OPINION
¶ 1 Following a jury trial, appellant Walter Mangum was convicted of possession of a deadly weapon by a prohibited possessor. The trial court suspended the imposition of sentence and placed Mangum on probation for three years. On appeal, he argues on various grounds the trial court erred in not dismissing the sole charge against him after the Pima County Justice Court vacated the underlying conviction that had created his prohibited possessor status. He also contends the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction and the trial court erroneously precluded any evidence at trial that his underlying conviction was invalid.
¶ 2 Although the first issue Mangum raises is a close one, we conclude he was not entitled to dismissal of the prohibited possessor charge after the underlying, predicate conviction on which that charge was based was found constitutionally invalid and vacated. Accordingly, the trial court did not err in failing to dismiss this case on that basis. We also find no merit in Mangum’s other arguments and, therefore, affirm.
BACKGROUND
¶ 3 We view the evidence in the light most favorable to upholding the jury’s verdict.
See State v. Tamplin,
¶ 4 Shortly thereafter, Mangum petitioned the justice court for post-conviction relief *167 from the misdemeanor domestic violence conviction pursuant to Rule 32, Ariz. R.Crim. P., 17 A.R.S. In October 2004, the justice court granted relief, finding multiple, prejudicial violations of Mangum’s right to counsel and on that basis vacating the misdemeanor conviction for which Mangum had been placed on probation in 2002. The state apparently did not further pursue any charges against Mangum in connection with that prior incident.
¶ 5 Mangum then moved to dismiss the prohibited possessor charge in this case based on the justice court’s having vacated the underlying misdemeanor conviction. Because that conviction had been “recently deemed invalid,” Mangum argued, his “alleged probationary status of July, 2003[was] a nullity.” After hearing argument, the trial court (Judge Tang) denied the motion without comment. This court later declined to accept jurisdiction of Mangum’s petition for special action challenging that ruling, Mangum v. State, No. 2 CA-SA 2005-0024 (order filed May 3, 2005), and thereafter, our supreme court denied his petition for review, Mangum v. State, No. CV-05-0215-PR (Ariz. Sup.Ct. order filed Dec. 8, 2005). During the ensuing trial in this case, the trial court (Judge Sabalos) denied Mangum’s motion for reconsideration of Judge Tang’s previous denial of the motion to dismiss and also denied Mangum’s motion for judgment of acquittal made pursuant to Rule 20, Ariz. R.Crim. P., 17 A.R.S. The trial court later denied Mangum’s post-trial motion for a new trial, in which he reurged the same arguments previously made below and now presented on appeal.
DISCUSSION
I.
¶ 6 Mangum first argues the trial court erred in refusing to dismiss the prohibited possessor charge after the justice court vacated his misdemeanor domestic violence conviction and ultimately dismissed that charge. We review for abuse of discretion a trial court’s ruling on a motion to dismiss criminal charges, but questions of statutory interpretation and constitutional law are reviewed de novo.
State v. Ramsey,
¶ 7 As noted earlier, Mangum was charged with having committed weapons misconduct “while serving a term of probation” in violation of § 13-3102(A)(4). That statute prohibits one from “knowingly ... [possessing a deadly weapon or prohibited weapon if such person is a prohibited possessor.” The phrase “ ‘[prohibited possessor’ ” includes “any person ... [w]ho is at the time of possession serving a term of probation pursuant to a conviction for a domestic violence offense as defined in [A.R.S.] § 13-3601.” A.R.S. § 13-3101(A)(6)(d). As the state correctly points out, at the time of his July 2003 arrest on the prohibited possessor charge, Mangum “was serving a 24-month term of probation pursuant to his [justice court] conviction for domestic violence/disorderly conduct” and, therefore, “was a prohibited possessor at that time.”
¶8 Mangum does not directly challenge that fact or conclusion, nor does he expressly argue that the prohibited possessor statutes under which he was convicted are ambiguous or unconstitutional.
1
But, citing
State v. McCann,
¶ 9 In
McCann,
our supreme court held that “a rebuttable presumption of regularity attaches to prior convictions used to enhance a sentence or as an element of a crime.”
When the State seeks to use a prior conviction as a sentence enhancer or as an element of a crime, the State must first prove the existence of the prior conviction. At that time, the presumption of regularity attaches to the final judgment. If the defendant presents some credible evidence to overcome the presumption, the State must fulfill its duty to establish that the prior conviction was constitutionally obtained.
Id. ¶ 15. Thus, under McCann, prior, final judgments of conviction are presumed valid. Id. ¶ 16. But the court “emphasize[d] that [its] ruling does not lessen the burden on the State, which retains the burden of establishing that a prior conviction is constitutionally valid” when used “as an element of a crime.” Id. In addition, the court stated: “In eases in which a judgment of conviction results from the violation of constitutional rights, the conviction cannot be used either to establish an element of an offense or for purposes of sentence enhancement. Thus, prior convictions may be used by the State only if constitutionally valid.” Id. ¶ 17.
¶ 10 According to Mangum, McCann “is controlling on the use of a constitutionally infirm conviction to prove an element of an offense” and, even if not controlling, “is the most analogous authority, and its reasoning should apply.” The trial court, Mangum further asserts, was bound by McCann “and committed reversible error by failing to dismiss the prohibited possessor charge in light of [his] unconstitutional underlying conviction.”
¶ 11 The state does not address, let alone distinguish, the rather broad language in McCann. Nor does the state contend that Mangum’s prior domestic violence conviction was not an essential element of the prohibited possessor charge under §§ 13-3101(A)(6)(d) and 13-3102(A)(4). 3 Rather, emphasizing the clear wording of those statutes, and particularly the phrase “at the time of possession” in § 13 — 3101(A)(6)(d), the state asserts its “burden under A.R.S. §§ [13-]3102(A)(4) and -3101(6) was not to prove the present validity of the domestic-violence conviction at the time of trial but only to prove [Mangum’s] status as a domestic-violence probationer at the time that he possessed firearms.” And, the state further argues, Mangum’s “domestic violence conviction, presumptively valid at the time of the instant offense, was probative of his status as a domestic-violence probationer regardless of *169 the subsequent justice-court ruling overturning his guilty plea.”
¶ 12 The clear wording of the pertinent statutes supports the state’s argument.
4
Our role in interpreting a statute is to discern and effect the legislature’s intent.
In re Pima County Juvenile No. 74802-2,
¶ 13 Using plain, unambiguous language, the legislature chose to make “the time of possession” the only relevant point at which the defendant must have been “serving a term of probation pursuant to a conviction for a domestic violence offense.” § 13-3101(A)(6)(d). The legislature did not expressly require a determination that a prior conviction be constitutionally valid in order for it to support a prohibited possessor charge under that statute. Nor can we infer any such legislative intent from the statutory wording or scheme. And, even if it were somehow relevant, no pertinent legislative history has been cited to or found by us.
¶ 14 In § 13 — 3101(A)(6), the legislature provided several separate and independent definitions of a “[prohibited possessor.” Under subsection (b), the definition includes a person “[w]ho has been convicted within or without this state of a felony.” In contrast, subsection (d) alternatively defines a prohibited possessor as, inter alia, a person “[w]ho is at the time of possession serving a term of probation pursuant to a conviction for a domestic violence offense as defined in § 13-3601 or a felony offense, parole, community supervision, work furlough, home arrest or release on any other basis.” As noted earlier, Mangum was charged with and convicted of prohibited possession based solely on his having “knowingly possessed a deadly weapon, while serving a term of probation” on his misdemeanor domestic violence conviction. In other words, Mangum’s status offense fell within subsection (d), not (b), of § 13-3101(A)(6).
¶ 15 Related statutes in pari materia or subsections of a single statute must be “read together and harmonized to avoid rendering any word, clause or sentence superfluous.”
State v. Story,
¶ 16 Based on this statutory scheme and the clear, unambiguous wording of subsection (d), we agree with the state that the prohibited possessor charge on which Mangum was convicted is essentially a status offense, and at the time of his arrest, Mangum “was bound by his [as yet] unchallenged guilty plea [in justice court] and by the probation *170 imposed as a result of the plea.” At the time of his arrest and indictment on the prohibited possessor charge, Mangum had not yet contested, let alone successfully challenged on constitutional or any other grounds, his guilty plea and conviction on the misdemean- or domestic violence charge. Only later did that occur. Under these circumstances, as the state correctly notes, Mangum’s “domestic violence conviction enjoyed the [McCann] presumption of regularity throughout [his] probation term and until the [justice] court subsequently vacated the conviction.” Because Mangum was “at the time of [his weapons] possession serving a term of probation pursuant to a [domestic violence] conviction,” § 13-3101(A)(6)(d), the trial court did not err in denying his motion to dismiss the prohibited possessor charge, despite the justice court’s ultimately having vacated the underlying conviction on constitutional grounds before this case went to trial.
¶ 17 This conclusion, however, must be further reconciled with
McCann.
As noted earlier, the court there said that the state may use prior convictions as an element of a crime “only if constitutionally valid.”
¶ 18 McCann involved a charge of aggravated driving under the influence of an intoxicant (DUI), not a prohibited possessor charge or other status offense. The aggravated DUI charge in McCann included as an element, and therefore required the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, prior DUI convictions. See A.R.S. § 28-1383(A)(2). In contrast, the crux of a prohibited possessor charge under § 13-3101(A)(6)(d), unlike subsection (b), is not a prior conviction, but rather, the defendant’s probationary or other release status at the time of the weapons possession.
¶ 19 A pair of Hawaii eases illustrates this distinction. In
State v. Lobendahn,
¶20 Arizona’s aggravated DUI statute is similar in purpose and effect to Hawaii’s habitual DUI law. The court’s statement in
McCann
that “prior convictions may be used by the State only if constitutionally valid” was specifically made in the context of an aggravated DUI prosecution, in which the number of prior DUI convictions directly affects the classification of and sentencing for the repeated offense.
¶ 21 In light of the court’s limited holding and the context in which the court’s other statements in McCann were made, we do not believe the court there intended to dictate the outcome on the much different issue posed here or to encompass all situations in which a prior conviction’s existence is relevant only to establish one’s probationary status. Nor do we have any reason to believe that the court in McCann implicitly rejected the views of the United States Supreme Court and most state courts that have specifically addressed the precise issue we face in cases that involved prohibited possessor status offenses. See ¶¶ 22-25, 30-32, infra.
¶22 In sum,
McCann
does not compel dismissal of the prohibited possessor charge in this case. And dismissal would have been inconsistent with not only federal case law but also the majority view of other state courts. In
Lewis v. United States,
¶23 The Court in
Lends
noted that the federal firearms statute contained “[n]o exception ... for a person whose outstanding felony conviction ultimately might turn out to be invalid for any reason.”
Id.
at 62,
¶ 24
Lewis
is factually distinguishable from this case, involved a federal statute, and “is not binding upon” our interpretation of Arizona’s prohibited possessor laws.
State v. Portsche,
¶ 25 We find
Lewis
particularly persuasive for at least two reasons. First, just as “[t]he federal gun laws ... focus[ed] not on reliability, but on the mere fact of conviction, or even indictment, in order to keep firearms away from potentially dangerous persons,”
¶ 26 Our supreme court in
McCann
did not cite or address
Lewis,
having had no reason to do so. In a more recent case, however, the court found some support in
Lewis
for its holding that “a dismissed indictment, like a reversed conviction, does not disqualify a defendant from mandatory probation” under Proposition 200, codified as A.R.S. § 13-901.01.
State v. Gomez,
¶27 For present purposes, two things stand out in
Gomez
and distinguish it from this case. First,
Gomez
essentially involved the effect of a prior, but dismissed, indictment for sentencing purposes. Like
McCann, Gomez
did not involve a prohibited possessor status offense and did not address the issue posed here. Second, the focus of the court’s inquiry in
Gomez
was “the time of sentencing for the Proposition 200 drug offense.”
¶ 28 Although the court in
Gomez
did not cite or discuss
McCann,
it did refer to
Lewis
and expressed no disagreement with the Supreme Court’s analysis or conclusion.
¶29 Federal courts, of course, are bound to follow
Lewis
and have done so.
See, e.g., United States v. Padilla,
¶ 30 In addition, although some out-of-state cases arguably support Mangum’s position,
7
most state courts that have addressed issues similar to that presented here have followed the reasoning of
Lewis
and upheld prohibited possessor convictions even when the defendant’s felon status was based on a constitutionally infirm predicate conviction.
See, e.g., Clark v. State,
¶ 31 Most if not all of those cases involved state statutes that broadly define one’s pro *174 hibited possessor status based on prior felony convictions, as does § 13-3101(A)(6)(b), rather than on the more limited basis of release status, as does § 13-3101(A)(6)(d). Nonetheless, those cases support the trial court’s ruling and our conclusion here. Illustrative of the majority view is Clark, in which the Alaska court stated:
It appears to us that sound policy supports what we perceive to be the intent of the legislature____We see no reason why the legislature would want to encourage a person who has formerly been convicted of a felony to gamble by possessing a concealable firearm, hoping that if he or she is arrested for being a felon in possession that he or she can defend against that offense by having the former conviction set aside.
¶32 The out-of-state cases typically involved a scenario in which the defendant’s underlying conviction was reversed only after the prohibited possessor conviction. Here, in contrast, the justice court upheld Mangum’s challenge and vacated his underlying domestic violence conviction before Mangum was tried on or convicted of the prohibited possessor charge in this case. But we find such factual distinctions immaterial when, as here, the defendant’s prior conviction was intact at the time of the illegal possession of a weapon, and that prohibition remained “until the conviction [was] vacated” or the disability was relieved in some other fashion.
Lewis,
¶ 33
People v. Loomis,
¶ 34 As was true of the defendant in
Loom-is,
at the time of his arrest on the prohibited possessor charge, Mangum had not even challenged, let alone obtained reversal of, his conviction on the misdemeanor domestic violence charge. In short, based solely on Man-gum’s probationary status at the time of his
*175
weapons offense, Mangum’s “possession was unlawful and the subsequent reversal of the [underlying] conviction does not then render such possession lawful.”
Lobendahn,
II.
¶35 Our rejection of Mangum’s primary argument also leads us to summarily dispose of his other contentions. The trial court did not violate Mangum’s constitutional rights by failing to find that, but for the ineffective assistance of his counsel (IAC) in the underlying justice court proceedings, he would not have been on probation in July 2003. Nor did the court err by failing to dismiss this ease on that basis. As noted above, the invalidity of Mangum’s domestic violence conviction, regardless of the source or cause, is immaterial to the prohibited possessor charge here. Any IAC claims were raisable, and indeed were successfully urged, only in the justice court, where the ineffective assistance and domestic violence conviction occurred.
See
Ariz. R.Crim. P. 32.3, 32.4(a), 17 A.R.S. And appellate review of any justice court rulings generally is in superior court, not this court.
See
Ariz. Const, art. VI, § 16; A.R.S. §§ 22-371, 22-375;
State v. Holland,
¶ 36 The trial court also did not err in denying Mangum’s motion for judgment of acquittal pursuant to Rule 20, Ariz. R.Crim. P., 17 A.R.S., nor is the evidence insufficient to support the conviction. For reasons already explained, the state was not required to prove at trial that Mangum’s prohibited possessor status remained unchanged after July 2003. On the relevant triable issues, Mangum’s probation officer testified that, at the time he found weapons in Mangum’s possession, “[h]e was on probation for a domestic violence disorderly conduct [conviction].” The officer also testified without objection that, “[i]n domestic violence cases, there’s a statute that says they cannot have weapons” and that “in this case we are dealing with a domestic violence offense.” Viewed in the light most favorable to sustaining the conviction,
State v. Garza,
¶ 37 Finally, contrary to Mangum’s arguments, the trial court did not commit constitutional error by precluding any evidence at trial on the reversal or invalidity of his domestic violence conviction or by faffing to sua sponte instruct the jury “on his theory of the case regarding an invalid conviction.” We agree with the state that these claims also are “based on the faulty premise that the State was required to prove the ongoing validity of [Mangum’s] domestic violence conviction.” Once the trial court ruled on the purely legal issue raised in Mangum’s motion to dismiss the prohibited possessor charge based on the invalidity of the underlying conviction, a ruling we now uphold on appeal, any evidence, argument, or jury instructions on that issue at trial were properly precluded as irrelevant.
DISPOSITION
¶38 Mangum’s conviction, suspension of imposition of sentence, and placement on probation are affirmed.
Notes
. As one state court observed, the United States Supreme Court has found no federal due process violation in "allowing] a felon in possession charge to be based upon a constitutionally infirm prior conviction.”
Clark v. State,
. This case does not involve a defendant who attempted to collaterally attack the validity of a prior conviction alleged for sentence enhancement or other purposes.
See State ex rel. Collins v. Superior Court,
. At oral argument in this court, the state conceded that Mangum’s prior conviction technically was an element of the prohibited possessor charge under A.R.S. §§ 13 — 3101 (A)(6)(d) and 13-3102(A)(4).
See People v. Quintana,
. Mangum does not argue, and we do not find, that the pertinent statutes are unclear or reasonably susceptible to different interpretations. Therefore, the rule of lenity does not apply here, nor does Mangum argue otherwise.
See State v. Sanchez,
. That statute, enacted as part of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, prohibited any person who "has been convicted by a court of the United States or of a State ... of a felony” from possessing a firearm. The statute was repealed in 1986 by Pub.L. 99-308, § 104(b), 100 Stat. 459. The current federal firearms statute is codified at 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), with an exception set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20).
. The Court in
Lewis
rejected as "extreme” any argument (not made by the government in that case) that the federal statute proscribed firearms possession by “even a person whose predicate conviction in the interim had been finally reversed on appeal and thus no longer was outstanding.”
.
See People v. Quintana,
.
See also State v. Watie,