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Parties Involved:
Garry Grace
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

[DO NOT PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

________________________

No. 18-13710

Non-Argument Calendar

________________________

D.C. Docket No. 1:16-cr-20387-DPG-1

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

 Plaintiff-Appellee,

 versus

GARRY GRACE, 

 Defendant-Appellant.

________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Florida

________________________

(March 2, 2020)

Before WILLIAM PRYOR, BRANCH and FAY, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM: 

The government moves us to modify our January 16, 2020, opinion, which 

affirmed Garry Grace’s conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm and 

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ammunition. 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1), 924(e)(1). We GRANT the motion, and we 

VACATE and WITHDRAW our earlier opinion and substitute the following 

revised opinion.

Grace appeals his conviction for possessing a firearm and ammunition as a 

felon. Id. §§ 922(g)(1), 924(e)(1). Grace seeks to vacate his conviction based on

Rehaif v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 2191 (2019), which the Supreme Court decided 

while his appeal was pending. Grace argues, based on Rehaif, that plain error 

occurred because his indictment failed to allege he knew he was a felon and that 

the omission stripped the district court of power to adjudicate his criminal case. 

Because the defect in Grace’s indictment did not affect the jurisdiction of the

district court or Grace’s substantial rights, we affirm.

A grand jury charged Grace with “knowingly possess[ing] a firearm and 

ammunition in and affecting interstate and foreign commerce . . . [after] having 

previously been convicted of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term 

exceeding one year, . . . in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 

922(g)(1) and 924(e)(1).” Before trial, Grace stipulated that, “on September 14, 

2013, [he] was not lawfully permitted to possess a firearm or ammunition under 

federal law” because he previously “had been convicted in a Florida court of a 

crime punishable by imprisonment for a term in excess of one year” and his “rights 

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to possess a firearm or ammunition ha[d] not been restored . . . .” Grace proceeded 

to trial and the jury found him guilty of being a felon in possession.

Grace’s presentence investigation report classified him as an armed career 

criminal and recommended that he receive the minimum statutory sentence of 

imprisonment. See 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1). The presentence report counted as 

predicate offenses Grace’s convictions in June 2001 of selling, manufacturing, or 

delivering both cocaine and marijuana and in November 2003—in two separate 

cases—of selling, manufacturing, or delivering cocaine and possessing marijuana

and of attempted armed robbery, attempted carjacking, aggravated battery with 

great bodily harm using a firearm, and burglary with assault or armed battery. The 

presentence report stated that Grace had served two concurrent sentences of 84 

months in prison for his latter crimes.

Grace did not object to the presentence report, and the district court adopted 

its findings and recommendations. The district court sentenced Grace to 180 

months of imprisonment.

Because Grace never objected to the sufficiency of his indictment, we 

review for plain error. See United States v. Reed, 941 F.3d 1018, 1020 (11th Cir. 

2019). Under that standard, Grace must prove an error occurred that was plain and 

that affected his substantial rights. See id. at 1021. “And because relief on plainerror review is in the discretion of the reviewing court, [Grace] has the further 

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burden to persuade [us] that the error seriously affected the fairness, integrity or 

public reputation of judicial proceedings.” United States v. Vonn, 535 U.S. 55, 63 

(2002) (alteration adopted) (internal quotation marks omitted).

Grace established an error in his indictment that Rehaif made plain. Rehaif

made clear that a defendant’s knowledge of his status as a felon is an element of 

the crime of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition. 139 S. Ct. at 

2200; see Reed, 941 F.3d at 1021. And Grace’s indictment failed to allege that he 

knew he was a felon.

The error in Grace’s indictment did not affect the jurisdiction of the district 

court to adjudicate Grace’s case. Jurisdiction concerns “the courts’ statutory or 

constitutional power to adjudicate the case.” United States v. Cotton, 535 U.S. 625, 

630 (2002) (emphasis omitted) (quoting Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Env’t, 523 

U.S. 83, 89 (1998)). Because Congress empowered district courts to try “all 

offenses against the laws of the United States,” 18 U.S.C. § 3231, “all that 

matter[s] for purposes of the district court’s subject-matter jurisdiction [is] that the 

United States file[] an indictment charging [the defendant] with violating ‘laws of 

the United States,’” United States v. Brown, 752 F.3d 1344, 1348 (11th Cir. 2014)

(alteration adopted) (internal quotation marks omitted). “So long as the indictment 

charges the defendant with violating a valid federal statute as enacted in the United 

States Code,” the district court has power to hear the criminal case. Id. at 1354. A 

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district court lacks jurisdiction only if the indictment “charg[es] (1) a crime that 

simply d[oes] not exist in the United States Code, . . . (2) conduct that . . . [is not 

prohibited by the] statute, . . . [or] (3) a violation of a regulation that [is] not 

intended to be a ‘law’ for purposes of criminal liability . . . .” Id. at 1353 (internal 

citations omitted). The omission of an element of a crime makes the indictment 

defective, but that defect “do[es] not deprive a court of its power to adjudicate [the]

case.” Cotton, 535 U.S. at 630; see Brown, 752 F.3d at 1350–51, 1353–54.

Grace’s indictment vested jurisdiction in the district court. The indictment

charged Grace with violating a law of the United States, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), 

which empowered the district court to hear his case. Grace’s indictment parroted 

the language of the statute by alleging that, on a specific date, he was a felon in 

possession of a firearm and ammunition that had a connection to interstate 

commerce. Id. That Grace’s indictment failed to allege that he knew he was a felon 

prohibited from possessing firearms did “not affect the jurisdiction of the [district 

court] to determine the case presented by [his] indictment.” See Cotton, 535 U.S. at 

631 (quoting United States v. Williams, 341 U.S. 58, 66 (1951)). In the words of 

the Court in Cotton, we are “[f]reed from the view that indictment omissions 

deprive a court of jurisdiction . . . .” Id. at 631.

Grace is not entitled to a vacatur of his conviction because he cannot prove

that the error in his indictment affected his substantial rights. He cannot “show a 

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reasonable probability that, but for the error, the outcome of [his] proceeding 

would have been different,” Molina-Martinez v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 1338, 

1343 (2016), in the light of “the whole record,” Vonn, 535 U.S. at 59. See Reed,

941 F.3d at 1021. Grace’s indictment “contained enough factual detail to apprise 

[him] of the conduct for which he would be tried” even though “it did not 

expressly allege mens rea” concerning his status as a felon. See United States v. 

Gray, 260 F.3d 1267, 1283 (11th Cir. 2001). Grace stipulated before trial that he 

was a felon and admitted at sentencing that he had been convicted of eight felony 

offenses and had served seven years in prison. See United States v. Harris, 941 

F.3d 1048, 1053 (11th Cir. 2019) (observing the defendant “waived any objections 

and effectively admitted to the recited facts for sentencing purposes” by failing to 

dispute the contents of his presentence report). So Grace cannot prove that he was 

prejudiced by the error in his indictment or that the error affected the fairness, 

integrity, or public reputation of his trial.

We AFFIRM Grace’s conviction.

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