Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · 2025-06-30
Case and law context
Role: applied; posture: criminal; motion to dismiss the indictment (Second Amendment, facial and as applied) denied; guilty plea without a plea agreement, preserving the constitutional challenge; on appeal the only reasoned issue is the as-applied Second Amendment challenge by a defendant whose predicate felonies are drug trafficking; conviction affirmed (one judge concurring in part and in the judgment); result: claimant-won; claim: (g)(1)
Instances and excluded annotation blocks
| Case | Element | Holding and scope | Variant | Exact source quotations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| /f4th/142/308 — Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · 2025 | Possession in or affecting commerce | not_reached Excluded from merits counts applied / procedural claim: (g)(1) Footnote 2 only: a Commerce Clause challenge to (g)(1) (and the facial Second Amendment challenge) is acknowledged by the defendant to be foreclosed by circuit precedent. A constitutional attack on the statute, not a ruling on the nexus element; no evidence about the gun's origin is stated. | Unspecified variant | No source quotation recorded for this block. |
| /f4th/142/308 — Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · 2025 | Actual or constructive possession | satisfied Excluded from merits counts applied / lower-court basis: conceded; claim: (g)(1) Admitted by plea; not reviewed on appeal. | actual/control | As Kimble fled, officers observed him discard a handgun from his waistband. The officers caught up, arrested Kimble, and recovered the gun.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f4th_142.jsonl#/f4th/142/308; Unicode character offsets [2429:2568] (end exclusive); SHA-256 3ad9f2ba17f1e40b90ceae5e47c6bd323001ae5f9267eeaa22294306e0765460.Kimble then pleaded guilty without the benefit of a plea agreement.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f4th_142.jsonl#/f4th/142/308; Unicode character offsets [3240:3307] (end exclusive); SHA-256 3ad9f2ba17f1e40b90ceae5e47c6bd323001ae5f9267eeaa22294306e0765460. |
| /f4th/142/308 — Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · 2025 | Conviction punishable by more than one year | satisfied Excluded from merits counts applied / lower-court basis: conceded; claim: (g)(1) Established by the guilty plea accepted in the district court; the court of appeals recites the two felony convictions and never treats the status element as open. The predicate felonies matter on appeal only as the "criminal history" tested against the Second Amendment. | prior-felony/state-and-federal-drug-trafficking-convictions | He was sentenced to six years’ confinement for that state-level felony but served just one year.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f4th_142.jsonl#/f4th/142/308; Unicode character offsets [1389:1485] (end exclusive); SHA-256 3ad9f2ba17f1e40b90ceae5e47c6bd323001ae5f9267eeaa22294306e0765460.He pleaded guilty to a federal felony: possession with intent to distribute a detectable quantity of cocaine. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison followed by four years of supervised release.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f4th_142.jsonl#/f4th/142/308; Unicode character offsets [1618:1813] (end exclusive); SHA-256 3ad9f2ba17f1e40b90ceae5e47c6bd323001ae5f9267eeaa22294306e0765460.Kimble then pleaded guilty without the benefit of a plea agreement.Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f4th_142.jsonl#/f4th/142/308; Unicode character offsets [3240:3307] (end exclusive); SHA-256 3ad9f2ba17f1e40b90ceae5e47c6bd323001ae5f9267eeaa22294306e0765460.Title 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) makes it unlawful for an individual to pos- sess a firearm if he “has been convicted in any court of[] a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.”Source: docroot/ir/caselaw/f4th_142.jsonl#/f4th/142/308; Unicode character offsets [3730:3927] (end exclusive); SHA-256 3ad9f2ba17f1e40b90ceae5e47c6bd323001ae5f9267eeaa22294306e0765460. |