Latest Case: United States v. Hicks (Criminal Law)

Department of Justice Once Again Proves Its Loyalty to the President, Not the Rule of Law

AUSTIN SARAT

Austin Sarat—Associate Provost, Associate Dean of the Faculty, and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College—comments on the recent news that the Justice Department will seek dismissal of charges against Michael Flynn. Sarat suggests that because the decision does not seem to advance the fair administration of justice in this case, the court should take the unusual step of refusing to grant the prosecutor’s motion to dismiss.

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United States v. Hicks

Docket: 18-11352

Opinion Date: May 8, 2020

Judge: E. Grady Jolly

Areas of Law: Criminal Law

This case was remanded from the Supreme Court in light of Rehaif v. United States, 139 S.Ct. 2191, 2200 (2019), which held that in 18 U.S.C. 922(g) prosecutions the government must prove that the defendant "knew he belonged to the relevant category of persons barred from possessing a firearm." The Fifth Circuit held that the district court did not err when it accepted the factual basis for defendant's guilty plea. The court agreed with the Seventh Circuit that even though due process concerns are implicated when a defendant claims that a Rehaif error rendered his guilty plea unknowing and involuntary, the defendant satisfies plain error review only if he shows that there is a reasonable probability that he would not have pled guilty had he known of Rehaif. In this case, defendant has not argued, much less shown, that he would have gone to trial if he had been informed of the knowledge of felon status requirement. Given that the facts detailed in the PSR provide ample support for the inference that defendant knew of his felon status when he possessed the firearms, the court held that defendant failed to show that the Rehaif error affected his substantial rights. Accordingly, the court affirmed the district court's judgment.