Court Opinion

ID: 9471989
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:46:11.022175+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:40.931980
License: Public Domain

NORRIS, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur. I find no merits in McWilliams’ claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, selective prosecution, and prosecutorial misconduct during the trial. I also believe that we cannot reverse McWilliams’ conviction based upon any challenge he might raise to the validity of his 1964 guilty plea.
In 1980, the Supreme Court made clear that the federal firearms statute “prohibits a felon from possessing a firearm despite the fact that the predicate felony may be subject to collateral attack on constitutional grounds.” Lewis v. United States, 445 U.S. 55, 65, 100 S.Ct. 915, 921, 63 L.Ed.2d 198 (1980). I believe that Lewis governs the instant case, and bars McWilliams from now challenging his 1964 plea, regardless of the merits of his claim that that plea was invalid when taken.
Although this court has held that Lewis should not be retroactively applied to bar a defendant charged with a firearms violation from collaterally attacking a constitutionally infirm predicate conviction during the period when Ninth Circuit law expressly permitted reversal if the predicate conviction could be overturned, United States v. Goodheim, 651 F.2d 1294 (9th Cir.1981), Goodheim’s due process notice rationale strikes me as inapplicable here. In 1975, when McWilliams violated the firearms statute, the law of the Ninth Circuit was consistent with Lewis: a challenge to a predicate conviction would not affect the validity of a subsequent firearms prosecution. See United States v. Liles, 432 F.2d 18 (9th Cir.1970) (defendant could be convicted for possession of a firearm despite fact that his predicate felony conviction was overturned on appeal for insufficient evidence).
Judge Fletcher’s reliance on McHenry v. California, 447 F.2d 470 (9th Cir.1971), to undermine the authority of Liles and to support the proposition that Ninth Circuit law in 1975 permitted a convicted felon to collaterally attack a constitutionally infirm conviction in the course of a federal firearms prosecution seems to me misplaced. In fact, the McHenry court considered a violation of California’s firearms statute and read Liles as an opinion interpreting Congressional intent in enacting the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 — the statute at issue here. McHenry does nothing to contradict Liles’ interpretation of that statute: that Congress intended that no one under taint of a felony conviction be permitted to possess a weapon, regardless of the status of that conviction. I am unwilling to read McHenry as authority for the proposition that Congress is constitutionally disabled from enacting such a statute.1
*1225Because the status of McWilliams’ firearms conviction will not be affected by any collateral attack on his 1964 plea, it seems pointless to me to remand for determination whether the 1964 plea violated then prevailing statutory and constitutional standards. McWilliams’ firearms conviction should be affirmed.

. I am not alone in having difficulty understanding McHenry's constitutional reach. In *1225United. States v. Pricepaul, 540 F.2d 417, 421 (9th Cir.1976), we expressed
some doubt that McHenry can be ready broadly for the proposition that the invalidity of a prior conviction under any provision of the federal Constitution prevents use of the conviction to prove guilt under a firearms statute. Since the federal constitutional rights infringed in that case were unspecified, however, it is difficult to ascertain how far the holding should extend.