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REHAIF REVERSES UNSENTENCED-FELON-IN-POSSESSION CASE

Chris Davies pled guilty to a pair of Iowa felonies. Before he was sentenced, he was caught with a gun.

Last week, the 8th Circuit relied on Rehaif v. United States to reverse the 18 USC § 922(g) conviction for being a felon in possession of a gun.

Chris had argued that he wasn’t a felon, because he had not been sentenced for the Iowa felonies yet. The Circuit rejected that claim, holding he was convicted when his guilty plea was accepted.

But whether he knew he was a convicted felon was something else. The government argued Chris acknowledged when he pled guilty to the Iowa felonies that he understood that each carried a maximum sentence of up to five years. The government said that proved Chris knew he was in a class of people not allowed to have guns.

The 8th disagreed, holding that while Chris knew he had pled guilty to the Iowa felonies, the facts “do not show that he knew he had been convicted of the Iowa felonies. In other words, the facts indicate he knew the offenses to which he was pleading guilty would ultimately qualify him to be charged as a felon in possession of a firearm, but there is no evidence that he knew when he possessed the firearms… before his sentencing that he had been convicted of those crimes. Indeed, it seems reasonable that someone in Chris’s position, after pleading guilty, might nevertheless think he could possess firearms because he had not yet been sentenced.”

United States v. Davies, 2019 U.S.App.LEXIS 33483 (8th Cir. Nov. 8, 2019)

– Thomas L. Root