United States v. Dustin Lee McLellan

958 F.3d 1110
Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit·Decided May 6, 2020·No. 18-13289·Published·Cited by 50 cases

Opinion

[PUBLISH]

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT

No. 18-13289

D.C. Docket No. 1:17-cr-00093-KD-B-1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee,

versus

DUSTIN LEE MCLELLAN, Defendant - Appellant.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama

(May 6, 2020)

Before ED CARNES, Chief Judge, ROSENBAUM, and BOGGS, * Circuit Judges. BOGGS, Circuit Judge:

*

Honorable Danny J. Boggs, United States Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit, sitting by designation.

Dustin McLellan was charged with three counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). He was convicted of the first count after a jury trial, and later pleaded guilty to the second count in exchange for the government’s agreement to drop the third count. Based on three prior state felony convictions, he was sentenced under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) to 180 months of imprisonment. McLellan now appeals, offering three lines of argument. First, he contends that the district court abused its discretion when it permitted one of his arresting officers to offer improper “expert” testimony at trial on the correlation between guns and drug activity and to suggest that McLellan was selling drugs. Second, he contends that his sentence under the ACCA was improper because Alabama’s first-degree burglary statute—the statute for two of his prior felonies—criminalizes more conduct than the ACCA’s “generic” definition of burglary, in contravention of Supreme Court precedent. See, e.g., Mathis v. United States, 136 S. Ct. 2243, 2248 (2016). Third, after McLellan filed his appeal, the Supreme Court decided Rehaif v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 2191 (2019), which held that in a felon-in-possession prosecution, the government must prove that the defendant “knew he belonged to the relevant category of persons barred from possessing a firearm.” Id. at 2200. McLellan argues that, based on Rehaif, his convictions must be vacated because his indictment did not allege, the jury was not instructed to find, and his plea colloquy did not address, whether he knew he was a

felon when he possessed the firearm. We affirm, but remand for clarification of the judgment to reflect the sentence the district court said it would have imposed if the Armed Career Criminal Act did not apply.

I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY McLellan’s first felon-in-possession count stems from his arrest on March 22, 2017. At around 12:30 p.m. that day, two officers from the Brewton, Alabama, police department found McLellan asleep in his car, which was parked in a secluded area known to the officers as a place that was frequently used for illegal narcotics transactions and dumping. As the officers approached McLellan’s car, one officer saw drug paraphernalia in plain view inside the car, as well as a “crystalline-type substance” on McLellan’s lap, which was later found to be methamphetamine. The other officer saw a firearm located on the center console area of the car, within McLellan’s reach. McLellan was arrested following a pat-down and search in and around the car, which revealed a digital scale with white residue on it, a glass pipe also with white residue, several empty plastic bags, a syringe, and four different types of tablets in different bags.

On May 24, 2017, a grand jury indicted McLellan on one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). A superseding indictment later added two more § 922(g)(1) counts against McLellan, stemming

from incidents that had occurred before his March 2017 arrest. McLellan went to trial on the first count, where he was convicted.

Following his conviction at trial, McLellan agreed to plead guilty to the second count in exchange for the government’s dismissal of the third count. On October 23, 2017, McLellan admitted to the following facts in support of his guilty plea on the second count:

[O]n or about August 19th, 2016 in the Southern District of Alabama, the defendant was driving a car in Atmore when he was pulled over for a traffic stop. In the search of that car, the police officers recovered a Highpoint nine millimeter handgun from the glove compartment, Serial Number P1562393. The Government would prove that the handgun was manufactured in Ohio; therefore, outside of the State of Alabama and was in and affecting interstate commerce. The Government would prove that the defendant willfully and knowingly possessed that firearm and that prior to the date that the defendant possessed that firearm, he had been convicted of a felony, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year; namely, burglary in the first degree on September 23rd of 1999 in the Circuit Court of Baldwin County Alabama, Case Number CC1999-000260.

McLellan’s Presentence Investigation Report noted that he qualified as an armed career criminal under the ACCA because he had three or more prior convictions for “violent felonies” or “serious drug offenses.” See 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1). McLellan has two Alabama first-degree burglary convictions and a conviction for Attempted Unlawful Manufacture of a Controlled Substance (which McLellan does not dispute is a “serious drug offense”). The district court sentenced

McLellan to 180 months each on the two convictions, with the terms to run concurrently. He now appeals.

II. DISCUSSION

A. Testimony at Trial

McLellan argues that the district court erred when it permitted one of his arresting officers, Matthew Jordan, to testify about certain matters at trial. We address these evidentiary arguments first, because their disposition determines whether there can be a retrial. Because McLellan preserved these arguments by objecting at trial, we review the district court’s evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion. United States v. Jiminez, 224 F.3d 1243, 1249 (11th Cir. 2000).

1. Rule 701

First, McLellan argues that the district court improperly permitted Officer Jordan, “to testify as an expert” on the relationship between guns and drug activity. At trial, Officer Jordan was asked: “Now, based on your training and experience, is there a correlation between weapons and drugs?” to which he responded, “[y]es, there is.” Officer Jordan then explained that it was “very common” for individuals involved in narcotic activity “to possess handguns, a lot of times for protection” because of the threat of “robbery of their narcotics” and the “sometimes large amounts of money they possess as well.”

Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, a witness’s opinion testimony—

opinions of matters over which they do not have direct knowledge—is classified as either lay testimony or expert testimony. “At the defendant’s request,” the government must disclose before trial any witness it wishes to present as an expert and must also provide the defendant with a summary of the expected testimony. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 16(a)(1)(G); United States v. Stahlman, 934 F.3d 1199, 1219 (11th Cir. 2019). A witness that is not classified as an expert can offer an opinion only if it is: “(a) rationally based on the witness’s perception; (b) helpful to clearly understanding the witness’s testimony or to determining a fact in issue; and (c) not based on scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge within the scope of Rule 702.” Fed. R. Evid. 701.

Contrary to McLellan’s insistence, Officer Jordan did not provide an improper expert opinion. His testimony did not require any scientific, technical, or specialized knowledge, but was rationally based on his perception of the relationship between guns and drug activity that he acquired during his time as a police officer in the narcotics division.1 We have held that “[a] witness is permitted to deliver a lay opinion testimony based on his professional experiences,” and Officer Jordan’s testimony involved precisely the type of knowledge that is acquired from the

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United States v. Dustin Lee McLellan, 958 F.3d 1110 (11th Cir. 2020).

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