in court, this time charged with third degree sex offenses. The victim was an 8 year old girl in Bonilla's care at a day care facility. We turn to the hearing transcript of Bonilla's appearance with his lawyer and court-appointed translator as he plead guilty again as part of a negotiated agreement:

JUDGE McGUCKIAN: Is there a plea agreement in this case? [Criminal case #95727 in Montgomery County Circuit Court]

ASSIST. STATES ATTY. MARY HERDMAN: Yes, Your Honor. There was a cap of 364 days on executed incarceration. …

JUDGE McGUCKIAN: How can that be? I can't understand that. This is the second offense. This doesn't make any sense. … Mr. Bonilla, you are a very lucky person. I have to say that to you because if I had realized when I took this plea about the prior case, I do not think I ever would have agreed to accept this plea of 364 days. I would have insisted upon more time so that you would be definitely eligible for action by Immigration.

No exile for immigrant Edgar Bonilla: the offices of States Attorney Doug Gansler negotiated a deal one day short of jail time that would have triggered an immigration review. They broke with the sentencing guidelines in order to protect Bonilla to stay here, in America … in Maryland. You see, to be 'exiled' you must be a gun owner.

To the present administration, mandatory jail time should be reserved for people who own a gun after a previous conviction - no matter how small - disables them from enjoying their Second Amendment right. We're not talking about charging people based on misuse of a weapon - its mere possession is sufficient to draw official wrath.

Gun laws are typically enforced only to squeeze gun ownership, since you don't need gun laws to jail a thug. So if real criminals are out of the equation, you're left with prosecutors applying gun laws against good people caught in the web of gun control policies built by decades of liberal activism. They go after people like Don Arnold.

Don Arnold is Maryland's high profile 'citizen of the year' whose minor, 30 year old infraction left him with a technical disability in the eyes of Attorney General Joe Curran: if caught possessing a gun, he risks a conviction that could bring jail time. Arnold's case surfaced when his application for a carry permit (needed for his job) was denied because Curran considers him ineligible to possess a gun and therefore ineligible to get his permit renewed. (The Handgun Board wants to grant a permit to this upstanding citizen, but Curran's office opposes this in court!) The Ehrlich message to people in Arnold's situation is Exile: not only should they get jail time, they should get five years mandatory in prison. [A Washington Post article on judicial discretion quoted Governor Bob Ehrlich: "'My predisposition is to respect discretionary authority that the system grants the judiciary, with exceptions,' Ehrlich said. One of those would be gun crimes, for which he favors mandatory sentences."]

Montgomery County States Attorney Doug Gansler's office negotiated the Bonilla plea bargain at about the same time Gansler himself was in Annapolis working closely with Bob Ehrlich to promote the governor's Exile bill. We conclude Gansler wants the county populated by more Bonillas and fewer Arnolds. Yet we still don't understand the public safety benefits of using gun law technicalities to exile people who have never done a crime of violence, while at the same time protecting aliens from deportation after they commit sex offenses against children.

Edgar Bonilla will be back on the streets next January, yet a model citizen jailed only for an Exile-type gun law infraction would not see freedom until 2008. Our research exposes a pattern of such inequities which we will present from time to time over the course of the coming year.