State High Court Refuses to Reinstate Voided La Mesa Gun-Seizure Law

The state Supreme Court refused Thursday to reinstate a law that allowed police to seize guns and other weapons from people who are being held for mental examinations.

On the same day that the Legislature voted final passage of a law virtually banning the sale of semiautomatic weapons, the court left intact a lower-court ruling declaring the state gun-seizure law unconstitutional.

In a case from San Diego County, the 4th District Court of Appeal said the law is invalid because it required the gun owner to go to court to seek return of the weapon, rather than providing automatically for an administrative hearing soon after the seizure.

Appealed by La Mesa

The court did not forbid the confiscation of guns from people apparently suffering from mental illness, but struck down the only state law on the books that provides for weapons seizure. As a result, the practice will not be allowed in California until a new law is passed that complies with the ruling.

Only Justice Stanley Mosk voted to grant a hearing to the city of La Mesa, which had appealed the lower-court decision. Four votes are needed for a hearing by the seven-member court.

The law, which dated from 1986, allowed police to confiscate deadly weapons from a person being detained for a psychiatric examination.

The law said the weapons would not be returned without a Superior Court order and left it to the owner to seek the order. Under the previous seizure law, the weapons were returned within 30 days unless police could show at an administrative hearing why they should remain confiscated.

The case began when Kathleen Bryte, a registered nurse and a psychiatric outpatient at Grossmont Hospital, called police to her La Mesa motel room to report a burglary. They arrived, decided she needed a mental examination, and found four rifles, a shotgun, a handgun and a knife in the room.

Sued to Recover Weapons

Bryte was examined at a hospital, found not to be dangerous, and released. She asked for the return of her weapons, which were worth about $2,700, and was refused, so she went to court and sued successfully to get them back.

The appeal court, in a 3-0 ruling, said Bryte should not have had to file suit to get her property back.

“A person’s property may not be confiscated by the state without some kind of notice and opportunity to be heard,” said Justice Charles Froehlich, citing a U. S. Supreme Court ruling. He said that, in unusual cases, the hearing can be held after the seizure but that the burden of starting the process cannot be placed on the property owner.

“The imposition of a requirement of affirmative action by the property owner, including the preparation of formal pleadings, the payment of a filing fee and subsequent participation in all the formal procedural devices of a Superior Court action, must be deemed unreasonable,” Froehlich said.

In this case, he said, even though the city was told soon after Bryte’s detention that she posed no danger, it fought her attempts to recover her weapons at every step. The city had her case transferred to federal court and, after she got it transferred back, it required an evidentiary hearing even though it had no evidence to contradict her right to the property, Froehlich said.

He said the law, to be valid, must require an administrative hearing on the recovery of the property.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Jay Bloom, whose office had asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the law, said the procedures required by the appellate court appear to be less protective of the property owner than the law that was struck down.

“You would have more full-blown rights in a Superior Court hearing, as opposed to some sort of administrative hearing before a police chief” or other government official, Bloom said.

A lawyer for the city did not return a telephone call.