A felon who possessed a firearm was sentenced May 13, 2022, to 37 months in federal prison.
Joshua Brown, age 49, of Iowa City received the sentence after a November 22, 2021 guilty plea to one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm. At the plea hearing, Brown admitted that, on July 18, 2020, he knowingly possessed a pistol after having been convicted of two crimes punishable by more than one year of imprisonment. In a plea agreement, Brown admitted that the pistol was stolen and that its serial numbers were obliterated. Brown admitted he had prior convictions for unauthorized possession of an offensive weapon in Johnson County in 1995 and possession of a firearm by a felon in Cedar County in 1996.
Brown was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Judge C.J. Williams. Brown was sentenced to 37 months’ imprisonment. He must also serve a three-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN). PSN is the centerpiece of the Department of Justice’s violent crime reduction efforts. PSN is an evidence-based program proven to be effective at reducing violent crime. Through PSN, a broad spectrum of stakeholders work together to identify the most pressing violent crime problems in the community and develop comprehensive solutions to address them. As part of this strategy, PSN focuses enforcement efforts on the most violent offenders and partners with locally based prevention and reentry programs for lasting reductions in crime.
Brown was released on the bond previously set and is to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on a date yet to be set.
This case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Mark Tremmel and was investigated by the Cedar Rapids Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Linn County Sheriff’s Office.
Court file information is available at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl. The case file number is CR 21-14.
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