Man's arrest on gun charge may not be valid, officials say

Mark Anthony Rattenni says he's been sitting in the Pinellas County jail since Wednesday because of bad police work and a misunderstanding with the U.S. Secret Service.

New York prosecutors say he's at least partly right.

Pinellas deputies arrested Rattenni on Wednesday evening after Secret Service agents paid a visit to Rattenni's Palm Harbor home to question him about possible threats to the president.

The deputies charged him with being a felon in possession of a firearm after finding a handgun in his apartment. They found records showing Rattenni has a valid concealed weapons permit in Florida, but deputies say he also has a felony record for forgery and assault convictions in New York.

Under Florida law, a felony assault conviction should have disqualified Rattenni from receiving a weapons permit. He showed deputies a 2007 letter from the state citing the convictions as the basis for a threatened revocation of his license.

But today, the district attorney's office in Yonkers, N.Y., said the forgery and assault charges ended up as misdemeanors after Rattenni pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

In other words, he doesn't have a felony conviction record.

In a jail interview this afternoon with News Channel 8, Rattenni said the same thing.

"I shouldn't have been arrested in the first place," he said. "I should have been released, I should be released."

As of late today, the sheriff's office said it had no new information to indicate the arrest was faulty, but Pinellas Chief Assistant State Attorney Bruce Bartlett isn't so sure.

Bartlett said he looked into the matter after a reporter called and is having some doubts about the validity of the arrest.

"I suspect we're going to have to clean up the mess," he said.

Public Defender Bob Dillinger said his investigators haven't talked to Rattenni since his first court appearance because they're shorthanded and his case was not a priority. Dillinger said he's now assigning staff to verify whether Rattenni's criminal record should have triggered an arrest.

Bartlett said it doesn't make sense that Rattenni would pass a background check to buy a handgun from a registered dealer or that he would still have a valid concealed weapons permit two years after state regulators first flagged a problem with his criminal record.

Bartlett said prosecutors will have to receive written confirmation from New York of Rattenni's misdemeanor record before dropping the charge that has kept him in jail on a $10,000 bond since Wednesday.

That can't happen at least until Monday.

"I suspect he'll be out of jail early next week," Bartlett said.

Meanwhile it's still not clear why the Secret Service was so interested in questioning Rattenni in the first place. The Secret Service doesn't discuss such matters, and Rattenni said it's a long story that he'll tell a reporter after his release from jail.

"That was a misunderstanding," he said.

His biggest concern now is getting out of jail.

"My rent is due, I need to pay my rent," Rattenni said. "I need to go back to work."