United States v. Johnson, No. 19-10915 (11th Cir. 2020)
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Recently, in Rehaif v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 2191, 2194 (2019), the Supreme Court clarified that a domestic-violence misdemeanant does not violate the prohibition on firearm possession if he does not know he is a domestic violence misdemeanant at the time he possesses a gun.
The Eleventh Circuit concluded that a person knows he is a domestic violence misdemeanant, for Rehaif purposes, if he knows all the following: (1) that he was convicted of a misdemeanor crime; (2) that to be convicted of that crime, he must have engaged in at least "the slightest offensive touching;" United States v. Castleman, 572 U.S. 157, 163 (2014), and (3) that the victim of his misdemeanor crime was, as relevant here, his wife. In this case, the record establishes that defendant knew all of these things at the time he was found in possession of a gun. Therefore, the court rejected defendant's challenge to his conviction for being a domestic-violence misdemeanant while possessing a firearm and affirmed the conviction. The court also found no merit in defendant's equal protection and Commerce Clause arguments.
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