EVERYTHING Brian Aitken was or had worked for was wiped away one winter afternoon after his mother called the police on him.
Separated from his wife, the entrepreneur and media consultant, now 27, had moved back home to New Jersey from Colorado toward the end of 2008 to be close to their young son.
In between jobs, his well-oiled life was running ragged, and on Jan.
2, 2009, when his ex canceled his visit with their son, he became distraught, muttered
something to his mother, and left his parents' home in Mount Laurel,
N.J.
"He said something that scared her, things that a guy will only say to his mom, like . . . 'Life's not worth living anymore,' " said Larry Aitken, Brian's father.
Sue Aitken, a trained social worker, decided to play it safe and
called
police, but she hung up before the 9-1-1 dispatcher could answer. Police
traced
the call and showed up anyway, and found two handguns in the trunk of
Brian's
car. And now Brian, her middle child, a graduate student with no prior
criminal
record, is serving a seven-year prison sentence for weapons charges.
No one blames Sue Aitken for Brian's arrest, except herself maybe,
but his
father and attorney claim that the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office
and the
former Superior Court judge who tried the case ignored evidence that
proved
Brian had the guns legally. The family has asked New Jersey Gov. Chris
Christie
for clemency and has garnered a great deal of support on a "Free Brian
Aitken"
Facebook page and among gun-rights advocates.
Aitken and his supporters believe that he had a legal exemption to
have the
handguns in his car because he was moving from his parents' home to a
residence in Hoboken.
"This case is the perfect storm of injustice," said Aitken's
attorney, Evan
Nappen, of Eatontown, Monmouth County, who specializes in gun laws.
The Burlington County Prosecutor's Office and former Superior Court
Judge
James Morley said Aitken and his legal team tried during closing
arguments to
raise an issue related to Aitken's moving that wasn't presented during
the
trial, but Morley wouldn't consider it. Aitken remains in prison pending
his
appeal.
A few weeks after Aitken's trial over the summer, Morley learned that
Christie was not going to reappoint him, due in part to a 2009 case in
which he
dismissed animal-cruelty charges against a Moorestown cop accused of
sticking
his penis into the mouths of five calves. Morley said there was no way
of
knowing whether the calves had been "puzzled" or "tormented" by the
officer's
actions.
Nappen thinks the animal-cruelty case exemplifies poor
decision-making by
Morley.
"Brian didn't receive oral sex from calves; he only lawfully
possessed
firearms," Nappen said.
A spokesman for Christie acknowledged that his office had received
clemency
requests for Aitken, but declined to comment further.
Handguns in a duffel bag:
When Mount Laurel police arrived at the Aitkens' home on Jan. 2,
2009, they
called Brian - who was driving to Hoboken - and asked him to return to
his
parents' home because they were worried. When he arrived, the cops
checked his
Honda Civic and, inside the trunk, in a box stuffed into a duffel bag
with
clothes, they found two handguns, both locked and unloaded as New Jersey
law
requires.
Aitken had passed an FBI background check to buy them in Colorado
when he
lived there, his father said, and had contacted New Jersey State Police
and
discussed the proper way to transport them.
"He bought them at Bass Pro Shops, for God's sake, not some guy named
Tony on
the street corner," his father said.
New Jersey and Colorado are on opposite ends of the gun-control
spectrum. In
Colorado, all he needed was the background check to own the guns.
In the Garden State, Aitken was required to have a purchaser's permit
from
New Jersey to own the guns and a carry permit to have them in his
car.
He also was charged with having "large capacity" magazines and
hollow-point
bullets, which one state gun-control advocate found troubling.
"What little I can glean about the transportation issue leaves me
puzzled,
but a person with common sense would not be moving illegal products from
one
place to another by car," said Bryan Miller, executive director of
CeaseFire NJ,
an organization devoted to reducing gun violence.
"If Mr. Aitken did the research he said he did, he would not have
hollow-point bullets and large-capacity magazines in the vehicle,"
Miller said.
"They are illegal, period."
New Jersey allows exemptions for gun owners to transport weapons for
hunting
or if they are moving from one residence to another. During the trial,
Aitken's
mother testified that her son was moving things out, and his friend in
Hoboken
testified he was moving things in. A Mount Laurel officer, according to
Larry
Aitken, testified that he saw boxes of dishes and clothes in the Honda
Civic on
the day of the arrest.
The exemption statute, according to the prosecutor's office,
specifies that
legal guns can be transported "while moving." Despite testimony about
his moving
to Hoboken, a spokesman for the prosecutor said the evidence suggested
that
Aitken had moved months earlier, from Colorado to Mount Laurel. "Again,
there
was no evidence that he was then presently moving," spokesman Joel
Bewley
said.
After Nappen raised the moving-exemption issue, he said, the jury
asked Judge
Morley for the exemption statute several times and he refused to hand it
over to
them. Morley, in a phone interview, echoed the sentiments of the
prosecutor's
office.
"My recollection of the case is that I ruled he had not presented
evidence
sufficient to justify giving the jury the charge on the affirmative
offense that
he was in the process of moving," Morley said.
Morley declined to comment further.
Aitken, who did not testify, was convicted and in August sentenced to
prison.
His father said that his son was involved in an "incident" after
arriving in
prison but that he doesn't discuss it.
"This is the most normal, everyday, All-American regular kid, and for
this to
happen to him is a disgrace," Larry Aitken said. "It's a disgrace of
society."
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