Court Opinion

ID: 9484741
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 10:06:40.796216+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:50:26.075826
License: Public Domain

DAVIS, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the panel’s per curiam opinion vacating the judgment and remanding this case to the district court.
Appellant, an undocumented citizen of Mexico, was convicted for illegally possessing an UZI pistol. Appellant’s twenty-four month custodial sentence, for which he received credit back to the date of the offense, May 3, 2008, plainly expired well over one year ago. Moreover, a search of the online detainee locator website of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), see https://locator.ice.gov/odls/home Page.do, shows no information for the Appellant, who appears not to be in ICE custody. Presumably, therefore, the Appellant has been removed from this country and likely will not be available for the further proceedings contemplated by our remand of this case.
I confess that I am not certain which would be the less desirable outcome: (1) that the Government declined to deport the Appellant (because this appeal was pending) and he is therefore still in this country, or (2) that the Appellant’s conviction will be permanently vacated because the Government has made it impossible for him to be present for further proceedings by deporting him sometime in the last year to Mexico upon his release from the Bureau of Prisons. One should not be surprised if Heller, which was decided about two months after Appellant’s arrest in this case, has spawned this kind of conundrum in many districts.