UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. DWAYNE ELLIS ROBINSON, JR. - Articles

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. DWAYNE ELLIS ROBINSON, JR.

Posted by: Azya Thornton on Apr 7, 2025

Court: 6th Circuit Court (Published Opinions)

Attorneys 1: ARGUED: Molly Rose Green, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant.

Attorneys 2: ARGUED: Rachel M. Stephens, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee.

Attorneys 3: ON BRIEF: Dumaka S. Shabazz, Michael C. Holley, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellant.

Attorneys 4: ON BRIEF: Rachel M. Stephens, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, Nashville, Tennessee, for Appellee.

Judge(s): STRANCH, THAPAR, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges

Court Appealed: United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee at Nashville

MURPHY, Circuit Judge. A jury convicted Dwayne Robinson of unlawfully possessing a firearm as a felon. A district court imposed the Armed Career Criminal Act’s minimum punishment because it found that Robinson had previously committed three qualifying offenses on “occasions different from one another[.]” 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1). Robinson now raises four claims. He argues that the district court violated the Sixth Amendment by responding to a jury note without his counsel’s input. He argues that the court should have granted a mistrial after detectives implied that he had shot at someone. He argues that the jury instructions incorrectly told the jury that gun ownership is irrelevant to gun possession. Finally, he argues that the district court could not invoke the Armed Career Criminal Act because the court did not require the jury to resolve whether he had committed his prior offenses on different occasions. None of these arguments provides a basis for relief. Robinson did not properly object to the court’s response to the jury note, its failure to grant a mistrial, or its jury instructions. We thus review these challenges for plain error. Robinson also has not shown that the district court committed an obvious mistake on any of these issues. As for his sentencing challenge, intervening Supreme Court precedent has confirmed Robinson’s claim that the jury should have decided whether he committed his prior offenses on different occasions. But our court’s intervening precedent has made clear that this type of error can be harmless. And a gap of many years separated each of Robinson’s three crimes. The record thus leaves no doubt that he committed those crimes on different occasions and that this error was harmless here. We affirm.

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