United States v. Minor

• Decision Date: 11 April 2022
• Docket Number: 20-1903
• Citation: 31 F.4th 9
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Willie Richard MINOR, Defendant, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

31 F.4th 9

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,

v.Willie Richard MINOR, Defendant, Appellant.

No. 20-1903

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

April 11, 2022

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.

Before Lynch, Thompson, and Kayatta, Circuit Judges.

KAYATTA, Circuit Judge.

A jury convicted Willie Minor under 18 U.S.C. § 924(a)(2) of knowingly violating 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), which prohibits nine categories of persons from possessing a firearm. On appeal, Minor asserts that the proceedings below were tainted by a series of errors relating to the mens rea required to establish a knowing violation of section 922(g). In Rehaif v. United States, ––– U.S. ––––, 139 S. Ct. 2191, 2200, 204 L.Ed.2d 594 (2019), the Supreme Court held that convictions under section 924(a)(2) for knowingly violating section 922(g) require "the Government [to] prove both that the defendant knew he possessed a firearm and that he knew he belonged to the relevant category of persons barred from possessing a firearm." The "relevant category" in this instance is the category of persons who have been convicted of "a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence." 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9). The government charged Minor with belonging to this category based on his 2010 no-contest plea to a simple assault under Maine law, which he entered after refusing to plead guilty to a charge of domestic violence assault. But because the jury was allowed to convict Minor of knowingly violating section 922(g)(9) without finding that he knew that his assault conviction placed him in the category of persons convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence, we vacate his conviction and offer further guidance on related issues to be addressed on remand.

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 section 922(g)(9), which effectively sets the stage for the issues raised in this appeal.

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 sections 924(a)(2) and 922(g)(9) with possession of a firearm by a person who had previously been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. The predicate offense supporting Minor's prohibited status is a June 2010 Maine conviction for Assault, Class D, committed against Minor's then-spouse. Minor was convicted on the federal possession charge after a trial in December 2017.

While his appeal from that conviction was pending, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Rehaif construing sections 924(a)(2) and 922(g) to require the prosecution to show that the defendant knew he belonged to the relevant category of persons prohibited from possessing a gun (thus articulating what we have called the "scienter-of-status" requirement, see United States v. Burghardt, 939 F.3d 397, 400 (1st Cir. 2019) ). In light of that ruling, the parties agreed that Minor's conviction should be vacated and the case remanded for a new trial. The government then filed a superseding indictment that included the allegation that Minor "knew that he had been previously convicted of th[e] misdemeanor crime of domestic violence."

In the course of the proceedings leading up to his second trial, Minor raised two issues of mens rea in order to provide the foundation for defenses he intended to present at trial. Most ambitiously, he argued that he could not be convicted unless he knew that it was unlawful for him to possess a firearm. More narrowly, he argued that the government at least had to prove that he knew that the simple assault offense to which he had previously pleaded guilty was a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.

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 allegation of domestic violence, claiming only that Minor "did intentionally, knowingly or recklessly cause bodily injury or offensive physical contact to Betty Minor."² The judgment and commitment form had initially been printed with the offense "Domestic Violence Assault," but the words "Domestic Violence" had been crossed out by hand. The state court records show that Minor then pleaded no contest to the assault charge in June 2010.

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...