Diontai Moore v. United States

In 2021, intruders tried to break into the house where Diontai Moore was living with his fiancée and her three children. Terrified, his fiancée took her handgun out of the safe and gave it to Moore while she fled with the children. Fortunately, Moore was able to use the handgun to ward off the intruders. Moore was on supervised release at the time as part of his sentence for a violation of 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(1)’s prohibition on possession of a firearm by a felon. Moore promptly informed his probation officer of the incident—and then was charged with another §922(g)(1) violation for using his fiancée’s firearm to fend off the invaders. The indictment identified Moore’s disqualifying offenses as three drug-related charges and his earlier §922(g) conviction. Moore pled guilty on the condition that he could challenge his §922(g)(1) conviction under the Second Amendment on appeal. Yet when he tried to challenge §922(g)(1) as applied to the convictions identified in the indictment, the Third Circuit declined to analyze whether those offenses could justify a permanent deprivation of Second Amendment rights. Instead, it held that Moore could be disarmed consistent with historical tradition because he was on supervised release— which is not the basis for his §922(g)(1) conviction or the 84-month sentence he has been ordered to serve. The question presented is: Whether courts should analyze as-applied Second Amendment challenges to 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(1) by examining whether historical tradition supports permanently disarming someone for the predicate offense(s) underlying the defendant’s conviction.