A former NASA police officer who was charged with a firearms offense while transporting his weapon to work is seeking to have his conviction overturned.
Rodney Thomas pleaded guilty in federal court in January 2007 to possessing a firearm on the property of a national park.
But now he has asked a judge to throw out that conviction because the law has been amended so that his offense is no longer a crime.
Thomas’ lawyer, David Lease, also argued in a court filing that Thomas’ previous attorney didn’t inform him of the possible consequences of the guilty plea.
According to court records, Thomas was pulled over for speeding while driving to work on the Baltimore-Washington Memorial Parkway (which is national park property) in September 2006.
He told the U.S. Park Police officer that he had a weapon in his vehicle. At the time, carrying a firearm on national park property was prohibited. Thomas pleaded guilty to both the speeding and weapons charges and was fined $500.
But Congress has since amended that law, and it’s OK for people who can carry legally weapons outside national park land to have them inside park property.
Thomas carried a firearm for his job and was told by his superiors at NASA that he could carry his weapon to and from work, Lease wrote in the filing.
Additionally, the complaint argues, Thomas was not informed that his guilty plea “would bar his future employment as a deputy sheriff or police officer.”
He applied for a position in the Prince George’s County Sheriff’s Office but was denied because of his “criminal record history,” the complaint says. Thomas’ previous attorney failed to advise him “of the compelling defenses to the charges against him” and “of the consequence that his law enforcement career would be effectively ended by pleading guilty to this offense,” Lease wrote.
Lease told The Washington Examiner that Thomas has not been employed in law enforcement since his plea, and he did not know whether Thomas had obtained other employment.
Thomas’ former lawyer, James McCollum, did not return a call for comment. The complaint for a writ of coram nobis (a request for a judge to reconsider a previously decided matter because of facts that could change the outcome) was filed this month in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt.
