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Parties Involved:
Derrick Fitzgerald Dial
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 24-10732

Non-Argument Calendar

____________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee,

versus

DERRICK FITZGERALD DIAL, 

Defendant-Appellant.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Alabama

D.C. Docket No. 1:23-cr-00146-JB-N-1

____________________

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2 Opinion of the Court 24-10732

Before JILL PRYOR, BRANCH, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Derrick Dial appeals his conviction for possessing a firearm 

and ammunition as a felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). He 

challenges the constitutionality of the prohibition on felons possessing firearms and ammunition. After careful consideration, we 

affirm. 

I.

When police officers observed a vehicle driven by Dial commit a traffic violation, they initiated a traffic stop. During the traffic 

stop, the officers smelled marijuana. They searched the vehicle and 

found a firearm and ammunition.

Dial, who had previous felony convictions, was charged 

with being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 

18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). He moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing 

that the statutory ban on the possession of firearms by felons violated the Second Amendment. After the district court denied the 

motion to dismiss, Dial pleaded guilty. The court imposed a sentence of 77 months’ imprisonment. This is Dial’s appeal.

II.

Ordinarily, when a defendant enters a valid guilty plea, he 

waives any non-jurisdictional defects in the proceedings. United 

States v. Brown, 752 F.3d 1344, 1347 (11th Cir. 2014). But Dial’s 

guilty plea did not waive his constitutional challenge to the 

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24-10732 Opinion of the Court 3

statutory prohibition on felons’ possession of firearms. See Class v. 

United States, 583 U.S. 174, 181 (2018) (holding that a defendant 

who pleaded guilty did not waive his Second Amendment challenge to a statute of conviction when the claim did not “contradict 

the terms of the indictment or the written plea agreement”).

We review de novo the constitutionality of a statute. United 

States v. Gruezo, 66 F.4th 1284, 1292 (11th Cir. 2023).

III.

Dial challenges the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), 

which generally prohibits individuals with felony convictions from 

possessing firearms or ammunition. He argues that this prohibition 

runs afoul of the Second Amendment, which states that: “A well 

regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the 

right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” 

U.S. Const. amend. II. 

To assess the constitutionality of the prohibition on felons 

possessing firearms, we begin with the Supreme Court’s decision 

in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). In Heller, the 

Court considered a Second Amendment challenge to a District of 

Columbia law that barred the private possession of handguns in 

homes. Id. at 635. After considering both the text and history of the 

Second Amendment, the Court concluded that it conferred on an 

individual a right to keep and bear arms. Id. at 595. The Court held 

that the ban on handgun possession in the home violated the Second Amendment. Id. at 635. But the Court acknowledged that the 

Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was “not 

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4 Opinion of the Court 24-10732

unlimited,” emphasizing that “nothing in [its] opinion should be 

taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession 

of firearms by felons and the mentally ill.” Id. at 626. Indeed, the 

Court labeled such restrictions as “presumptively lawful.” Id. at 627 

n.26. 

After Heller, we considered a constitutional challenge to 

§ 922(g)(1)’s prohibition on felons’ possession of firearms. See 

United States v. Rozier, 598 F.3d 768, 770 (11th Cir. 2010). We held 

that “statutes disqualifying felons from possessing a firearm under 

any and all circumstances do not offend the Second Amendment.”

Id. at 771. 

Several years later, the Supreme Court considered a Second 

Amendment challenge to New York’s gun-licensing regime that 

limited when a law-abiding citizen could obtain a license to carry a 

firearm outside the home. See N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen,

597 U.S. 1, 11 (2022). The Court recognized that “the Second and 

Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a 

handgun for self-defense outside the home.” Id. at 10. The Court 

explained that to determine whether a restriction on firearms was 

constitutional, a court must begin by asking whether the firearm 

regulation at issue governs conduct that falls within the plain text 

of the Second Amendment. Id. at 17. If the regulation does cover

such conduct, the court may uphold it only if the government “affirmatively prove[s] that its firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and 

bear arms.” Id. at 19. Bruen emphasized that Heller established the 

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correct test for determining the constitutionality of gun restrictions. See id. at 26. And, like Heller, Bruen described Second 

Amendment rights as extending only to “law-abiding, responsible 

citizens.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).

Based on Bruen, Dial argues that § 922(g)(1)’s prohibition on 

felons’ possession of firearms is unconstitutional because the statute “flunks Bruen’s text-and-history test.” Appellant’s Br. 8. His argument is foreclosed by precedent. 

After Bruen, we considered another Second Amendment 

challenge to § 922(g)(1). See United States v. Dubois, 94 F.4th 1284, 

1289 (11th Cir. 2024). We held that the challenge was foreclosed by 

Rozier, which “interpreted Heller as limiting the [Second Amendment] right to law-abiding and qualified individuals and as clearly 

excluding felons from those categories by referring to felon-in-possession bans as presumptively lawful.” Id. at 1293 (internal quotation marks omitted). We concluded that Bruen did not abrogate our 

decision in Rozier, observing that even in Bruen the Supreme Court 

continued to describe the right to bear arms as extending only to 

“law-abiding, responsible citizens.” Id. (internal quotation marks 

omitted). 

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. 

Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), does not change our analysis. In 

Rahimi, the Court considered a Second Amendment challenge to 

the federal statute that prohibits an individual who is subject to a 

domestic violence restraining order from possessing a firearm 

when the order includes a finding that he represents a credible 

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threat to the safety of an intimate partner or a child of that partner 

or individual. See id. at 693 (citing 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8)). The Court

held that this firearm restriction was constitutional. Id. And it once 

again declared that the prohibition on “the possession of firearms 

by ‘felons’ . . . [is] ‘presumptively lawful.’” Id. at 699 (quoting Heller, 

554 U.S. at 626, 627 n.26). 

Rahimi does not displace our holding in Dubois that Bruen did 

not abrogate Rozier. Under our prior panel precedent rule, an “intervening Supreme Court decision abrogates our precedent only if 

the intervening decision is both clearly on point and clearly contrary to our earlier decision.” Dubois, 94 F.4th at 1293 (internal quotation marks omitted). “If the Supreme Court never discussed our 

precedent and did not otherwise comment on the precise issue before the prior panel, our precedent remains binding.” Id. (alteration 

adopted) (internal quotation marks omitted). Rahimi did not involve § 922(g)(1) nor did it otherwise comment on the precise issue 

before us in Rozier. Moreover, in Rahimi, the Supreme Court once 

again reiterated, albeit in dicta, that the prohibition “on the possession of firearms by felons . . . [is] presumptively lawful.” 602 U.S. at 

699 (internal quotation marks omitted).

Under our precedent, Dial’s Second Amendment challenge 

to § 922(g)(1) fails. We affirm his conviction. 

AFFIRMED.

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