CEDAR RAPIDS – An Iowa man who used a gun to scare off a man beating up his mom lost his appeal on the ensuing federal gun charge he was convicted of.
According to court documents, on April 18, 2012, Cedar Rapids police officers responded to a report that a shot had been fired at the residence of Laura Fluke, the mother of eighteen-year-old William Robison. The officers interviewed individuals present at Fluke’s residence and learned that Fluke had been assaulted by her boyfriend, 41-year old violent convicted felon Shane Manley, on the front porch. Moser told the officers that Manley approached Fluke on the porch, picked her up by her neck, hit her, and threw her to the ground.
Robison, who was in a second-floor bedroom when the fight began, retrieved a 9-mm handgun and walked down the stairs into the living room where the fight between Manley and Fluke continued. He then fired a shot into the living room wall above a couch where two people were lying. The bullet traveled through both the living room wall and the house’s exterior siding. After firing the shot, Robison returned to the upstairs bedroom, where he told a friend that the shot nearly struck Manley. Fluke did not sustain visible injuries during the assault. Officers searched the residence and in the second-floor bedroom recovered the 9-mm handgun, which had an obliterated serial number; a 12-gauge shotgun with a sawed-off barrel; and corresponding ammunition.
Robison pled guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm. Given Robison’s criminal history, the court noted Robison’s criminal history as well as his consumption of methamphetamine and other drugs. The court imposed a sentence of 108 months’ imprisonment.
Robison appealed, and the appeal failed when the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Monday that Manley – who was beating Robison’s mother (Fluke) – did not during the course of the assault “use a firearm or any other type of dangerous weapon and that Fluke did not sustain visible injuries from the assault. The court said that Robison could have chosen “several other alternate courses of action—less drastic than wielding and firing a 9-mm handgun— including physically separating Manley and Fluke, enlisting the assistance of other people present in the living room, or calling the police.”
Robison will continue to serve his prison sentence.
