United States v. Derrick Fitgerald Dial

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
• Decided: December 13, 2024
• Docket: 24-10732
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

USCA11 Case: 24-10732 Document: 26-1 Date Filed: 12/13/2024 Page: 1 of 6

[DO NOT PUBLISH] In the United States Court of Appeals For the Eleventh Circuit

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No. 24-10732 Non-Argument Calendar ____________________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, versus DERRICK FITZGERALD DIAL,

Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama D.C. Docket No. 1:23-cr-00146-JB-N-1 ____________________ USCA11 Case: 24-10732 Document: 26-1 Date Filed: 12/13/2024 Page: 2 of 6

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Before JILL PRYOR, BRANCH, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges. PER CURIAM: Derrick Dial appeals his conviction for possessing a firearm and ammunition as a felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). He challenges the constitutionality of the prohibition on felons pos- sessing firearms and ammunition. After careful consideration, we affirm. I. When police officers observed a vehicle driven by Dial com- mit a traffic violation, they initiated a traffic stop. During the traffic stop, the officers smelled marijuana. They searched the vehicle and found a firearm and ammunition. Dial, who had previous felony convictions, was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). He moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that the statutory ban on the possession of firearms by felons vio- lated the Second Amendment. After the district court denied the motion to dismiss, Dial pleaded guilty. The court imposed a sen- tence of 77 months’ imprisonment. This is Dial’s appeal. II. Ordinarily, when a defendant enters a valid guilty plea, he waives any non-jurisdictional defects in the proceedings. United States v. Brown, 752 F.3d 1344, 1347 (11th Cir. 2014). But Dial’s guilty plea did not waive his constitutional challenge to the USCA11 Case: 24-10732 Document: 26-1 Date Filed: 12/13/2024 Page: 3 of 6

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statutory prohibition on felons’ possession of firearms. See Class v. United States, 583 U.S. 174, 181 (2018) (holding that a defendant who pleaded guilty did not waive his Second Amendment chal- lenge to a statute of conviction when the claim did not “contradict the terms of the indictment or the written plea agreement”). We review de novo the constitutionality of a statute. United States v. Gruezo, 66 F.4th 1284, 1292 (11th Cir. 2023). III. Dial challenges the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which generally prohibits individuals with felony convictions from possessing firearms or ammunition. He argues that this prohibition runs afoul of the Second Amendment, which states that: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” U.S. Const. amend. II. To assess the constitutionality of the prohibition on felons possessing firearms, we begin with the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). In Heller, the Court considered a Second Amendment challenge to a District of Columbia law that barred the private possession of handguns in homes. Id. at 635. After considering both the text and history of the Second Amendment, the Court concluded that it conferred on an individual a right to keep and bear arms. Id. at 595. The Court held that the ban on handgun possession in the home violated the Sec- ond Amendment. Id. at 635. But the Court acknowledged that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was “not USCA11 Case: 24-10732 Document: 26-1 Date Filed: 12/13/2024 Page: 4 of 6

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unlimited,” emphasizing that “nothing in [its] opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill.” Id. at 626. Indeed, the Court labeled such restrictions as “presumptively lawful.” Id. at 627 n.26. After Heller, we considered a constitutional challenge to § 922(g)(1)’s prohibition on felons’ possession of firearms. See United States v. Rozier, 598 F.3d 768, 770 (11th Cir. 2010). We held that “statutes disqualifying felons from possessing a firearm under any and all circumstances do not offend the Second Amendment.” Id. at 771. Several years later, the Supreme Court considered a Second Amendment challenge to New York’s gun-licensing regime that limited when a law-abiding citizen could obtain a license to carry a firearm outside the home. See N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 11 (2022). The Court recognized that “the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” Id. at 10. The Court explained that to determine whether a restriction on firearms was constitutional, a court must begin by asking whether the firearm regulation at issue governs conduct that falls within the plain text of the Second Amendment. Id. at 17. If the regulation does cover such conduct, the court may uphold it only if the government “af- firmatively prove[s] that its firearms regulation is part of the histor- ical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.” Id. at 19. Bruen emphasized that Heller established the USCA11 Case: 24-10732 Document: 26-1 Date Filed: 12/13/2024 Page: 5 of 6

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correct test for determining the constitutionality of gun re- strictions. See id. at 26. And, like Heller, Bruen described Second Amendment rights as extending only to “law-abiding, responsible citizens.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Based on Bruen, Dial argues that § 922(g)(1)’s prohibition on felons’ possession of firearms is unconstitutional because the stat- ute “flunks Bruen’s text-and-history test.” Appellant’s Br. 8. His ar- gument is foreclosed by precedent. After Bruen, we considered another Second Amendment challenge to § 922(g)(1). See United States v. Dubois, 94 F.4th 1284, 1289 (11th Cir. 2024). We held that the challenge was foreclosed by Rozier, which “interpreted Heller as limiting the [Second Amend- ment] right to law-abiding and qualified individuals and as clearly excluding felons from those categories by referring to felon-in-pos- session bans as presumptively lawful.” Id. at 1293 (internal quota- tion marks omitted). We concluded that Bruen did not abrogate our decision in Rozier, observing that even in Bruen the Supreme Court continued to describe the right to bear arms as extending only to “law-abiding, responsible citizens.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). The Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), does not change our analysis. In Rahimi, the Court considered a Second Amendment challenge to the federal statute that prohibits an individual who is subject to a domestic violence restraining order from possessing a firearm when the order includes a finding that he represents a credible USCA11 Case: 24-10732 Document: 26-1 Date Filed: 12/13/2024 Page: 6 of 6

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threat to the safety of an intimate partner or a child of that partner or individual. See id. at 693 (citing 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8)). The Court held that this firearm restriction was constitutional. Id. And it once again declared that the prohibition on “the possession of firearms by ‘felons’ . . . [is] ‘presumptively lawful.’” Id. at 699 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 626, 627 n.26). Rahimi does not displace our holding in Dubois that Bruen did not abrogate Rozier. Under our prior panel precedent rule, an “in- tervening Supreme Court decision abrogates our precedent only if the intervening decision is both clearly on point and clearly con- trary to our earlier decision.” Dubois, 94 F.4th at 1293 (internal quo- tation marks omitted). “If the Supreme Court never discussed our precedent and did not otherwise comment on the precise issue be- fore the prior panel, our precedent remains binding.” Id. (alteration adopted) (internal quotation marks omitted). Rahimi did not in- volve § 922(g)(1) nor did it otherwise comment on the precise issue before us in Rozier. Moreover, in Rahimi, the Supreme Court once again reiterated, albeit in dicta, that the prohibition “on the posses- sion of firearms by felons . . . [is] presumptively lawful.” 602 U.S. at 699 (internal quotation marks omitted). Under our precedent, Dial’s Second Amendment challenge to § 922(g)(1) fails. We affirm his conviction. AFFIRMED.