United States v. Fowler
| Jurisdiction | United States,Federal,Virginia |
| Parties | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, v. SEQUAN ANTHONY FOWLER, Defendant. |
| Decision Date | 18 January 2024 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Virginia |
| Docket Number | 1:23-cr-165 (LMB) |
Before the Court is a Motion to Dismiss the Indictment (“Motion”) filed by defendant Sequan Fowler (“defendant” or “Fowler”). In his Motion, Fowler argues that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which prohibits felons from possessing firearms, is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 142 S.Ct. 2111 (2022). For the reasons that follow, Fowler's Motion will be denied.[1]
On March 19,2020, officers from the Prince William County Police Department responded to the Country Inn and Suites in Woodbridge, Virginia, in response to a call about a shooting in progress.[2] Responding officers spoke with the hotel desk clerk who reported hearing gunfire and complaints of loud noises and the smell of marijuana coming from a room on the fourth floor. The officers approached the fourth floor room and, while standing by the door, overheard two male occupants discussing how much ammunition they had remaining and a firearm's slide being racked. When a woman opened the door to the hotel room, the officers ordered everyone out of the room and detained Fowler and several other occupants. In a protective sweep of the room, the officers located a firearm underneath the bed.[3] They obtained a search warrant to conduct a full search of the room and found another firearm in an air conditioning vent.[4] Both firearms had been reported stolen in Prince William County, Virginia. Subsequent DNA testing conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives revealed that defendant Sequan Fowler's DNA was present on the trigger, grip, and slide of the firearm recovered from underneath the bed.
On October 11, 2023, a grand jury returned an Indictment charging Fowler with possession of a firearm following a conviction punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year,[5] in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). [Dkt. No. 13].
Fowler argues that the Indictment should be dismissed because 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) is unconstitutional on its face and as applied to him because it violates the Second Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court in Bruen. [Dkt. No 24]. An indictment may be dismissed if the statute on which the indictment is premised is unconstitutional. United States v. Brown, 715 F.Supp.2d 688, 689 (E.D. Va. 2010); see also United States v. Riley, 2022 WL 7610264, at *3 (E.D. Va. Oct. 13,2022); Fed. R. Crim. P. 12.
Section 922(g)(1) makes it unlawful for a convicted felon to possess a firearm or ammunition. Specifically, the statute provides:
It shall be unlawful for any person-who has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;... to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.
Although Fowler attempts to capitalize on the rash of challenges to longstanding firearm restrictions in the wake of what other federal courts have characterized as an “unprecedented and singularly impractical” standard articulated in Bruen, [6] his Motion disregards binding Supreme Court and Fourth Circuit precedent and runs counter to the reasoning of over 300 federal courts-including several in this district-which have upheld § 922(g)(1) in the wake of Bruen.
The Second Amendment provides 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. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court cabined the right protected by the Second Amendment to that of “law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.” 554 U.S. 570, 635 (2008). Heller recognized that “[l]ike most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” id. at 626, and it clarified that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on the longstanding prohibitions on possession of firearms by felons,” Id. at 626-27, which the Court described as “presumptively lawful regulatory measures,” id. at 626-27, n.26. Two years later, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Supreme Court invalidated a handgun ban and several related city ordinances under the Second and Fourteenth Amendments but reaffirmed that its holding in Heller “did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons.” 561 U.S. 742,786 (2010) (citing Heller, 554 U.S. at 626-27).[7]
In response to the Supreme Court's decisions in Heller and McDonald, federal courts of appeals developed a two-step test to evaluate Second Amendment challenges to restrictions on firearms. This test was best described as a “history and means-end scrutiny framework,” which assessed: 1) whether “the challenged law regulated activity falling outside the scope of the right as originally understood” based on its historical meaning, and 2) “how close the law comes to the core of the Second Amendment right and the severity of the law's burden on that right” (the “means-end scrutiny prong”). See Bruen, 142 S.Ct. at 2126 (cleaned up). Fowler contends that the Supreme Court's decision in Bruen casts doubt on Congress's longstanding categorical regulations as to who may possess firearms, including felons like him, as well as the application of Heller and McDonald by federal courts. [Dkt. No. 24] at 2-4, 6.[8]
Bruen neither expressly overruled Heller nor invalidated Heller's or McDonald's statements about § 922(g)(1)'s presumptive validity; rather, it articulated a new two-step framework for considering constitutional challenges to firearm regulations, declining to endorse the history and means-end scrutiny framework employed by most courts of appeals after Heller, including the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. See Bruen, 142 S.Ct. at 2125-26. The Bruen Court observed that “[s]tep one of the predominant framework is broadly consistent with Heller, which demands a test rooted in the Second Amendment's text, as informed by history.” Id. at 2127. But the Court “decline[d] to adopt” the second step, holding that “Heller and McDonald do not support applying means-end scrutiny in the Second Amendment context.” Id. at 2126-27.
After Bruen, courts are to first consider whether “the Second Amendment's plain text covers an individual's conduct.” Id. at 2126.[9] If a court finds that the individual's conduct is, in fact, covered by the plain text of the Second Amendment, then the burden shifts to the Government to “demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Id. at 2130. The Government need only identify “a well-established and representative historical analogue” of the challenged law, “not a historical twin.” Id. at 2133 (emphasis omitted). “Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation's historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual's conduct falls outside the Second Amendment's ‘unqualified command.'” Id. at 2126 (citing Konigsberg v. State Bar, of Cal., 366 U.S. 36,49 n. 10 (1961)); see also Maryland Shall Issue, Inc, v. Moore,F.4th, 2023 WL 8043827, at *2-3 (4th Cir. Nov. 21,2023) ().[10] In articulating this standard, the Bruen Court relied on Heller's statements about the limits of the Second Amendment, emphasizing that the right to bear arms is limited to “lawabiding, responsible citizens.” Bruen, 142 S.Ct. at 2131, 2156; see also Id. at 2122,2133-34, 2138, 2150 (referencing “law-abiding” citizens). Moreover, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the presumptive lawfulness of “longstanding prohibitions” relating to firearms. Id. at 2133-34 (); see also Id. at 2157 (Alito, J., concurring) (); Id. at 2162 (Kavanaugh, J., joined by Roberts, C.J., concurring) ; id. at 2189 (Breyer, J., joined by Sotomayor and Kagan, JJ., dissenting) (). “[Six] of the nine Justices pointed out that Bruen was not casting any doubt on [the presumptive lawfulness of longstanding prohibitions of firearms by convicted felons] language in Heller.” See Vincent v. Garland, 80 F.4th 1197,1201 (10th Cir. 2023) (Bacharach, J.).
Because Bruen reiterates the prescriptions of Heller, it neither invalidated nor overruled Heller's language that “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons” are “presumptively lawful.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 626-27 & n.26. In his Reply, Fowler categorizes Heller's discussion of felon-in-possession laws as “dicta,” and invites the Court to disregard it, [Dkt. No. 31] at 2; however, he provides no authority from the Fourth Circuit describing Heller's language as such, and the...
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