United States of America v. Mani Panoam Deng

United States Court of Appeals
For the Eighth Circuit
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No. 23-3545
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United States of America
Plaintiff - Appellee
v.
Mani Panoam Deng
Defendant - Appellant
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Appeal from United States District Court
for the Southern District of Iowa - Central
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Submitted: May 7, 2024
Filed: June 20, 2024
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Before SMITH, KELLY, and KOBES, Circuit Judges.
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KOBES, Circuit Judge.
The Government charged Mani Panoam Deng with being an unlawful drug
user in possession of a firearm, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3). He moved to dismiss the
indictment, arguing that § 922(g)(3) violates the Second Amendment (both facially

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and as applied to him) and is void for vagueness. The district court1 denied his facial
Second Amendment challenge and deferred ruling on his other claims because they
were bound up with facts about his offense conduct that a jury needed to find. Deng
then pleaded guilty unconditionally. He appeals, renewing his constitutional
challenges to § 922(g)(3) and arguing that the court erred by deferring a complete
decision on his motion to dismiss. We affirm.
I.
We start with the Second Amendment. Deng argues that § 922(g)(3) violates
the Second Amendment facially and as applied to him under New York State Rifle &
Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022). But after briefing concluded, we held that
§ 922(g)(3) is facially constitutional. United States v. Veasley, 98 F.4th 906, 918
(8th Cir. 2024). That decision binds us here.
Deng’s as-applied challenge fails too because he waived it by pleading guilty
unconditionally. United States v. Seay, 620 F.3d 919, 922 n.3 (8th Cir. 2010). A
“knowing and intelligent guilty plea” generally “forecloses independent claims
relating to the deprivation of constitutional rights that occurred before the entry of
the guilty plea.” United States v. Morgan, 230 F.3d 1067, 1071 (8th Cir. 2000)
(cleaned up) (citation omitted). There is a narrow exception for “jurisdictional”
claims, or those that attack the “State’s power to bring any indictment at all.” Seay,
620 F.3d at 921 (citation omitted); see also United States v. Nunez-Hernandez, 43
F.4th 857, 860 (8th Cir. 2022) (noting “jurisdiction” in this context has “nothing to
do with subject-matter jurisdiction” and is instead shorthand for the “limited class
of defenses that survive a guilty plea”). Facial constitutional challenges fit the bill,
Morgan, 230 F.3d at 1071; as-applied challenges to § 922(g)(3) do not, Seay, 620
F.3d at 922 n.3; Veasley, 98 F.4th at 908.
1 The Honorable Stephanie M. Rose, Chief Judge, United States District Court
for the Southern District of Iowa.

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Deng points out that he pleaded guilty without a plea agreement and so did
not agree to an appeal waiver. But it is his guilty plea itself that “waives all non-
jurisdictional defects and defenses,” independent of any appeal waiver. See United
States v. Limley, 510 F.3d 825, 827 (8th Cir. 2007). A defendant may, of course,
enter a conditional guilty plea, preserving his right to appeal an issue. See id. (citing
Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2)). That is not what happened here.
Now to Deng’s vagueness challenge. A criminal statute is void for vagueness
under the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause “if it fails to give ordinary people
fair notice of the conduct it punishes or is so standardless that it invites arbitrary
enforcement.” United States v. Turner, 842 F.3d 602, 604 (8th Cir. 2016) (cleaned
up) (quoting Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591, 595 (2015)). To win a facial
challenge, the only type available after his guilty plea, Deng “need not prove that
§ 922(g)(3) is vague in all its applications,” but he still must show that the statute “is
vague as applied to his particular conduct.” United States v. Bramer, 832 F.3d 908,
909–10 & n.2 (8th Cir. 2016) (per curiam). That’s because a defendant “who
engages in some conduct that is clearly proscribed cannot complain of the vagueness
of the law as applied to the conduct of others.” United States v. Cook, 782 F.3d 983,
987 (8th Cir. 2015) (quoting Holder v. Humanitarian L. Project, 561 U.S. 1, 18–19
(2010)). We review vagueness challenges de novo. United States v. Burgee, 988
F.3d 1054, 1060 (8th Cir. 2021).
Section 922(g)(3) prohibits anyone “who is an unlawful user of or addicted to
any controlled substance” from possessing firearms. Because the term “unlawful
user” “runs the risk of being unconstitutionally vague,” we interpret it to “require a
temporal nexus” between the gun possession and regular drug use. United States v.
Carnes, 22 F.4th 743, 748 (8th Cir. 2022) (citation omitted). Admittedly,
§ 922(g)(3) might still be unconstitutionally vague on “the right fact[s],” Bramer,
832 F.3d at 909, but this isn’t that case. Deng admitted that he frequently used
marijuana and knew that he was a marijuana user when he possessed the gun. See
id. at 909–10 (holding that a defendant who possessed guns while regularly using
marijuana had adequate notice that his conduct was criminal under § 922(g)(3)).

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Because he has failed to show that § 922(g)(3) is unconstitutionally vague as applied
to him, he cannot mount a facial challenge.
Nor can Deng prevail under the rule of lenity.2 This canon of statutory
construction is a “junior version of the vagueness doctrine” that “ensures fair
warning by . . . resolving ambiguity in a criminal statute as to apply it only to
conduct clearly covered.” United States v. Lanier, 520 U.S. 259, 266 (1997)
(citation omitted). But the canon “only applies” when a “grievous ambiguity”
remains after we have used the normal tools of statutory interpretation. United States
v. Castleman, 572 U.S. 157, 172–73 (2014) (citation omitted). Because § 922(g)(3),
“as interpreted by our case law, makes clear that [Deng’s] conduct is proscribed,”
there is no need to resort to lenity. See United States v. Shellef, 507 F.3d 82, 106 (2d
Cir. 2007).
One final issue. Deng argues that the district court erred by deferring a ruling
on his vagueness and as-applied Second Amendment challenges. But he waived this
claim too by pleading guilty. See Limley, 510 F.3d at 828 (unconditional guilty plea
waived right to appeal denial of motion for a Franks hearing).
II.
We affirm the district court’s judgment.
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2 We assume without deciding that a defendant who pleaded guilty
unconditionally may invoke the rule of lenity on appeal.

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