United States of America v. Jashawn Anthony Mackall

NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
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No. 23-3040
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
v.
JASHAWN ANTHONY MACKALL,
Appellant
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Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Pennsylvania
(D. C. No. 2:22-cr-00111-001)
District Judge: Honorable Arthur J. Schwab
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Submitted under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a)
on January 31, 2025
Before: KRAUSE, PORTER and ROTH, Circuit Judges
(Opinion filed: July 31, 2025)
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OPINION*
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* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and pursuant to I.O.P. 5.7 does not
constitute binding precedent.

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ROTH, Circuit Judge.
Jashawn Anthony Mackall was convicted of being a felon in possession of a
firearm and ammunition, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). He appeals the District
Court’s denial of his amended motion to dismiss the indictment on constitutional
grounds. We will affirm.
I.
In August 2021, Mackall took police on a high-speed chase after refusing to pull
over for traffic violations. Following a successful vehicle-immobilizing maneuver by
police, Mackall admitted he had a gun in the car, and he was arrested. At the time, he
was on state parole in Pennsylvania for two felony convictions after he shot a person in
the leg in an aggravated assault with an unlawfully possessed firearm. In April 2022,
Mackall was charged with one count of being a felon in unlawful possession of a firearm
and ammunition, in violation of § 922(g)(1).1 Mackall pleaded guilty without a plea
agreement. Afterwards, Mackall filed and later amended a motion to dismiss the
indictment on constitutional grounds. The District Court denied his motion and
sentenced him to 57 months’ imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release.
II.2
According to Mackall, the Constitution requires us to vacate his conviction and
1 Mackall’s criminal record included felony convictions in 2013 and 2016 for carrying
firearms without a license, in violation of 18 Pa.C.S. § 6106(a), and a 2016 felony
conviction for aggravated assault, in violation of 18 Pa.C.S. § 2702(a)(1).
2 The District Court had jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3231, and we have jurisdiction
under 28 U.S.C. § 1291. We exercise de novo review over constitutional challenges to
federal criminal statutes. United States v. Pendleton, 658 F.3d 299, 305 (3d Cir. 2011).

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remand for the District Court to dismiss the indictment. He first argues that § 922(g)(1)
is an invalid exercise of Congress’s powers under the Commerce Clause. He then argues
that § 922(g)(1) is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment both as applied to him
and on its face. He further contends that § 922(g)(1) is void for vagueness under the Fifth
Amendment’s Due Process Clause. We disagree.
A.
We begin with Mackall’s argument that Congress exceeded its powers under the
Commerce Clause in enacting § 922(g)(1).3 We have previously addressed this exact
same issue and reached the exact opposite holding.4 Mackall does not identify any
intervening Supreme Court authority that “has ‘undermine[d] the rationale’ of our
precedent,” so we cannot reevaluate that precedent “without having to resort to an en
banc rehearing.”5 Thus, our precedent prevents us from entertaining Mackall’s
Commerce Clause challenge. We reject it.6
B.
We next turn to Mackall’s Second Amendment challenges. Citing New York State
3 See U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 3.
4 See United States v. Singletary, 268 F.3d 196, 204–05 (3d Cir. 2001).
5 See Erie Ins. Exch. by Stephenson v. Erie Indem. Co., 68 F.4th 815, 819 (3d Cir. 2023)
(alteration in original) (quoting DiFiore v. CSL Behring, LLC, 879 F.3d 71, 76 (3d Cir.
2018)). Mackall relies heavily on United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995), and
United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000), but we considered those decisions in
Singletary. Mackall also cites United States v. Rahimi, but the Supreme Court
“decline[d] to consider Rahimi’s Commerce Clause challenge because he did not raise it
below.” 602 U.S. 680, 765 n.6 (2024) (Thomas, J., dissenting). While Justice Thomas
expressed “doubt that § 922(g)(8) is a proper exercise of Congress’s power under the
Commerce Clause,” id., a footnote in the dissent of an 8-to-1 decision is not precedential.
6 See, e.g., United States v. Allen, 618 F.3d 404, 410 n.5 (3d Cir. 2010).

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Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen7 and United States v. Rahimi,8 he claims that
§ 922(g)(1) is unconstitutional as applied to him because there is no historical tradition of
disarming “people” like him without either a hearing on his right to possess a firearm or a
determination that he presents a credible threat of violence to another person. However,
in United States v. Quailes,9 we held that § 922(g)(1) is constitutional as applied to a
convict on state parole.10 Because Mackall was on state parole when he unlawfully
possessed the firearm for which he was federally charged, § 922(g)(1) is constitutional as
applied to him. As a result, his facial challenge also fails.11 Thus, we reject Mackall’s
Second Amendment challenges.
C.
Lastly, we consider Mackall’s argument that § 922(g)(1) is void for vagueness
under the Due Process Clause.12 To bring a facial vagueness challenge to a criminal
statute, Mackall must first show that it is vague as applied to his own circumstances.13
He does not attempt to do so. Instead, he argues that § 922(g)(1) is unconstitutionally
vague on its face because, after Bruen, there are people covered within its text who
7 597 U.S. 1 (2022).
8 602 U.S. 680 (2024).
9 126 F.4th 215 (3d Cir. 2025).
10 Id. at 221–23.
11 See United States v. Moore, 111 F.4th 266, 273 n.5 (3d Cir. 2024) (dismissing facial
challenge to § 922(g)(1) where an as-applied challenge failed, because the challenger
could not “establish that no set of circumstances exists under which the Act would be
valid” (quoting Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 693)).
12 See U.S. Const. amend. V.
13 See United States v. Harris, --F.4th--, 2025 WL 1922605, at *9 (3d Cir. July 14, 2025)
(“If a statute clearly warns an ordinary person that his own conduct is a crime, he cannot
dodge liability just because it might not be clear as to someone else.”).

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“cannot be constitutionally disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment,” and that
“there is no way for an individual to know, in advance of indictment and conviction,
whether he falls on one side or the other of the constitutional line.”14 Because Mackall
does not argue that the statute is vague as applied to his own conduct, his challenge fails.
III.
For the above reasons, we will affirm the District Court’s denial of Mackall’s
amended motion to dismiss the indictment.
14 Appellant Br. at 25.

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