Opinion ID: 4569171
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Rehaif Challenge

Text: Bryant was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Section 922(g) prohibits possession of firearms by people who fall into certain groups: here, “any person . . . who has been convicted in any court of[ ] a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.” 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). At the time Bryant pled guilty to the instant crime, a conviction under § 922(g) did not require that the defendant knew he belonged to one of the prohibited classes when he knowingly possessed the firearm or ammunition. See United States v. Amante, 418 F.3d 220, 221 n.1 (2d Cir. 2005); United States v. Rehaif, 888 F.3d 1138, 1145 n.3 (11th Cir. 2018) (collecting cases). However, in June 2019—after Bryant had been convicted and had already filed his opening brief in this appeal—the Supreme Court changed the legal landscape. In Rehaif, the Court held that, under § 922(g), the government must prove not only that the defendant knew he possessed the firearm, but also that “he knew he belonged to the relevant category of persons barred from possessing a firearm.” 139 S. Ct. at 2200. Thus, although a felon need not specifically know that it is illegal for him to possess a firearm under federal law, Rehaif requires him to know, at the time he possessed the firearm, that he “ha[d] been convicted in any court of[ ] a crime 13 punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.” 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1); see Rehaif, 139 S. Ct. at 2194 (“To convict a defendant, the Government . . . must show that the defendant knew he possessed a firearm and also that he knew he had the relevant status when he possessed it.” (emphasis added)). Here, because the knowledge-of-status requirement had not previously been recognized, it was omitted from every part of Bryant’s case: the charging document to which Bryant pled guilty (namely, an information) did not allege knowledge of status, the district court did not advise him of that requirement at the guilty plea proceeding, and the district court did not identify a factual basis for concluding that Bryant had that knowledge. Thus, on appeal, Bryant contends that the conviction must be vacated for two independent reasons: (1) the district court did not have jurisdiction over him because the charging document was deficient; and (2) the failure to cover this legal requirement at his plea proceeding violated Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.
Bryant argued in his opening brief that, because the information charging him was deficient, the district court had no jurisdiction over him. In his reply brief, however, he acknowledges that this argument is foreclosed by our recent decision 14 in United States v. Balde, 943 F.3d 73 (2d Cir. 2019). Bryant is correct. As we held in Balde, omission of the knowledge-of-status requirement in a charging document does not affect the district court’s jurisdiction. Id. at 92 (“[T]he indictment’s failure to allege that [the defendant] knew” of his unlawful status “was not a jurisdictional defect.”). Thus, Bryant’s jurisdictional argument fails. 2. Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Bryant also argues that the district court did not properly inform him at the time of his guilty plea of “the nature of each charge to which [he] [wa]s pleading” or determine that there was a “factual basis for the plea”—particularly, with respect to the knowledge-of-status requirement—as required under Rule 11. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(b)(1)(G), (b)(3). Based upon these Rule 11 violations, Bryant asserts that his § 922(g)(1) conviction must be overturned. Because Bryant did not object to the district court’s description of the charges at his plea proceeding, his challenge is reviewed for plain error. 5 5Bryant argues that this Court should apply a “modified plain error” standard. We have sometimes applied a modified plain error standard—requiring the government to bear the burden of establishing that the error did not affect the defendant’s substantial rights— in cases where the error was the result of a supervening change in law. See United States v. Viola, 35 F.3d 37, 42-43 (2d Cir. 1994). However, that approach was called into question by the Supreme Court’s decision in Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461 (1997). See, e.g., United States v. Botti, 711 F.3d 299, 308-09 (2d Cir. 2013) (questioning Viola’s modified plain error rule in light of Johnson, but declining to decide the issue). In any event, our 15 “Under the plain error standard, an appellant must demonstrate that (1) there is an error; (2) the error is clear or obvious, rather than subject to reasonable dispute; (3) the error affected the appellant’s substantial rights; and (4) the error seriously affects the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” United States v. Bastian, 770 F.3d 212, 219-20 (2d Cir. 2014) (quotation marks and alteration omitted). The government concedes that the failure to inform Bryant of the knowledge-of-status requirement in § 922(g)(1) at the plea proceeding was a clear error. Thus, the first two prongs of the plain error standard are not at issue on appeal. In determining whether the error affected “substantial rights” under the third prong, the Supreme Court has explained that “in most cases it means that the error must have been prejudicial: It must have affected the outcome of the district court proceedings.” United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 734 (1993). More particularly, when seeking a reversal of a guilty plea based upon a Rule 11 violation, a defendant “must show a reasonable probability that, but for the error, conclusion would not differ in this case depending on who bears the burden of persuasion. Accordingly, we decline to resolve the parties’ disagreement over whether “modified plain error” or our standard plain-error review applies. See United States v. Miller, 954 F.3d 551, 558 & n.16 (2d Cir. 2020). 16 he would not have entered the plea.” United States v. Dominguez Benitez, 542 U.S. 74, 83 (2004); accord Balde, 943 F.3d at 96. In making that assessment, “a reviewing court must look to the entire record, not to the plea proceedings alone.” Dominguez Benitez, 542 U.S. at 80. Moreover, “[c]ourts should not upset a plea solely because of post hoc assertions from a defendant about how he would have pleaded,” but “should instead look to contemporaneous evidence to substantiate a defendant’s expressed preferences.” Lee v. United States, 137 S. Ct. 1958, 1967 (2017); accord United States v. Hobbs, 953 F.3d 853, 857-58 (6th Cir. 2020) (quoting Lee in rejecting a Rehaif challenge to a guilty plea). Bryant argues that the failure to advise him of the knowledge-of-status requirement at his plea proceeding satisfies the third prong. Specifically, he asserts that there is evidence supporting an inference that he lacked knowledge of his unlawful status at the time he possessed a firearm. As support, he notes that he served no time in prison on his grand larceny conviction and that the conviction was more than ten years old at the time of his plea. Thus, “[g]iven these circumstances,” he argues, he would not have pled guilty had he known of the additional knowledge requirement because “the government would have [had] significant difficulty convincing a jury that [he] knew and remembered he had 17 been convicted of a crime punishable by a term of imprisonment exceeding one year.” Bryant Reply Br. at 6. We find Bryant’s arguments unpersuasive. In the wake of Rehaif, we have vacated a § 922(g) conviction in a case where the defendant was sentenced to less than one year in prison on the prior felony, United States v. Johnson, No. 18-2033-CR, 2020 WL 3864945, at -3 (2d Cir. July 9, 2020) (summary order) (“[T]he fact that neither of [the defendant’s] two felony convictions actually resulted in prison sentences of more than a year weighs . . . in favor of concluding that [the defendant] might not have pleaded guilty absent error.”), and in a case where the defendant’s legal status (in terms of whether he was illegally or unlawfully in the United States when he possessed the firearm) was “hotly contested” in the district court, Balde, 943 F.3d at 97. On the other hand, we have upheld felon-in-possession convictions after Rehaif where the defendant had actually served more than one year in prison on the prior conviction. See, e.g., United States v. Miller, 954 F.3d 551, 560 (2d Cir. 2020) (defendant was previously sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment with execution suspended after three years, “which remove[d] any doubt that [he] was aware of his membership in § 922(g)(1)’s class”). 6 The rationale for the dichotomy is simple: defendants who 6Moreover, we have issued a series of non-precedential summary orders since Rehaif addressing Rule 11 challenges where, similar to the defendant in Miller, the defendant 18 went to prison for over one year would obviously be aware that the crime was punishable by more than one year in jail (and are not likely to have forgotten), and those who were sentenced to less than one year might not have known that they could have been sentenced to more than one year. The facts here fall between a gap left in these two lines of cases. Here, Bryant was sentenced on the prior felony in Virginia to three years in prison, but he served no actual jail time because the sentence was suspended. Moreover, that 2007 conviction was about a decade before he possessed the firearm at issue in this case in August 2016. Thus, Bryant contends that these facts weigh in favor of concluding that there is a “reasonable probability that, but for the error, he would had been sentenced to, and served, more than one year in prison on the prior felony. In each of those cases, as in Miller, we rejected the Rehaif claim because the fact that the defendant had actually served a sentence of more than one year on the prior felony made it highly unlikely that the defendant was unaware of his prohibited status or that the knowledge-of-status requirement would have impacted the outcome of the case. See, e.g., United States v. Mikelinich, 798 F. App’x 697, 698 (2d Cir. 2020) (“[The defendant] also admitted that he pled guilty in 2004 to being a felon in possession (based on yet another prior felony) and that he was sentenced to 15 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Given that [the defendant] had in fact been sentenced to more than one year in prison, there is no reason to believe that he would not have pleaded guilty had he been told that the government would need to prove that he knew he was a felon when he possessed the firearm[ ].” (alteration in original) (quotation marks omitted)); United States v. Keith, 797 F. App’x 649, 652 (2d Cir. 2020) (“[The defendant] had been convicted in October 2008 of criminal sale of cocaine and served over two years in prison.”). 19 not have entered the plea.” Dominguez Benitez, 542 U.S. at 83. However, those are not all the facts before us. The government has also submitted the 2007 judgment from Bryant’s grand larceny conviction in Virginia state court. 7 That judgment states that Bryant “stands indicted for a felony” and that, in connection with Bryant’s guilty plea, the Virginia court had “made [an] inquiry” and was “of the opinion that [Bryant] fully understood the nature and effect of his plea and of the penalties that may be imposed upon his conviction.” Gov. Suppl. App’x at 1 (emphases added). This recitation is in accord with the Rules of the Supreme Court of Virginia, which mandate that “[a] circuit court shall not accept a plea of guilty . . . to a felony charge without first determining that the plea is made voluntarily with an understanding of the nature of the charge and the consequences of the plea.” Va. Sup. Ct. R. 3A:8(b)(1) (emphasis added). The judgment further states that Bryant was sentenced to three years in prison, but the sentence was suspended in lieu of 7 Bryant argues that it is improper for the government to submit evidence—here, the state judicial order—for the first time on appeal. However, the evidence is not in the district court record because the government had no reason to submit evidence of Bryant’s knowledge of his felon status (both because he pled guilty and it was before Rehaif was decided). Because there is no reason to doubt the judgment of conviction—and Bryant does not dispute its validity—we will consider that evidence on appeal. Miller, 954 F.3d at 559-60 (“We will not penalize the government for its failure to introduce evidence that it had but that, prior to Rehaif, it would have been precluded from introducing. Therefore, in the limited context of our fourth-prong [plain error] analysis, we will consider reliable evidence in the record on appeal that was not a part of the trial record . . . .”). 20 probation. Gov. Suppl. App’x at 1. Importantly, the Virginia court also certified “that at all times during this proceeding the defendant was present in person.” Gov. Suppl. App’x at 2. This evidence “removes any doubt that [Bryant] was aware of his membership in § 922(g)(1)’s class.” See Miller, 954 F.3d at 560. The record of conviction shows that the Virginia court presiding over his grand larceny case informed Bryant—in accord with the Virginia Supreme Court’s rules—of the penalties which could be imposed at the time of his guilty plea, which would necessarily entail advising him that the crime was punishable by a sentence of imprisonment of more than one year. Moreover, Bryant would also have heard, at his sentencing, that he was being sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, even though that sentence was being suspended. Thus, this situation is not akin to the hypothetical situation that concerned the Supreme Court in Rehaif, where a defendant received a sentence of probation on the prior felony and might not have understood that the maximum punishment for the crime was more than one year, especially if he had gone to trial on the prior felony (and thus may have lacked the opportunity for the court to ever explain the maximum penalty to the defendant at, for example, a guilty plea proceeding). Nor is it similar to the facts confronted 21 by this Court in Johnson, 2020 WL 3864945, where the defendant had been previously convicted of felonies, but none of the sentences imposed for those prior convictions exceeded one year. Here, based upon the state court judgment and the legal requirements under Virginia law, not only was Bryant advised at his plea that his crime of conviction was punishable by a term of imprisonment of more than one year, but he was also actually sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. Although he served no actual time due to the suspended sentence, there is no reasonable probability that he was unaware that he could have served more than one year of imprisonment. In fact, Bryant does not claim on appeal (nor has he claimed at any time) that these procedures under Virginia law were not followed, or that he was somehow unaware or forgot that he received a suspended sentence of three years’ imprisonment on the prior conviction. In short, this evidence is more than sufficient to show that Bryant was aware of his unlawful status at the time he possessed the firearm. Other circuit courts addressing similar evidence have reached the same conclusion. For example, in United States v. Huntsberry, 956 F.3d 270 (5th Cir. 2020), the defendant argued that his guilty plea, to being a felon-in-possession of a 22 firearm in 2014, should be vacated under Rehaif because the prior felony was based upon a juvenile conviction in 2003 for which he received a suspended sentence of two years’ imprisonment followed by three years’ supervised probation. Id. at 285. The Fifth Circuit rejected the Rehaif challenge and held that there was “little possibility that [the defendant] was ignorant of his status as a convicted felon,” although he had not served any time in prison, because Louisiana law required defendants to be apprised of the maximum possible penalty before accepting a guilty plea. Id. From that legal requirement, the court concluded that the defendant “undoubtedly understood that the offense to which he pleaded nolo contendere was punishable by more than one year in prison.” Id. Similarly, in United States v. Burghardt, 939 F.3d 397 (1st Cir. 2019), cert. denied, 140 S. Ct. 2550 (2020), the First Circuit held that the defendant’s post-Rehaif Rule 11 challenge failed because he had twice previously been convicted of crimes in New Hampshire, where judges are required by state law to explain to defendants the potential maximum sentence. Id. at 403-04. The court concluded that this legal requirement made it “virtually certain” the defendant was told “face-to-face what his maximum sentence could be.” 8 Id. at 404; see also United 8Bryant argues that Burghardt is distinguishable because the defendant in that case had multiple felony convictions and had served at least a total of two years’ imprisonment 23 States v. Payne, 964 F.3d 652, 656 (7th Cir. 2020) (relying in part on the “express statements in the three docket sheets and the common practice in the courts in which [the defendant] was convicted” in holding that the defendant knew of his unlawful status); United States v. Thomas, 810 F. App’x 789, 798 (11th Cir. 2020) (“[T]he state court that accepted Thomas’s guilty plea was required by Florida law to first ensure that Thomas understood . . . the statutory maximum penalty . . . . [He] does not point to anything in the record to suggest that the state court judge who accepted his guilty plea failed to comply with state law.”). This does not end our analysis, however. We must also consider whether, notwithstanding this proof, Bryant would have insisted, even foolishly, on going to trial based on his belief that the government could not prove his knowledge of his felon status to the jury. See Dominguez Benitez, 542 U.S. at 85 (“[I]f it is reasonably probable he would have gone to trial absent the error, it is no matter that the choice may have been foolish.”). Although Bryant argues that we “should infer that it is reasonably probable that [he] would not have pleaded guilty to this with respect to those convictions. However, the First Circuit’s decision did not hinge on that fact. Instead, the court noted that the record was unclear as to how much of the two years of prison time was served on each conviction and emphasized that “evidence that he served over a year for a single charge is not necessary to support our conclusion” because there was “ample other evidence” of the defendant’s knowledge of his status. Burghardt, 939 F.3d at 404 n.4. 24 offense after Rehaif,” Bryant Reply Br. at 11, there is insufficient evidence in the record to support such an inference. First, Bryant’s suggestion that the government might not be able to admit the Virginia judgment of conviction carries no weight. Bryant does not dispute the accuracy or authenticity of the document, and there is no indication that the government would have any issue admitting that judgment under Rule 803(22) of the Federal Rules of Evidence. Second, as noted supra, there is nothing in the record to suggest that Bryant ever raised any issue—with his attorney, with the district court, or with anyone else—about any purported lack of knowledge about his status as a felon at the time he possessed the firearm in August 2016. This fact alone makes this case distinguishable from other cases, such as Balde, where “[t]hroughout the proceedings below, the nature of [the defendant’s] status was hotly contested” (including at multiple hearings and during his plea colloquy) and he “vigorously argued” that he was legally present in the United States. 943 F.3d at 97. The final and perhaps most compelling reason why we can be confident that Bryant would not have put the government to the test of proving his knowledge of his prohibited status is based upon the fact that Bryant would have faced other, more serious charges if he had gone to trial. See, e.g., Burghardt, 939 F.3d at 405 25 (“The benefit received by the defendant from pleading is often a factor in our analysis of the likelihood that a defendant might have decided not to plead guilty . . . .”). Bryant argues that the government would have had “significant difficulty convincing a jury that [he] knew and remembered he had been convicted of a crime punishable by a term of imprisonment exceeding one year,” and, at a minimum, “he would have been in a superior negotiating position because his understanding about his status as a prohibited person would have been in play as a defense.” Bryant Reply Br. at 6, 11. Critically, these arguments overlook the fact that Bryant faced a separate and more serious firearm charge in the superseding indictment—namely Count IV, for knowingly possessing a firearm in August 2016 in furtherance of drug trafficking, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)—which would carry a mandatory consecutive sentence of five years’ imprisonment. See 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(i). The Rehaif decision would have been of no assistance to Bryant with respect to this related firearms charge. More specifically, other than proving his possession of the firearm in August 2016 (which obviously was the same element and proof contained in the felon-in-possession charge, and was part of Bryant’s pre-Rehaif plea calculus), the only additional element that the government would have to prove was that his possession of the firearm was in 26 furtherance of drug trafficking. See 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A). The proof that the gun possession related to drug trafficking was overwhelming, including, among other things, the following: (1) the shootout in which Bryant was involved on August 26, 2016 took place at the Putney Residence, which was the base of operations for the drug business; (2) shortly after the shootout, Bryant and a second individual left the residence in their vehicles and were stopped by law enforcement; (3) police searched the Putney Residence on August 26, 2016 and seized marijuana, drug paraphernalia (including a crack pipe and scales), and a semi-automatic Ruger .40 caliber firearm, in addition to .40 caliber shell casings recovered outside the Putney Residence; and (4) police were told by one of the targets of the August 26, 2016 shooting (and at least one other eyewitness) that the shooting involved a narcotics debt of $30. 9 Based upon this evidence, Bryant undoubtedly understood that, if the government could prove he possessed the firearm in August 2016, it also could easily prove the possession related to his drug trafficking on Count IV. Given this 9 We note that the criminal complaint also referenced that a law enforcement officer observed (over a live-feed video, which was recorded) Bryant holding a handgun during a drug transaction with an informant on August 11, 2016, at the Putney Residence. See Aff. in Support of Compl. at 3-4, United States v. Bryant, 16cr118 (D. Vt. Aug. 17, 2016), ECF No. 24-1. This evidence was also referenced by the government (and confirmed by Bryant) at the guilty plea proceeding. See Plea Tr. at 24-25, Bryant, 16cr118, ECF No. 382. 27 additional (more serious) charge and the overlapping proof, even if Rehaif had been decided before Bryant’s guilty plea, Bryant would have certainly recognized that any potential acquittal on the felon-in-possession charge based on Rehaif would have been a Pyrrhic victory. In other words, assuming that the government could not prove his knowledge of his prohibited status and that he was acquitted on the § 922(g) charge, the same proof would have resulted in his conviction on the § 924(c) charge, with a higher penalty (namely, a mandatory five years of imprisonment) that must run consecutively to the other counts of conviction, including the mandatory five-year minimum on the narcotics distribution charge. 10 Similarly, from the government’s standpoint, the § 922(g) charge would not have been an independent focal point in the plea negotiations because a § 922(g) conviction would likely be grouped with the drug distribution conviction under the Guidelines and (as ultimately reflected in the PSR) result in no incremental increase in the total offense level for purposes of sentencing. The government’s 10 Moreover, although the superseding indictment did not charge Bryant with discharging a firearm, it is clear that the evidence would have supported such a charge given the conduct on August 26, 2016, and, if the government obtained a superseding indictment before trial adding that charge, Bryant would have faced a 10-year mandatory, consecutive sentence if convicted of the § 924(c) charge. See 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A)(iii). 28 willingness to dismiss the § 924(c) charge as part of the plea agreement was an enormous benefit to Bryant, while the felon-in-possession charge would have had little, if any, additional significance to him (or the government) in such negotiations. Thus, in the context of this particular case, it is highly implausible that Rehaif could have given Bryant any additional leverage in plea negotiations or would have resulted in him reaching a decision not to plead guilty to the twocount superseding information and, instead, go to trial on the superseding indictment. In sum, we conclude that, even if the district court had correctly explained the knowledge-of-status element under § 922(g) at the time of Bryant’s plea, there is no reasonable probability that he would not have pled guilty to the superseding information, and thus, the error did not affect a substantial right. Accordingly, Bryant’s Rehaif challenge fails under plain error review. 11 11Because the third prong of the plain-error standard is not satisfied, we need not consider the fourth prong of the test. See Puckett v. United States, 556 U.S. 129, 135 (2009). In any event, for the same reasons articulated under third prong, we also conclude that the error did not affect “the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.” Bastian, 770 F.3d at 219-20. 29