UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. DEANGELUS THOMAS - Articles

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. DEANGELUS THOMAS

Posted by: Azya Thornton on Jul 2, 2025

Court: 6th Circuit Court (Published Opinions)

Attorneys 1: ON SUPPLEMENTAL BRIEF: Needum L. Germany, FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER’S OFFICE, Memphis, Tennessee, for Appellant.

Attorneys 2: ON SUPPLEMENTAL BRIEF: Karen Hartridge, Mary H. Morris, Regina Thompson, UNITED STATES ATTORNEY’S OFFICE, Memphis, Tennessee, for Appellee.

Judge(s): COLE, McKEAGUE, and NALBANDIAN, Circuit Judges

Court Appealed: United States Supreme Court. United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee at Memphis

NALBANDIAN, Circuit Judge. Deangelus Thomas was indicted on two counts of being a felon in possession under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) for his role in a shooting. Though his indictment gave him notice that he might be subject to enhanced penalties based on his criminal history, he was not formally indicted as an armed career criminal. At trial, a jury found him guilty of both felon-in-possession counts. Throughout sentencing, Thomas maintained that he could not be sentenced under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA). 18 U.S.C. § 924(e)(1). Because he had never been indicted for it, and the jury had not found the essential fact —that he had three prior violent- felony convictions committed on different “occasions, ” —he claimed he could only be subject to the penalties associated with § 922(g)(1). Otherwise, his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights would be violated. The district judge disagreed. Following then-binding Sixth Circuit precedent, the judge found the fact of Thomas’s three prior convictions by a preponderance of evidence at sentencing, and imposed an enhanced, 432-month sentence on Thomas. We affirmed. But the Supreme Court later decided Erlinger v. United States, 602 U.S. 821 (2024), which held that the Fifth and Sixth Amendments require a jury to find the three-occasions element of an ACCA conviction. Now, Thomas is back before us. He argues that Erlinger is a form of structural error and requires automatic reversal. As a remedy, he argues for a remand to the district judge for resentencing based on the crime he was convicted of by a jury—the unenhanced § 922(g)(1). Because our circuit has already decided that Erlinger errors are subject to harmless error, we affirm his sentence because the failure to charge the jury was harmless.

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