Court rules that merely sitting next to a gun doesn't mean you own it

The Massachusetts Court of Appeals today reversed a Boston man's gun-possession conviction because prosecutors failed to prove he owned the gun in the friend's car he was driving at the time - or that he even knew the weapon was there.

Two state troopers pulled Jeffrey Snow over around 12:30 a.m. on Aug. 27, 2007 after they watched him come off the Longfellow and run through a red light with no headlights on. Snow was at the wheel of a friend's car as a designated driver following the Cambridge Caribbean Festival. He said he had no idea there was a gun in the car, wedged between the driver's seat and the center console.

Suffolk County prosecutors argued the gun was "in plain sight" and that Snow was guilty on the theory of "constructive possession," basically that even though he may not have actually owned the gun, he had control over it at the time. The court, however, agreed with Snow that the fact the gun was not in plain sight - a trooper found it only during an extensive search of the car with a flashlight - and that the car was not his warranted a reversal of his conviction:

Even after the defendant stepped out of the car, when the interior of the vehicle was illuminated by a dome light, the officer's flashlight, and the headlights from the police cruiser, the trooper remained unable to see the weapon. Prior to stopping the car, Trooper O'Neil had not seen any interior lights illuminating the car as it was being driven. If the gun was not in the troopers' "plain view" when the car was flooded with light from three different sources, it cannot be said on this record that the Commonwealth established that the defendant had seen it in far less favorable lighting conditions. Moreover, there was no other evidence that the defendant had seen the gun or knew of its presence in a car that was not his own.

Complete ruling.