He declined to pay and sat for six months in a Nuevo Laredo jail, playing dominoes and sipping orange soda to pass the time as his family and friends in Texas raised money and hired lawyers to try to bring him home.
The case received widespread publicity as U.S. law enforcement officials sought to warn other Americans to avoid taking knives, guns or ammunition into Mexico, which has much stricter weapons laws than does the United States.
Possession of a weapon such as a pocket knife or a handgun in Mexico can result in up to five years in prison, while those caught with firearms or ammunition reserved by Mexican law for military use face five- to 30-year sentences and hefty fines.
The whole mess ended with Bean being returned to the United States during a routine prisoner exchange with Mexico. He immediately set about clearing his name in the United States.
Bean, an avid hunter, wanted to regain his right to own firearms. He also hoped to eventually reapply for his federal license to sell guns, which he had done previously as a hobby and a source of extra income.
Nearly two years later, in 2000, after Bean had spent about $200,000 in legal fees and other expenses relating to his incarceration in Mexico, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans restored Bean's right to own a gun.
Now, at the request of the Bush administration, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider reversing that decision.
"The government could not have picked a worse case to take up on appeal," Bean's attorney, Larry Hunter, said Tuesday.
"He is such an innocent victim. He's not anywhere near the type of felon this law is targeting," he said. "Even the 5th Circuit realized that."
At issue, according to Solicitor General Theodore Olson, is not whether Bean, a 61-year-old who has no prior criminal record, deserves to own a gun. The issue is whether Bean's case should be allowed to set a precedent for other, more dangerous, convicted felons who may now expect the courts to restore their gun ownership rights.
"There is a significant risk that persons who pose a real danger to public safety might be rearmed," Olson wrote in his brief to the Supreme Court.
Felons in the United States are barred from carrying guns after they are released from prison, but they can ask the government to make an exception. Since 1992, however, Congress has prevented the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms from spending money to process those requests, and they have been piling up at ATF.
Bean sought to break the logjam by suing, and he won. The 5th Circuit panel deciding his case said that Mexican officials had unfairly arrested and imprisoned him for what the judges considered a "simple oversight," not an intentional crime.
Olson said such cases are better handled by the ATF than by the courts, noting that in Texas alone, 80,000 people were convicted of felonies in 1999. If a significant number of them seek to reclaim their gun ownership rights, he indicated, the courts could be deluged.
Hunter dismissed that concern, calling it a "hyperbolic claim" in his court filings.
Olson's argument "paints an eye-catching image of federal district judges dispensing gun permits like candy to tens of thousands of marauding Texas felons," he wrote.
The justices are expected to hear arguments next fall.