3.23.11 | Chris Newmarker

Forever linked: Snoop Dogg, Jerry Lewis and St. Jude Medical’s CEO

It was only a single bullet in his pants pocket while waiting to board an airplane. But after his detention last week at an India airport, St. Jude Medical (NYSE:STJ) CEO Daniel Starks now is in a different league: one often inhabited by professional athletes and celebrities rather than medical technology executives.

At this point, it seems the biggest punishment Starks faces is embarrassment over accidentally bringing live ammunition into an airport. A company spokeswoman said last week that there have been no formal charges.

Others who have brought guns, and especially loaded guns, into airports have found themselves in more serious situations. In case you’ve forgotten some of those cases, here are members of the exclusive airport ammo club of which Starks is now a member:

Then-Cleveland Browns lineman Shaun Rogers found himself arrested at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport in April 2010 for carrying a loaded semi-automatic handgun in a carry-on bag. Rogers told authorities that he’d forgotten about the gun. Browns’ defensive lineman Robaire Smith, who was traveling with Rogers at the time, wasn’t arrested.
Smith, though, was months earlier charged for carrying a gun in his luggage at Michigan’s Bishop Airport in November 2009. Bringing a gun to an airport kind of seems to be a Cleveland Browns tradition.
Minnesota Vikings fans shouldn’t snicker too much about the Browns, though. A New York Times story from the 1990s recounts how linebacker Broderick Thomas was arrested in 1995 for carrying a gun into an airport. Thomas was the fourth Minnesota Vikings player in four years arrested for firearms possession.
In 1997, authorities arrested then-Dallas Cowboys head coach Barry Switzer for having a loaded revolver in his carry-on baggage.
If it’s not sports figures getting into trouble, it’s celebrities. Comedian Jerry Lewis had his own brush with the law in 2008 when Las Vegas airport authorities found an unloaded handgun in his baggage.
Authorities arrested Christian Slater for having a gun at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport in December 1994. Slater reached a plea deal the next year over the resulting criminal charge.
Musicians have gotten in trouble for bringing guns to airports, too. The rapper Snoop Dogg, for example, was arrested in 2006 after airport security claimed to find a gun and marijuana on him while he was in a parked car at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, Calif.