Reported / Citable
Background
In 2019, Talanzo Debrow was convicted of aggravated criminal damage to property under Louisiana law after ramming two police cars with a stolen vehicle while attempting to flee a traffic stop. After serving his sentence, police found a firearm in a car attributed to him in 2023. Federal prosecutors charged him under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), the federal statute prohibiting convicted felons from possessing firearms.
Debrow filed a motion to dismiss the indictment, arguing that § 922(g)(1) was unconstitutional as applied to him. He contended that under the Supreme Court’s framework in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, the government could not show a historical tradition of disarming individuals whose only prior felony was for aggravated property damage. The district court denied his motion.
Debrow entered a conditional guilty plea, which allowed him to appeal the denial of his motion. He was sentenced to 56 months in prison and subsequently appealed to the Fifth Circuit.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit vacated the district court’s order and remanded the case for further proceedings. Writing for the majority, Judge Higginson held that the government had failed to meet its “heavy burden” of proving that a lifetime firearms ban for someone with Debrow’s specific predicate conviction is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
The court rejected the government’s primary argument that it should look beyond the statute of conviction to the underlying facts—that Debrow rammed police cars—to determine he was “dangerous.” The court criticized this approach as an “obscure at best and impossible at worst” retrospective test that fails to provide fair notice to citizens. Instead, it reaffirmed its precedent favoring a focus on the elements of the predicate offense itself, not on unproven conduct.
The court also found the government’s reliance on historical “going-armed” laws unpersuasive. It noted that Debrow’s conviction was for a property crime, which required only that it was “foreseeable that human life might be endangered,” rather than a purposeful or knowing act of violence against a person. The court concluded that applying the going-armed analogue to this property crime without more specific historical evidence from the government would be an improper expansion of precedent. The case was sent back to the district court to reconsider the issue with the benefit of proper argument from the parties.
Key Takeaways
- In the Fifth Circuit, as-applied Second Amendment challenges to the federal felon-in-possession law require a focus on the elements of the prior conviction, not a wide-ranging inquiry into the defendant’s “dangerousness” or the underlying facts of the crime.
- The government bears a “heavy burden” to show that disarming a person based on their specific prior felony conviction is consistent with a Founding-era historical tradition of firearm regulation.
- A felony conviction for a property crime that involves only a “foreseeable” risk of harm to human life is not automatically a valid predicate for a lifetime firearms ban without specific historical analogues.
Why It Matters
This decision highlights the continuing legal battles over the scope of the Second Amendment following the Supreme Court’s landmark Bruen decision. It reinforces the Fifth Circuit’s distinct, predicate-by-predicate approach to felon-in-possession cases, deepening a split with other circuits that either uphold the law against all felons or use a more flexible “dangerousness” test.
The ruling places a significant evidentiary burden on the government in § 922(g)(1) prosecutions, requiring it to produce specific historical proof tailored to each type of predicate offense. It signals that courts in the Fifth Circuit will not simply accept generic arguments about violence or public safety, particularly when the underlying crime is not a clear-cut crime against a person. The opinion also openly discusses the “fractured” jurisprudence on this issue within the Fifth Circuit, suggesting it may soon be taken up by the full court.