NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — The mother of a 6-year-old boy who shot his teacher in Virginia was sentenced Wednesday to 21 months in prison for using marijuana while possessing a firearm, which is illegal under U.S. law.
Deja Taylor’s son brought his gun to school and shot Abby Zwerner in her first-grade classroom in January, seriously wounding the educator.
Investigators later found nearly an ounce of marijuana in Taylor’s bedroom and evidence of frequent drug use in her text messages and paraphernalia.
Taylor’s sentencing in U.S. District Court offered the first measure of accountability for the January shooting, which revived a national conversation about gun violence and shook the military shipbuilding city of Newport News.
Taylor, 26, still faces a separate sentencing in December at the state level for felony child neglect. And Zwerner is suing the school system for $40 million, alleging that administrators ignored multiple warnings that the boy had a gun.
The federal case against Taylor comes at a time when marijuana is legal in many states, including Virginia, while many Americans own firearms.
Deja Taylor, the mother of a 6-year-old boy who shot his teacher in Virginia, was sentenced to 21 months in prison for using marijuana while possessing a firearm.Billy Schuerman/The Virginian-Pilot via AP, File
Some U.S. courts in other parts of the country have ruled against federal law prohibiting drug users from owning guns. But the law remains in effect in many states and has been used to impeach others, including Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son.
Federal prosecutors in Virginia argued in court papers that Taylor’s “chronic, persistent and … life-affecting abuse extends this case far beyond any occasional and/or recreational use.”
Prosecutors had asked for a 21-month prison sentence.
“This case is not a marijuana case,” they wrote. “It is a case that underscores the inherently dangerous nature and circumstances that arise from the caustic cocktail of mixing sustained and prolonged use of controlled substances with a lethal firearm.”
Taylor’s son brought his gun to school and shot Abby Zwerner in her first-grade classroom. Billy Schuerman/The Virginian-Pilot via AP
Taylor accepted a negotiated plea in June. She was convicted of using marijuana while she possessed a gun and of lying about her drug use on a federal form when she purchased the gun.
Taylor’s attorneys had asked the judge for probation and home confinement, according to court documents. They argued that Taylor needs counseling for problems including schizoaffective disorder, a condition that shares symptoms with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
“EM. Taylor is deeply saddened, extremely distraught, and completely remorseful for the unintended consequences and mistakes that led to this horrific shooting,” her attorneys wrote.
They also said he needs treatment for marijuana addiction.
“Addiction is a disease and incarceration is not the cure,” his attorneys wrote.
Police at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia, after the shooting on Jan. 30, 2023. Billy Schuerman/The Virginian-Pilot via AP, File
Taylor’s lawyers also argued that the U.S. Supreme Court could eventually overturn the federal ban prohibiting drug users from owning guns. For example, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled in August that drug users should not automatically be prohibited from owning guns.
Other lower courts have upheld the ban, and the Justice Department has appealed the Fifth Circuit’s ruling to the Supreme Court. The high court has not yet decided whether to take up the case.
Federal law generally prohibits people from possessing firearms if they have been convicted of a felony, been committed to a mental institution, or are an unlawful user of a controlled substance, among other things.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission reported that nearly 8,700 people were convicted under the law last year. The commission did not provide a detailed breakdown of how many were charged for their drug use. But he said nearly 88% of them were convicted because of a prior felony conviction.
Karen O’Keefe, state policy director for the pro-legalization group Marijuana Policy Project, told The Associated Press in June that about 18% of Americans admitted to using cannabis in the past year and about 40% owned guns.
Taylor’s grandfather has had full custody of his son, now 7, since the shooting, according to court documents.
Taylor’s son told authorities he obtained the gun by climbing into a drawer to reach the top of a dresser, where the firearm was in his mother’s purse. Taylor initially told investigators that he had secured his gun with a trigger lock, but investigators never found one.
Immediately after the shooting, the boy told a reading specialist who restrained him: “I shot that (expletive) dead” and “I got my mom’s gun last night,” according to search warrants.
Zwerner is suing the school district for $40 million.Toscano Law Group
It was not the first time Taylor’s gun was fired in public, prosecutors wrote. Taylor shot the father of his child in December after seeing him with his girlfriend.
“You could have killed me,” the father told Taylor in a text message, according to a prosecutors’ brief.
Some time after her son shot his teacher, Taylor smoked two joints, prosecutors added. She also tested positive for drugs while awaiting sentencing on the federal charges.
Taylor’s attorneys said Taylor “stands vulnerable before this court humiliated, remorseful and saddened.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn