UNPUBLISHED

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

No. 16-7450

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.

OLUWASEGUN OGUN,

Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, at 

Newport News. Rebecca Beach Smith, Senior District Judge. (4:12-cr-00004-RBS-TEM1; 4:16-cv-00097-RBS)

No. 20-6578

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff - Appellee,

v.

CORBIN ALEXANDER DICKERSON,

Defendant - Appellant.
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Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, at 

Richmond. John A. Gibney, Jr., Senior District Judge. (3:09-cr-00283-JAG-3; 3:16-cv00443-JAG)

Submitted: February 7, 2022 Decided: March 22, 2022

Before MOTZ, DIAZ, and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges.

Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.

ON BRIEF: Geremy C. Kamens, Federal Public Defender, Frances H. Pratt, Assistant 

Federal Public Defender, Laura J. Koenig, Assistant Federal Public Defender, OFFICE OF 

THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Alexandria, Virginia, for Appellants. G. Zachary 

Terwilliger, United States Attorney, Jessica D. Aber, United States Attorney, Aidan Taft 

Grano-Mickelsen, Assistant United States Attorney, Daniel T. Young, Assistant United 

States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Alexandria, Virginia, 

for Appellee. 

Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
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PER CURIAM:

In these consolidated appeals, Appellants contend that their 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) 

convictions are infirm because they rest—at least in part—on invalid predicate offenses. 

Though Appellants claim otherwise, we conclude that our recent decision in United States 

v. Crawley, 2 F.4th 257 (4th Cir. 2021), cert. denied, __ S. Ct. __, 2022 WL 89589 (U.S. 

Jan. 10, 2022), forecloses Appellants’ challenge. Thus, we affirm.

In 2012, Oluwasegun Ogun pleaded guilty, pursuant to a plea agreement and a 

statement of facts incorporated therein, to three offenses: one count of conspiracy to 

commit Hobbs Act robbery (Count 1), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1951(a); and two counts 

of brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence (Counts 5 and 6), in violation of 18 

U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A). For Count 5, the indictment alleged two predicate crimes of 

violence: Count 1’s Hobbs Act conspiracy and a substantive count of Hobbs Act robbery—

pertaining to the robbery of a Cold Stone Creamery restaurant—charged in Count 2. Count

6 likewise identified a pair of predicates: the Count 1 conspiracy and a Hobbs Act robbery 

of a Subway restaurant, which was charged in Count 3. The district court sentenced Ogun 

to 421 months’ imprisonment.

Similarly, in 2009, Corbin Alexander Dickerson pleaded guilty, pursuant to a plea 

agreement and an incorporated statement of facts, to using, carrying, possessing, and 

brandishing a firearm in relation to a crime of violence (Count 7), in violation of 18 U.S.C. 

§ 924(c). As with Ogun, Dickerson’s indictment alleged Hobbs Act conspiracy (Count 1) 

and Hobbs Act robbery (Count 6) as the two predicate offenses supporting the § 924(c) 
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charge. Dickerson received a 120-month prison sentence, plus a 5-year term of supervised 

release.

In 2016, Appellants, relying on Johnson,

* each moved under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to 

vacate their § 924(c) convictions. After the district court denied relief on Ogun’s motion, 

this court granted a certificate of appealability on the question of “whether an 18 U.S.C. 

§ 924(c) conviction is infirm if it rests on multiple predicate crimes of violence, at least 

one of which is invalid.” United States v. Ogun, No. 16-7450 (4th Cir. Nov. 2, 2020) 

(unpublished order). As to Dickerson, the district court denied relief on his motion but 

granted a certificate of appealability on this same issue.

“We review a district court’s denial of relief on a § 2255 motion de novo.” United 

States v. Palacios, 982 F.3d 920, 923 (4th Cir. 2020), cert. denied, 141 S. Ct. 2826 (2021). 

In the wake of Johnson and its progeny, this court has determined that one of the predicates 

at issue—conspiracy to commit Hobbs Act robbery—is not a crime of violence for 

purposes of § 924(c). See United States v. Ali, 991 F.3d 561, 573 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 

142 S. Ct. 486 (2021). Substantive Hobbs Act robbery, on the other hand, continues to 

qualify as a valid § 924(c) predicate. See id. 

In United States v. Crawley—for which these appeals were placed in abeyance—

we held that, if a defendant’s § 924(c) conviction is “expressly based on [a] valid and 

invalid predicate,” then it “remains sound following Johnson and its progeny.” 2 F.4th at 

* Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591, 606 (2015) (holding that residual clause 

of Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(2)(B)(ii), is unconstitutionally vague).
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263. In other words, we will uphold a § 924(c) conviction if it is “expressly predicated” 

on at least one offense that categorically qualifies as a crime of violence or drug trafficking 

crime. Id. To determine which predicate offenses underlie a § 924(c) conviction obtained 

by a guilty plea, we may look to “the critical record documents,” id. at 267, which include 

the indictment, the plea agreement, the statement of facts, and the plea colloquy, id. at 263-

64. At bottom, the inquiry centers on whether “the conduct to which the defendant admits 

is in fact an offense under the statutory provision under which he is pleading guilty,” id. at 

265 (internal quotation marks omitted), and, if so, whether that offense is a valid predicate, 

id. at 263.

As discussed above, Ogun’s indictment expressly identified a valid predicate 

(Hobbs Act robbery) and an invalid predicate (Hobbs Act conspiracy) as the crimes of 

violence underlying his § 924(c) charges. And the statement of facts bore out these 

allegations, as Ogun admitted that he and his coconspirator agreed to commit—and did in 

fact commit—gunpoint robberies of two restaurants. The same was true for Dickerson: the 

indictment alleged that the § 924(c) conviction was predicated on Hobbs Act conspiracy 

and Hobbs Act robbery, and Dickerson admitted in the statement of facts to conspiring to 

commit several robberies over a three-month period, including a restaurant robbery where

Dickerson served as the getaway driver while his confederates brandished a firearm and 

stole money from the restaurant safe.

So, having reviewed the critical record documents in each case, we are satisfied that 

each of the § 924(c) charges was expressly based on a valid predicate and an invalid 

predicate. Under Crawley, that is enough to sustain Appellants’ convictions.
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Appellants’ attempts to distinguish Crawley are unpersuasive. First, Appellants 

correctly note that, in Crawley, the predicates at issue—Hobbs Act conspiracy and a drug 

trafficking offense, 2 F.4th at 260—were wholly distinct, whereas the predicates here 

involved different violations of the same criminal statute. But nothing in Crawley indicates 

that its holding is limited to situations in which one predicate is a crime of violence and the 

other is a drug trafficking crime. Rather, Crawley broadly speaks to instances in which “a 

§ 924(c) conviction [is] based on one valid and one invalid predicate offense.” 2 F.4th at 

263. Such is the situation here.

Second, Appellants contend that, unlike in Crawley, the records in their cases do 

not unambiguously establish “which predicate offense—the valid or the invalid—formed 

the basis for” their § 924(c) convictions. But this argument incorrectly presupposes that 

only one offense can serve as the predicate for a given § 924(c) charge. Moreover, these 

cases are, in fact, similar to Crawley because, in all three cases, the defendant’s “statement 

of facts supporting the plea include[s] proof of both predicate offenses.” 2 F.4th at 267. 

Thus, like the court in Crawley, we discern no ambiguity in the predicates that underlaid 

Appellants’ § 924(c) convictions.

Accordingly, we affirm the judgments denying relief on Appellants’ § 2255 

motions. We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal contentions are 

adequately presented in the materials before this court and argument would not aid the 

decisional process.

AFFIRMED