Federal Felon Returned to Prison for Committing Same Crime

A felon who resisted police officers while in possession of a firearm was sentenced on February 2, 2026, to more than eight years in federal prison.

Orrington Alexander Gardner, age 41, from Waterloo, Iowa, received the prison term after a July 17, 2025, guilty plea to possession of a firearm by a felon.

Information from sentencing and a related supervised release hearing showed that Gardner was convicted of possession of a firearm by a felon in the Northern District of Iowa in 2009. The district court sentenced him to the statutory maximum sentence of ten years for that offense. Gardner was released from federal prison in late June 2022. Less than three months later, Waterloo police officers received information that Gardner had a gun. On September 14, 2022, officers followed Gardner from his home and pulled over a car in which he was a passenger. An officer repeatedly asked Gardner to step out of the car, and he refused. Gardner began to roll up his window, and the officer opened the car door and attempted to grab Gardner's hands. Gardner resisted the officer and reached towards his waistband where he had a loaded gun. After a struggle over Gardner's hands, officers managed to take the gun from Gardner's waistband and arrest him.

Gardner was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge C.J. Williams. Gardner was sentenced to 100 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. Gardner is being held in the United States Marshal's custody until he can be transported to a federal prison.

This case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce violent crime and gun violence, and to make our neighborhoods safer for everyone.

On May 26, 2021, the Department launched a violent crime reduction strategy strengthening PSN based on these core principles: fostering trust and legitimacy in our communities, supporting community-based organizations that help prevent violence from occurring in the first place, setting focused and strategic enforcement priorities, and measuring the results.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Kyndra Lundquist and was investigated by a Federal Task Force composed of the Waterloo Police Department, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms assisted by the Black Hawk County Sheriff's Office and Cedar Falls Police Department.

Court file information at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.plLinks to other government and non-government sites will typically appear with the "external link" icon to indicate that you are leaving the Department of Justice website when you click the link..

The case file number is 24-CR-2044.

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