United States v. Dukes
United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
432 F.3d 910 (2006)
Police searching the home Drexel Dukes, Jr. (defendant) shared with his girlfriend found methamphetamine, drug-manufacturing equipment, several guns, and two homemade devices fashioned from industrial mufflers, which had been modified in ways that made them unfit for their original use and suited to muffling gunfire. Dukes admitted possessing the devices but claimed he did not know they could silence a firearm, and he was convicted on drug charges and for possessing unregistered firearm silencers under 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d); he appealed the sufficiency of the evidence on the silencer count.
Whether, in a prosecution for possession of an unregistered firearm, the government's burden of proof depends on the quasi-suspect nature of the firearm in question.