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Parties Involved:
James Deonte Tolbert
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 24-10026

Non-Argument Calendar

____________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

Plaintiff-Appellee,

versus

JAMES DEONTE TOLBERT, 

Defendant-Appellant.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Alabama

D.C. Docket No. 2:22-cr-00474-ACA-GMB-2

____________________

USCA11 Case: 24-10026 Document: 27-1 Date Filed: 01/13/2025 Page: 1 of 3
2 Opinion of the Court 24-10026

Before NEWSOM, BRANCH, and ABUDU, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

The Government’s motion to dismiss this appeal pursuant 

to the appeal waiver in James Tolbert’s plea agreement is 

GRANTED IN PART as to Tolbert’s sentencing challenge. See 

United States v. Bushert, 997 F.2d 1343, 1351 (11th Cir. 1993) 

(sentence appeal waiver will be enforced if it was made knowingly 

and voluntarily); United States v. Boyd, 975 F.3d 1185, 1192 (11th Cir. 

2020) (sentence appeal waiver will be enforced where “it was 

clearly conveyed to the defendant that he was giving up his right 

to appeal under most circumstances” (quotation marks and 

brackets omitted)); United States v. Weaver, 275 F.3d 1320, 1323-24, 

1333 (11th Cir. 2001) (an appeal waiver is enforceable when the 

waiver was referenced during the plea colloquy and the defendant 

confirmed that he understood the provision and had entered into 

it freely and voluntarily).

The Government’s motion to dismiss this appeal pursuant 

to the appeal waiver is DENIED IN PART as to Tolbert’s challenge 

to the constitutionality of his statute of conviction, 18 U.S.C. 

§ 922(g)(1), as applied to him. Although the appeal waiver applied 

to both challenges to Tolbert’s conviction and his sentence, during 

the change-of-plea hearing, the district court focused on the waiver 

as it applied to sentencing issues. Therefore, we are not satisfied 

that the record establishes that Tolbert understood that the waiver 

also applied to challenges to the conviction itself, and we thus 

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24-10026 Opinion of the Court 3

cannot conclude that he knowingly and voluntarily entered into 

that waiver. Accordingly, we decline to dismiss Tolbert’s challenge 

to his conviction based on the appeal waiver. 

Nevertheless, as Tolbert acknowledges in his brief on 

appeal, his claim that § 922(g)(1) is unconstitutional is foreclosed by 

our binding precedent. See United States v. Dubois, 94 F.4th 1284, 

1293 (11th Cir. 2024) (holding that the Supreme Court’s decision in 

New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022) 

“did not abrogate” our decision in United States v. Rozier, 598 F.3d 

768, 770 (11th Cir. 2010), which held that § 922(g)(1) did not violate 

the Second Amendment). Although he asserts that Rozier and 

Dubois were wrongly decided, under our prior precedent rule, “a 

prior panel’s holding is binding on all subsequent panels unless and 

until it is overruled or undermined to the point of abrogation by 

the Supreme Court or this court sitting en banc.” United States v. 

Archer, 531 F.3d 1347, 1352 (11th Cir. 2008). Accordingly, we 

AFFIRM Tolbert’s conviction. 

MOTION TO DISMISS GRANTED IN PART AND 

DENIED IN PART; AFFIRMED.

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