In June 2019, a woman lay on the floor of a trailer home in Kitsap County, struggling to breathe after her boyfriend, Dwayne Allen Flannery, allegedly beat and choked her.
After a neighbor called the police, Flannery was charged with second-degree assault. The county’s Superior Court issued a no-contact order prohibiting Flannery from going near his girlfriend. The court also issued an order requiring him to immediately turn in his firearms.
Four years later, Flannery has not turned in a single weapon.
He claimed the weapons surrender order violates his Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures and self-incrimination, since turning in his weapons would mean admitting he had firearms that he wasn’t legally allowed to have under the no-contact order, which made it a felony offense for him to possess firearms.
