United States v. MinorUnited States v. Minor
Karen A. Pickett, with whom Pickett Law Offices, P.C. appeared on brief, for appellant.
Benjamin M. Block, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Donald E. Clark, Acting United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee.
I.
We first discuss the procedural path leading to Minor‘s trial and the largely undisputed facts presented to the jury. We then describe the parties’ debate concerning how best to apply Rehaif‘s holding to adjudicating a charge that a person knowingly violated
A.
Minor‘s federal case began with a November 2016 interview with members of the Auburn, Maine Police Department,1 in which Minor told the officers that he owned “a Lorcin black firearm,” which the officers later seized. In February 2017, a federal grand jury charged Minor under
While his appeal from that conviction was pending, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Rehaif construing
The government urged the court to adopt an even narrower view of the requisite mens rea. It argued, in essence, that it need only prove that Minor knew “the features” of his past offense that rendered it a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, even if he did not know that, because of those features, the offense was indeed a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. Those features were: that he had been convicted of assault, that the conviction subjected him to incarceration for one year or less, that the conviction was for causing bodily injury or offensive physical contact to another person, and that that person was his spouse at the time.
The district court ultimately accepted the government‘s view of the mens rea requirement. As a result, the court declined Minor‘s repeated request that the court instruct the jurors that they needed to find that Minor knew that his prior offense was a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.
Minor‘s case proceeded to his second trial, at which he stipulated to most elements of the offense charged. He agreed that the gun was recovered from his home, was operable, and had been moved in interstate commerce, and that he had “knowingly possessed” it. Minor also stipulated to several details regarding his prior Maine assault conviction, including that the victim named in the 2009 assault complaint was his spouse at the time. As Minor maintains on appeal, his defense homed in on what he knew about his prior conviction, since he had “stipulated to literally every other aspect of the crime.”
The government then introduced state-court records of Minor‘s prior offense. These records show that Minor was initially charged with a “Domestic Violence Assault” that occurred on August 23, 2009. The complaint alleges that the charged conduct was directed at “Betty Minor.” It then stated, “This conduct was committed against a family or household member as defined by [Maine law].” The judicial advice-of-rights video played at Minor‘s state-court arraignment on the charge of Domestic Violence Assault instructed him:
If you are convicted of certain specific crimes, you may lose your right to purchase, possess, or own a firearm or any type of ammunition. These specific crimes include offenses that involve the use of force, or even the attempt to use physical force, or offensive physical contact, or the use, or threat to use, a deadly weapon and . . . and the victim was either your spouse [or another specified relation]. The judge can tell you whether you are charged with such a crime. If you are, I would strongly suggest you speak with an attorney before entering a plea of guilty or no contest.
In the wake of that admonition, Minor refused to plead guilty to the domestic violence charge on which he was arraigned. Subsequently, the state prosecutor successfully moved to amend the complaint to reduce the charge to “Assault, Class D” and to strike the sentence stating, “This conduct was committed against a family or household member . . . .” The docket entries characterized the revision as a motion to amend “to delete DV reference.” The revised charge thus eliminated any express
In his own trial testimony in 2020 on the federal gun-possession charge, Minor described his understanding of his 2010 state-court conviction: “I was convicted of a simple assault.” But, he said, “I wasn‘t convicted of a domestic. . . . They removed any language . . . that it was a domestic.” Minor then related that he had told his prior counsel, “I want to make sure I‘m not pleading to a domestic,” “because it would have meant that I couldn‘t have firearms.” Minor testified that he believed he could possess a firearm and that this result had been arranged in his plea, but the court struck those answers on the government‘s objection, and it denied on relevance and unfair-prejudice grounds Minor‘s counsel‘s entreaty for further inquiry into Minor‘s belief that he could own a firearm.
Minor also sought to introduce testimony from George Hess, the lawyer who had represented him in the Maine state proceedings. As proffered, Hess would purportedly have testified about Minor‘s desire “to possess a firearm” and that Minor was “unwilling to plead to a domestic violence offense.” Minor further proffered that Hess would testify to representations made to him by Assistant District Attorney Nick Worden, who prosecuted Minor‘s misdemeanor. Specifically, ADA Worden allegedly told Hess “that Mr. Minor would still be able to possess a firearm if he pled guilty to the Class D simple assault.” The district court excluded this evidence on relevance grounds.
B.
Before trial, Minor sought jury instructions on the knowledge requirement imposed by Rehaif. He requested the jury be instructed that: “In order to find the Defendant guilty of the charged offense you must find beyond a reasonable doubt that he acted knowingly in possessing the firearm and that he knew that he belonged to the relevant category of persons barred from possessing a firearm.” Later, Minor revised the latter portion of the request so that he sought instructions requiring the jury to find, for a guilty verdict, “that at the time [Minor] possessed the firearm, he knew that he had been previously convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” and “that he knew that he belonged to the status of individuals convicted of a crime of domestic violence as defined by federal law.” Minor later supplemented the “as defined by federal law” portion of that request by asking that the court additionally read out the statutory definition of “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence,” which states:
[A] ‘misdemeanor crime of domestic violence’ means an offense that (i) is a misdemeanor under Federal, State, or Tribal law; and (ii) has, as an element, the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon, committed by a current or former spouse . . . of the victim.
The district court denied all of Minor‘s requested versions of the Rehaif instruction and ultimately instructed the jury that to find Minor guilty, it must find:
that Willie Richard Minor knew that he had been convicted of [the specified Maine assault Class D offense], that he knew the conviction subjected him to incarceration of up to 364 days, that he knew the conviction was for causing bodily injury or offensive physical contact to another person, and that he knew the victim of the crime was his spouse at the time.3
At the government‘s request, in light of Minor‘s testimony, the district court аlso charged the jury that Minor‘s “belief that he could possess a firearm is not itself a defense.” The jury returned a guilty verdict, and the district court subsequently sentenced Minor to time served with three years’ supervised released. Minor timely appealed.
II.
Minor argues that the district court misapprehended Rehaif‘s requirement throughout the proceedings below, leading to3 his being convicted on insufficient evidence and improper jury instructions, among other purported errors. We review this preserved contention of legal error de novo. See United States v. Norris, 21 F.4th 188, 193-95 (1st Cir. 2021) (applying de novo standard of review to preserved challenges to sufficiency of the evidence and jury instructions). To conduct this review, we first address the application of Rehaif to
A.
In Rehaif, the Supreme Court held that, “in a prosecution under
The defendant in Rehaif had been charged with unlawful possession due to the prohibited status specified in
Minor argues that whether he is properly subject to the prohibited status in
Had Minor been convicted as originally charged for domestic violence assault under Maine law, none of this likely would have mattered because it would have been obvious that he knew that he had been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. But federal law‘s classification of other misdemeanors i.e., simple assault as crimes of domestic violence is “quite complex.” United States v. Triggs, 963 F.3d 710, 715 (7th Cir. 2020). After all, it took three split United States Supreme Court opinions two decided long after Minor pled in a Maine court to establish the contours of how a simple assault can constitute a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” under
Nor does a finding that a defendant is aware of the component parts of his prohibited status necessarily mean that he is aware of the implication of the sum of those components. In Rehaif, the defendant clearly knew that he was in the United States, and he knew all the facts that rendered thаt presence unlawful. See 139 S. Ct. at 2201-02 (Alito, J., dissenting). Yet the Court found that the government must show that he knew the legal import of those facts, i.e., that his presence was unlawful. Id. at 2198 (majority op.).
For the foregoing reasons, Minor‘s reliance on Rehaif seems persuasive. The government and our dissenting colleague nevertheless argue that we should rule
B.
The government urges us to find that Minor need only have known of “the features” of his past offense that rendered it “within the scope of”
In Staples, a defendant had been charged with possessing an unregistered machinegun in violation of the National Firearms Act,
Liparota addressed a statute that criminalized the unauthorized use of food stamps. 471 U.S. at 420. The Court there held that the offense required proving that the defendant knew his use was unauthorized, but not that the defendant “had knowledge of specific regulations governing food stamp acquisition or possession.” Id. at 434. The Court has since characterized this holding in varying ways. It has said Liparota required that a defendant “kn[ew] of the facts that made the use of the food stamps unauthorized.” Elonis v. United States, 575 U.S. 723, 736 (2015). More recently, the Rehaif Court cited Liparota as an example of a mens rea requirement as to a collateral mistake of law, noting: “We held [in Liparota] that the statute required scienter not only in respect to the defendant‘s use of food stamps, but also in respect to whether the food stamps were used in a ‘manner not authorized by the statute or regulations.‘” Rehaif, 139 S. Ct. at 2198 (quoting Liparota, 471 U.S. at 425 n.9).
Essentially ignoring both how the mens rea issue arose in Staples and Rehaif‘s explanation of Liparota, the government argues that the district court‘s approach here, as captured in the jury instructions, sufficiently required the jury to find that Minor knew “the facts” that made his past offense a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” even if he did not need to know that those facts added up to a particular result. Specifically, the district court requirеd the jury to find that Minor knew: (1) “that he had been convicted of [the prior offense]“; (2) that “the conviction subjected him to incarceration of up to 364 days“; (3) that “the conviction was for causing bodily injury or offensive physical contact to another person“; and (4) that
This approach reflects that taken by our dissenting colleague and by the majority of an Eleventh Circuit panel in United States v. Johnson, 981 F.3d 1171, 1182 (11th Cir. 2020), which similarly considered an appeal from a
The defect in the application of this maxim to this case rests in the failure to pay heed both to the express requirement in
Our own past precedent supports this conclusion. In United States v. Guzmán-Merced, 984 F.3d 18, 21 (1st Cir. 2020), we held that in order to prove a knowing violation of
We have considered on our own accord trying to distinguish Rehaif from the instant case based on the fact that the prohibited status at issue in Rehaif was “being an alien . . . unlawfully in the United States,”
In sum, unless we are to engage in result-driven interpretative gymnastics, Rehaif effectively controls our treatment
C.
Just as Rehaif makes it not quite so easy to convict some persons under
Even as to simple assault convictions, as a practical matter, few defendants will be able to marshal a credible case for finding that they did not know that their conviction placed them in a category of persons who could not possess a firearm. The government can rely on circumstantial evidence to prove the requisite knowledge. Rehaif, 139 S. Ct. at 2198 (quoting Staples, 511 U.S. at 615, n.11).
Notably, a
Minor himself only claims to have lacked the requisite knowledge upon pleading guilty to simple assault because of the
presumably unusual combination of erroneous advice given by a prosecuting attorney and an amendment of the complaint to drop references to domestic violence.
Nor would it do any good for a defendant to say that he did not know his conviction was a “misdemeanor” because he believed his conviction rendered him eligible for a lengthier sentence. Such a mistake would only place him within the category of
We do agree with the government -- indeed, we have previously said -- that it is no defense for those charged with violating
Nor is there any reason to think that Rehaif‘s construction of
For all these reasons, our interpretation of what
III.
Having determined that a conviction under sections
A.
We first consider Minor‘s challenge to the sufficiency of the government‘s evidence. The government does not dispute that this challenge was preserved. Accordingly, we review the claim de novo, evaluating the evidence “in the light most favorable to the verdict” to decide “whether ‘that evidence, including all plausible inferences drawn therefrom, would allow a rational factfinder to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the charged crime.‘” United States v. Torres Monje, 989 F.3d 25, 27 (1st Cir. 2021) (quoting United States v. Santos-Rivera, 726 F.3d 17, 23 (1st Cir. 2013)). In so doing, “we do not view each piece of evidence separately, re-weigh the evidence, or second-guess the jury‘s credibility calls.” United States v. Acevedo-Hernandez, 898 F.3d 150, 161 (1st Cir. 2018).
On that element, the government introduced the Maine state court records, which included the initially charged offense of “domestic violence assault” against Betty Minor. According to the transcript of Minor‘s arraignment on that initial charge, which the government also introduced, Minor testified that he understood he had been charged with “domestic violence assault,” that it was for “intentionally, knowingly or recklessly caus[ing] bodily injury or offensivе physical contact to Betty . . . Minor,” and that the alleged assault was “committed against a family or household member.” The judicial advice-of-rights video played at this arraignment further informed Minor that he could lose the right to possess firearms for certain offenses involving force against a spouse, and Minor later testified in his federal trial that he had understood this guidance. Thereafter, the motion to amend the complaint reduced the charge to simple assault and specifically struck the language alleging that “[t]his conduct was committed against a family or household member as defined by [Maine law],” but it did not disturb the allegation that Minor “intentionally, knowingly or recklessly cause[d] bodily injury or offensive physical contact to Betty Minor.”
The unusual sequence of events leading to Minor‘s state-court plea certainly provides him with a strong basis on which to claim that he did not know that even the reduced assault charge marked him as one convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. But having a strong argument does not mean that the other side‘s evidence is not minimally sufficient. Accordingly, because the records presented at trial do not demonstrate that the amended complaint removed the name of the victim, because Minor has stipulated that this victim was his spоuse at the time, and because Minor had been informed of and understood the risk of losing his rights for offenses involving the use of force against a spouse, a jury could have plausibly inferred from this evidence that Minor also knew that his conviction on the assault charge, even as amended, was itself also a conviction for a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.
While Minor testified in his federal trial that he “wasn‘t convicted of a domestic,” that he believed his spouse‘s name had also been struck from the complaint, and that he understood that the charge had been pleaded down, a rational factfinder could nonetheless discredit such countervailing testimony. In light of our standard of review, we “resolve all credibility disputes in [the government‘s] favor,” and must “choose the inference ‘most compatible’ with the jury‘s guilty verdict when confronted with competing inferences.” Acevedo-Hernandez, 898 F.3d at 161 (quoting United States v. Acosta-Colon, 741 F.3d 179, 191 (1st Cir. 2013)). Accordingly, we find that the government presented sufficient evidence for a rational factfinder to find Minor possessed a firearm while knowing that he had been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.
B.
We next apply our view of the scienter-of-status requirement to Minor‘s preserved challenge to the jury instructions. See United States v. Godin, 534 F.3d 51, 61 (1st Cir. 2008) (“[A] court may still find that an erroneous jury instruction constitutes reversible error after finding that [the] evidence was sufficient to support the verdict.” (citing United States v. Baldyga, 233 F.3d 674, 682 n.8 (1st Cir. 2000))). Minor contends that the instructions “omitted or materially altered [an] element[] of [his] offense,” and he preserved this objection by renewing it after the trial court charged the jury, so we review this challenge de novo. United States v. Ford, 821 F.3d 63, 67-68 (1st Cir. 2016).
As discussed, the district court‘s instructions tracked the approach the government now advances on appeal: that Minor needed to know only the features of his prior conviction that rendered it a qualifying domestic violence misdemeanor. Accordingly, as to the scienter-of-status element, the jury was required to find only that:
Willie Richard Minor knew that he had been convicted of [the specified Maine assault Class D offense], that he knew the conviction subjected him to incarceration of up to 364 days, that he knew the conviction was for causing bodily injury or offensive physical contact to another person, and that he knew the victim of the crime was his spouse at the time.
In giving this instruction, the district court rejected Minor‘s request to instruct the jury that a guilty verdict required finding “that at the time [Minor] possessed the firearm, he knew that he had been previously convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.” For the reasons stated above, the court erred when it allowed the jurors to convict without finding that Minor knew that his state-court conviction placed him in the relevant category of persons barred from possessing a firearm, i.e., persons convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence.
Having found error, we consider whether it was harmless. Ford, 821 F.3d at 68. “A jury instruction error is not harmless if ‘the record contains evidence that could rationally lead to a contrary finding’ in the absence of the error.” Id. (quoting Godin, 534 F.3d at 56). Thus, an instructional error “on an element of the offense can be harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, if, given the factual circumstances of the case, the jury could not have found the defendant guilty without making the proper factual finding as to that element.” United States v. McLellan, 959 F.3d 442, 466 (1st Cir. 2020) (quoting United States v. Doherty, 867 F.2d 47, 58 (1st Cir. 1989)). The government has presented no argument that the jury instructions here, even if erroneous, were nonetheless harmless -- and for good reason. Minor testified directly to his belief that he “wasn‘t convicted of a domestic.” And given the amendment of the assault complaint and the alleged information conveyed to Minor, it was certainly quite possible that a properly instructed jury could rationally find that he did not have the necessary mens rea. The instructional error was thus not harmless, so Minor‘s conviction must be vacated and his case remanded for a new trial. See Ford, 821 F.3d at 68.
C.
We turn finаlly to Minor‘s claims of evidentiary error. While we have already determined that Minor is entitled to a new trial, these evidentiary disputes are likely to reoccur below, so we resolve them now to provide clarity for the further proceedings. Minor points to two categories of evidence excluded by the court below. First, the court barred Minor “from testifying to what he believed about whether he was allowed to possess a gun after the simple assault conviction.” Second, the court denied Minor‘s entreaties to present evidence of an “entrapment by estoppel” defense, including testimony from his
1.
The government‘s primary argument below for barring Minor from testifying to his belief about whether he could lawfully possess firearms was that such evidence would be irrelevant because the government was not required to prove Minor knew his possession was unlawful. See
Minor counters, as he did below, that even if his belief as to the lawfulness of his gun possession would not represent a defense in itself, this belief is nonetheless relevant because it bears indirectly but probatively on the appropriate mens rea inquiry -- that is, it tends to demonstrate that Minor did not know he had been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. This tendency can only be shown if Minor understood the relationship between a domestic violence conviction and the ability to possess firearms. As we have explained, Minor testified that he did understand this relationship at the time of his prior conviction.
This argument for relevance further relies on the legal premise that scienter of status for
Finding relevance does not, however, end the inquiry into this testimony, because the district court also found that this evidence would be unfairly prejudicial. See United States v. Centeno-Gonzalez, 989 F.3d 36, 53 (1st Cir. 2021) (“Even when evidence is proffered by the defense, a district court maintains ‘general discretion to exclude otherwise relevant evidence “if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.“‘” (quoting United States v. DeCologero, 530 F.3d 36, 60 (1st Cir. 2008))). Specifically, the district court explained to Minor‘s counsel that soliciting this testimony would be:
an invitation at that point to jury nullification because it‘s not an element of the crime, and the Government has to prove the elements of the crime. And you‘re able to challenge all of th[os]e things, including what he believed about the nature of his conviction, but what you‘re not able to do is put in that he thinks that he was allowed to have a gun because that can only be appealing to sympathy and jury nullification.
We do not doubt that the proffered testimony might cause some prejudice. But, the court to date has conducted this balancing with one empty scale, as it incorrectly understood the testimony to have no relevance and thus no probative value. So,
2.
Minor also challenges the district court‘s decision barring him from introducing certain testimony from his state-court counsel Hess about representations purportedly made by ADA Worden, the Maine prosecutor of Minor‘s assault charge.4 The district court ruled that this proffered evidence would be irrelevant because any representations by ADA Worden would not give rise to a valid entrapment-by-estoppel defense, Minor‘s only argued-for basis for this evidence.5 On appeal, Minor sets aside the argument that he is entitled to present an entrapment-by-estoppel defense and hangs his case for presenting the proffered evidence instead on its relevance for his scienter of status. While Minor did not argue precisely this basis for the proffered evidence below, the government has not argued that Minor waived his argument. Moreover, the identical issue will most certainly arise afresh at any new trial. We therefore proceed to consider his argument on appeal for the prudential purpose of providing guidance in subsequent proceedings below.
The government relies on its reading of the scienter-of-status requirement to contend that whatever ADA Worden may have told Minor about his ability to possess firearms is irrelevant, reasoning that “the prosecutor‘s purported misstatement would not have deprived Minor of any of the knowledge about his conviction that would place him in the category of a domestic violence misdemeanant.” But we have determined that the mens rea element for proving a knowing violation of
Thus, while it may be true that ADA Worden‘s representations would not have changed Minor‘s awareness that his prior conviction involved the use of force or that the victim was his spouse, such representations may very well have borne on whether Minor knew that the conviction qualified as a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence even in the wake of the amendment dropping the so-named charge. If Minor knew that a domestic violence conviction would
We therefore find that the proffered evidence of representations made by ADA Worden in discussions leading up to Minor‘s 2010 conviction would be relevant to Minor‘s knowledge that he belonged in the category of persons barred from possessing firearms, and that excluding such evidence solely on lack-of-relevance grounds would be an abuse of discretion. In so finding, however, we express no view on any other arguments against the admissibility of such evidence that have not been presented to us.
IV.
For the foregoing reasons, we vacate Minor‘s conviction under sections
- DISSENTING OPINION FOLLOWS -
LYNCH, Circuit Judge, dissenting. With respect, I dissent. The majority misreads Rehaif v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 2191 (2019) and other binding Supreme Court cases. The majority‘s erroneous decision creates a circuit split. It will have the unfortunate consequence of impairing efforts to prevent instances of domestic violence within thе jurisdictions which comprise the First Circuit.
In 1996, Congress expanded the federal firearm prohibition to include persons convicted of “a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.”
Defendant Willie Richard Minor‘s criminal history reflects several instances of
At the trial, Minor had admitted he knowingly possessed the firearm. He also had admitted he knew he previously was convicted of misdemeanor assault under Maine law, and the victim was his then-wife. Acknowledging, as it must, that this is sufficient evidence to support Minor‘s section
I dissent.
I.
The district court had instructed as to Rehaif‘s knowledge-of-status element that the jury must find, as it did, that Minor knew: (1) “he had been convicted of [the state misdemeanor offense]“; (2) “the conviction subjected him to incarceration of up to 364 days“; (3) “the conviction was for causing bodily injury or offensive physical contact to another person“; and (4) “the victim of the crime was his spouse at the time.” The majority holds this was insufficient, and that the district court was required further to instruct the jury, as requested by Minor, that it must find Minor knew his Maine violent misdemeanor against his then-wife specifically qualified as a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” under
The question ultimately is whether “the instructions adequately illuminate the law applicable to the controlling issues in the case without unduly complicating matters or misleading the jury.” United States v. DeStefano, 59 F.3d 1, 3 (1st Cir. 1995). The district court‘s instructions did exactly this and no more was needed.
A.
Rehaif‘s knowledge-of-status element was substantially incorporated into the charge as rendered. I begin with the definition of the relevant status, i.e., “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.”
domestic violence,” to determine the elements of the offense Minor had to be aware of.
For unlawful possession purposes, Congress defined “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” as any misdemeanor under state or federal law that “has, as an element, the use or attempted use of physical force” and is “committed by a current or former spouse, parent, or guardian of the victim.”
The Court in Hayes went on to clarify that these elements are satisfied so long as the government “charge[s] and prove[s] a prior conviction that was, in fact, for an offense . . . committed by the defendant against a spouse or other domestic victim.” Id. at 421 (ellipses in original) (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court cited the law‘s legislative history in support, explaining that “[c]onstruing [section] 922(g)(9) to exclude the domestic abuser convicted under a generic use-of-force statute (one that does not designate a domestic relationship as an element of the offense) would frustrate Congress’ manifest purpose.” Id. at 426-27; see also id. at 427
Seven years later, the Supreme Court upheld the application of
Rehaif did not overrule these precedents; rather, it added a knowledge-of-status element. The precise holding in Rehaif requires the jury to find only “that the defendant knew he possessed a firearm and thаt he knew he belonged to the relevant category of persons barred from possessing a firearm.” 139 S. Ct. at 2200; see also Wooden v. United States, 142 S. Ct. 1063, 1076 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (“The deeply rooted presumption of mens rea generally requires the Government to prove the defendant‘s mens rea with respect to each element of a federal offense, unless Congress plainly provides otherwise.” (citing Rehaif, 139 S. Ct. at 2195)).
The district court here properly instructed the jury that it must find Minor knew the elements of his prior offense (including what the majority calls “collateral legal issues“) that rendered him a domestic violence misdemeanant, i.e., that he previously was convicted of a misdemeanor, and that the conviction was for causing bodily injury to his then-wife. See Hayes, 555 U.S. at 421; see also United States v. Johnson, 981 F.3d 1171, 1182 (11th Cir. 2020) (“[Under Rehaif,] the defendant must have known that he was convicted of a misdemeanor, and he must have known the facts that made that crime qualify as a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.“).
Contrary to Minor‘s argument, this charge did not “t[ake] away the jury‘s ability to consider whether Mr. Minor acted with the requisite [knowledge].” The instructions appropriately set forth the elements of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence,” and asked whether Minor was aware of those elements.11 Cf. Elonis v. United States, 575 U.S. 723, 735 (2015) (“[A] defendant generally must ‘know the facts that make his conduct fit
the definition of the offense.‘” (quoting Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600, 607 n.3 (1994))); Liparota v. United States, 471 U.S. 419, 434 (1985) (“To prove that petitioner knew that his acquisition or possession of food stamps was unauthorized, for example, the Government need not show that he had knowledge of specific regulations governing food stamp acquisition or possession . . . . Rather, as in any other criminal prosecution requiring mens rea, the Government may prove by reference to facts and circumstances surrounding the case that petitioner knew that his conduct was unauthorized or illegal.“).
B.
The majority incorrectly holds -- in the same breath that it acknowledges ignorance of the law is no defense -- that the jury should have been required to find further that Minor knew the “legal import” of his prior state conviction for unlawful possession purposes. In support, the majority states that the Rehaif Court treated the prohibited status specified in
The majority misreads Rehaif. The Court had “express[ed] no view about what precisely the [jury must find as to] a defendant‘s knowledge of status in respect to other [section] 922(g) provisions not at issue [in that case],” noting the dissent‘s criticism of applying this rule to the other statuses listed in
The majority‘s position as to
within the definition of “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” set forth in
i.
Supreme Court precedent dictates that a defendant typically is charged only with knowing “the facts that make his conduct fit the definition of the offense,” and not “that those facts give rise to a crime.” Elonis, 575 U.S. at 735 (quoting Staples, 511 U.S. at 608 n.3). Yet the majority‘s unfortunate holding will require the government to prove in a
The majority tries to avoid this reasoning by misreading Liparota v. United States, 471 U.S. 419. The Court in Liparota held that the offense of “knowingly us[ing], transfer[ing], acquir[ing], alter[ing], or possess[ing] [Food Stamps] in any manner not authоrized by [law]” required proof the defendant knew his use of food stamps was unauthorized. Id. at 420, 423-25. The Court there clarified that the government could establish such knowledge “by reference to facts and circumstances surrounding the case,” and that the defendant need not have “knowledge of specific regulations governing food stamp acquisition or possession.” Id. at 434. The Rehaif majority relied on Liparota for the premise that a criminal defendant can be charged with knowledge of certain collateral legal matters without violating the maxim that ignorance of the law is no defense, 139 S. Ct. at 2198, and the Court in Elonis construed Liparota as requiring “knowledge of the facts that made the use of the food stamps unauthorized,” 575 U.S. at 736.
After Liparota,13 the Supreme Court considered in Staples whether there was a knowledge element in the offense of unlawful possession of an unregistered machinegun, and what proof the element would require. 511 U.S. at 602. The Court held there was, stating the government must prove the defendant knew only that “the weapon he possessed had the characteristics that brought
it within the statutory definition of a machinegun.” Id. at 602. The Court did not hold the defendant needed to know the statutory definition of a machinegun. Id. at 619; see also id. at 622 n.3 (Ginsburg, J., concurring) (“The mens rea presumption requires knowledge only of the facts that make the defendant‘s conduct illegal, lest it conflict with the related presumption . . . that, ordinarily, ‘ignorance of the law or a mistake of law is no defense to criminal prosecution.‘” (quoting Cheek v. United States, 498 U.S. 192, 1999 (1991))).
The majority contends Rehaif‘s reading of Liparota required the government to prove, and the district court to have instructed the jury it must find, that Minor knew his prior state conviction qualified specifically as a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence under federal law. This is incorrect. The correct approach to the knowledge-of-status element under the precedents just described is the one taken by the Eleventh Circuit in United States v. Johnson, 981 F.3d 1171.
In Johnson, the defendant was found guilty of violating
In line with Rehaif and the other controlling Supreme Court law, the court then held that
a person knows he is a domestic-violence misdemeanant, for Rehaif purposes, if he knows all the following: (1) that he was convicted of a misdemeanor crime, (2) that to be convicted of that crime, he must have engaged in at least “the slightest offensive touching,” United States v. Castleman, 572 U.S. 157, 163 (2014) (internal citations omitted), and (3) that the victim of his misdemeanor crime was, as relevant here, his wife.
Johnson, 981 F.3d at 1175. The defendant in Johnson, just as Minor, knew these material facts, so the court affirmed his conviction and sentence.
This case is distinguishable from our decisions in United States v. Guzmán-Merced, 984 F.3d 18 (1st Cir. 2020) and United States v. Patrone, 985 F.3d 81 (1st Cir. 2021) upon which the majority relies. The question in both these cases was whether there was a “reasonable probability” the defendant “would not have pled guilty had he been advised of th[e] essential [mens rea] element of the government‘s burden of proof,” Guzmán-Merced, 984 F.3d at 19; see also Patrone, 985 F.3d at 83, not what was required to prove the essential mens rea element.14
This court vacated the defendant‘s guilty plea, conviction, and sentence in Guzmán-Merced because it found the record lacking as to whether the defendant knew he previously was convicted of felonies as required for conviction under
in prison. The doubt was because the defendant had not served any time in prison for his prior offenses, he was eighteen years old when convicted, and “he ha[d] a limited education and diagnosed learning disabilities.” Guzmán-Merced, 984 F.3d at 20. Here, the district court‘s instructions did not leave room for such doubt. The charge required the jury to determine whether Minor knew the material elements (collateral legal issues and otherwise) that made his prior state conviction a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. The district court asked the jury
ii.
As the majority admits, the definition of “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” is “quite complex.” The jury here was properly instructed, and found beyond a reasonable doubt, that Minor knew he had been convicted of a crime of violence, to wit: assault; that the crime was a misdеmeanor; that the person he assaulted was his wife; and thus, that he knew he had been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. The majority rules this was not enough, and that the instructions had to provide Minor knew more than that.17 The majority‘s rule risks rendering
The “practical considerations” discussed in Hayes also undercut the majority‘s reasoning.18 As the Court acknowledged,
Congress extended the federal firearm prohibition to domestic violence misdemeanants to “keep[] firearms out of the hands of domestic abusers” because “[f]irearms and domestic strife are a potentially deadly combination nationwide.” 555 U.S. at 426-27; see also Voisine, 136 S. Ct. at 2281 (“Congress passed [section] 922(g)(9) to take guns out of the hands of abusers convicted under the misdemeanor assault laws then in general use in the States.“); Kanter v. Barr, 919 F.3d 437, 466 (7th Cir. 2020) (Barrett, J., dissenting) (“‘[N]o one doubts that the goal of [section] 922(g)(9), preventing armed mayhem, is an important governmental objective’ and ‘[b]oth logic and data establish a substantial relation between [section] 922(g)(9) and this objective.‘” (quoting United States v. Skoien, 614 F.3d 638, 642 (7th Cir. 2010) (en banc) and citing id. at 644 (“[N]o matter how you slice these numbers,
II.
I dissent.
Notes
First, that Willie Richard Minor had been convicted as charged in the superseding indictment of assault Class D in the Maine Superior Court on June 14, 2010.
Second, that the victim of that crime was Willie Richard Minor‘s spouse at the time. Minor has stipulated that he and Bettyann Minor were married from June 8, 2008, until October 4, 2016, and that the victim listed in the complaint filed on October 14, 2009, Betty Minor, was his spouse at the time.
testimony by Attorney George Hess that with respect to the underlying state misdemeanor crime that Assistant DA Nicholas Worden said to him that if Mr. Minor pleaded down to the simple assault rather than the domestic violence assault under state law that he would still be able to possess a firearm even under federal law.