FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
July 23, 2010
PUBLISH Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
TENTH CIRCUIT
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v.
No. 09-4150
MARK R. POPE,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Utah
(D.C. No. 2:08-cr-00303-DS-1)
Parker Douglas, Assistant Federal Defender (Steven B. Killpack, Federal
Defender, with him on the briefs), Salt Lake City, Utah, for Defendant-Appellant.
Elizabeth D. Collery, Attorney, Appellate Section, Criminal Division, United
States Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. (Brett L. Tolman, United States
Attorney, and Diana Hagen and Carol A. Dain, Assistant United States Attorneys,
District of Utah; and Lanny A. Breuer, Assistant Attorney General, and Gary G.
Grindler, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Washington, D.C., with her on the
brief), for Plaintiff-Appellee.
Before TACHA and GORSUCH, Circuit Judges, and STAMP, Senior District
Judge. *
GORSUCH, Circuit Judge.
*
Honorable Frederick P. Stamp, Senior District Court Judge, Northern
District of West Virginia, sitting by designation.
This case began when a grand jury indicted Mark Pope for violating 18
U.S.C. § 922(g)(9). That statute makes it a federal felony for a person previously
convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence to possess a gun. In
response to the indictment, Mr. Pope filed a motion to dismiss. While he
admitted to being previously convicted of a domestic violence crime, and to
possessing a gun, Mr. Pope pressed an affirmative defense that, he said, precluded
his conviction. Because he possessed the gun in question only on the property
where he was living and only to protect himself, others, or his property, he argued
that the application of § 922(g)(9) to him would violate the Second Amendment.
While the statute may be constitutional as applied to other situations, it is, he
submitted, unconstitutional as applied to the facts of his case.
The district court denied Mr. Pope’s motion to dismiss and today we affirm
that decision. We do so without passing, one way or the other, on Mr. Pope’s
Second Amendment defense because an antecedent procedural problem lurks here.
All the material facts on which Mr. Pope’s motion to dismiss relies are outside
the indictment, hotly disputed by the government, and intimately bound up in the
question of Mr. Pope’s guilt or innocence. Under these circumstances, Fed. R.
Crim. P. 12(b)(2) and our precedent preclude the resolution of Mr. Pope’s as-
applied constitutional challenge before trial.
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I
The indictment in this case is a model of Spartan prose. Count I, the only
portion of the indictment still at issue, alleges simply that “[o]n or about August
14, 2007, in the Central Division of the District of Utah, Mark R. Pope, the
defendant herein, having been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of
domestic violence as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 921(33), did knowingly possess in
and affecting interstate commerce a firearm, that is, a .22 caliber High Standard
revolver; all in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9).” R. Vol. I at 8-9.
In response to this charge, Mr. Pope filed a motion to dismiss arguing that
§ 922(g)(9) is unconstitutional as applied to him. Mr. Pope’s motion sought to
rely on the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S. Ct.
2783 (2008), and its recognition of the Second Amendment’s individual right to
bear arms. See also McDonald v. City of Chicago, Illinois, __ S. Ct. __, 2010 WL
2555188 (2010). Mr. Pope readily acknowledged Heller’s dictum that its
recognition of an individual right was not meant to upset “longstanding
prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons.” Id. at 2816-17; see also
McDonald, ___ S. Ct. at ___, 2010 WL 2555188, at *25; United States v.
McCane, 573 F.3d 1037, 1047 (10th Cir. 2009). But, while felons may be barred
from possessing firearms, Mr. Pope argued, the Second Amendment is violated
when misdemeanants are prevented from possessing firearms purely for the
“protection of self, property and home.” R. Vol. I at 23. See generally In re
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United States, 578 F.3d 1195 (10th Cir. 2009) (Murphy, J., dissenting); McCane,
573 F.3d at 1047-50 (Tymkovich, J., concurring); United States v. Skoien, ___
F.3d ___, 2010 WL 2735747 (7th Cir. 2010) (en banc).
And this, he submitted, describes his situation exactly. While the
indictment was silent about the reason for his possession, Mr. Pope provided an
evidentiary proffer in an effort to fill the void. In his proffer, Mr. Pope claimed
that, while he was living with friends, he and one of his dogs were attacked by a
neighbor’s dogs. In response, he walked to the neighbor’s house carrying the
handle of an ax (though, he stressed, without the blade) and confronted her. After
the confrontation, the neighbor called the police to report the incident. When
officers arrived at the home where Mr. Pope was living, they found him in the
front yard with a pistol in his front pocket. Mr. Pope claimed the gun belonged to
his wife and, consistent with Heller’s recognition that “the need for defense of
self, family, and property is most acute” in “the home,” 128 S. Ct. at 2817, he
claimed that he had taken possession of his wife’s gun for exactly these reasons.
In these circumstances, he contended, any conviction under § 922(g)(9) would be
unconstitutional and so the indictment against him had to be dismissed.
Opposing Mr. Pope’s motion, the government argued that, as a general rule,
motions to dismiss seeking to test the legal adequacy of an indictment must be
analyzed solely on the basis of the factual allegations contained in the indictment.
And, the government emphasized, none of the facts essential to Mr. Pope’s as-
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applied constitutional challenge could be found in the indictment. The
government acknowledged that an exception to the general rule against resort to
facts outside the indictment exists when the motion is based on agreed facts, the
government offers no objection to the consideration of those facts, and the motion
is capable of resolution as a matter of law. But, the government argued, this
particular exception “is inapplicable here.” R. Vol. I at 29. Indeed, the
government proceeded to argue that the facts surrounding Mr. Pope’s offense
were very different from those he described. At trial, the government said it
would show that (1) Mr. Pope was never attacked by the neighbor’s dogs, and (2)
Mr. Pope threatened the neighbor that, if he ever saw her dogs outside her yard,
he would kill both them and her. And, the government seemed to suggest, if the
district court did venture outside the indictment to consider the facts likely to be
adduced at trial, these same facts would preclude the conclusion that § 922(g)(9)
is unconstitutional as applied to this case because they show Mr. Pope wasn’t
seeking simply to protect “self, property, and home.” R. Vol. I at 23.
The district court took the parties’ dispute under advisement and soon
issued a succinct order stating that “the Court hereby adopts the position of the
United States and denies the Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss.” R. Vol. I at 49.
From this, we understand the district court to have adopted both (1) the
government’s position that the motion wasn’t ripe for resolution before trial,
because deciding it would require resort to disputed facts outside the indictment;
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and (2) the government’s apparent additional view that, even if the motion could
be resolved before trial, it would have to be decided against Mr. Pope on the
merits.
After the district court’s ruling, Mr. Pope opted to plead guilty and was
sentenced. In agreeing to plead guilty, however, he reserved his right to appeal
the district court’s denial of his pre-plea motion to dismiss. Mr. Pope now
exercises that reserved right before us.
II
We affirm. We do so not on the merits of the constitutional question but
because we agree that Mr. Pope’s motion to dismiss could not be appropriately
resolved before trial. In reaching this holding, we first outline the legal principles
that govern our analysis before turning to their application in this case.
A
The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure encourage the pretrial resolution
of a number of important, and even some potentially dispositive, matters. So, for
example, parties must raise certain arguments before trial — such as those
seeking the suppression of the evidence on which the prosecution relies — or risk
waiving them. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 12(b)(3), (e). Other issues may be addressed
by pretrial motion at a party’s election. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 12(b)(2). But still
other matters may not be raised by pretrial motion at all. Id.
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With respect to this final category, Rule 12 authorizes the district court to
resolve before trial only those motions “that the court can determine without a
trial of the general issue.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 12(b)(2) (emphasis added). In a
criminal case, the “general issue” is “defined as evidence relevant to the question
of guilt or innocence.” United States v. Yakou, 428 F.3d 241, 246 (D.C. Cir.
2005) (quotation marks omitted). Thus, the Supreme Court has instructed, Rule
12 permits pretrial resolution of a motion to dismiss the indictment only when
“trial of the facts surrounding the commission of the alleged offense would be of
no assistance in determining the validity of the defense.” United States v.
Covington, 395 U.S. 57, 60 (1969); see also United States v. Knox, 396 U.S. 77,
83, 83 n.7 (1969); United States v. Mandujano, 425 U.S. 564, 585 n.1 (1976)
(Brennan, J., concurring). If contested facts surrounding the commission of the
offense would be of any assistance in determining the validity of the motion, Rule
12 doesn’t authorize its disposition before trial.
The reasons that have been offered for this longstanding rule are many and
various. See 1A Charles Alan Wright & Andrew D. Leipold, Federal Practice and
Procedure § 190, at 385 (4th ed. 2008) (“With slight alteration [Rule 12(b)(2)] has
remained unchanged since the Rules were first adopted”); id. at 442 n.7
(discussing alteration of language in 1975). Perhaps most prominent among them
is respect for the role of the jury. The jury is, of course, charged with
determining the general issue of a defendant’s guilt or innocence. Fact-finding by
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the district court based on evidence that goes to this question can risk trespassing
on territory reserved to the jury as the ultimate finder of fact in our criminal
justice system. See United States v. Fadel, 844 F.2d 1425, 1430 (10th Cir. 1988);
United States v. King, 581 F.2d 800, 801-02 (10th Cir. 1978); United States v.
Shortt Accountancy Corp., 785 F.2d 1448, 1452-53 (9th Cir. 1986); see also
Wright & Leipold, supra, § 194, at 442 n.7 (noting that genesis of the rule was to
prevent resolution of issues that belonged to the jury). But this is not the only
rationale cited for the rule. Even when the court is ultimately responsible for
deciding the merits of a legal defense, it is sometimes said evidence adduced at
trial can provide a “more certain framework” for its analysis — particularly when
it isn’t clear before trial precisely what evidence will and won’t be admissible.
United States v. Reed, 114 F.3d 1067, 1070 (10th Cir. 1997) (holding that district
court’s void-for-vagueness determination “should be based only on the facts as
they emerge at trial”). And, of course, it also disserves judicial economy to hold
a separate “mini-trial”on a defense only to repeat the exercise with largely the
same evidence a short time later at the trial itself. A pretrial hearing in these
circumstances may wind up being little more than a “dress rehearsal[]” that is not
only needlessly repetitive but that might also facilitate an end-run around the
limited discovery rules governing criminal prosecutions. Fadel, 844 F.2d at
1430; see Fed. R. Crim. P. 16(a), 26.2; 18 U.S.C. § 3500. After all, unlike their
civil counterparts, criminal proceedings have no extensive discovery and
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summary judgment procedures requiring both sides to lay their evidentiary cards
on the table before trial. See, e.g., United States v. DeLaurentis, 230 F.3d 659,
661 (3d Cir. 2000). Rule 12(b)(2), it is said, helps draw and police this
distinction between civil and criminal procedure.
Accepting that Rule 12(b)(2) has long governed, and continues to govern,
federal criminal proceedings, what motions might be said to be susceptible to
pretrial determination without implicating what the Rule calls “trial of the general
issue”? They fall into two general categories. First, some pretrial motions simply
do not implicate the general issue at all. These include motions related to what
evidence might be admitted at trial (e.g., suppression motions), or the conduct of
and preparation for trial (e.g., joinder of offenses and codefendants, venue, bills
of particulars, and discovery), for example. See Wright & Leipold, supra, § 191,
at 390-92. They also include other motions that seek and result in dismissal of
the case altogether but that can be decided, at least in the circumstances of the
case at hand, without deciding any disputed questions of fact about the
circumstances of the alleged crime (e.g., some speedy trial violations). See id.
So long as a motion implicates “fact[s] peculiar to the motion,” and not facts
surrounding the question of guilt or innocence, it can’t be said to implicate the
general issue. Covington, 395 U.S. at 60. See also Rule 12(d) (requiring district
court to state its “essential findings on the record”). Motions of this kind,
however, may involve only the taking of evidence that is “entirely segregable
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from the evidence to be presented at trial.” United States v. Barletta, 644 F.2d
50, 58 (1st Cir. 1981) .
Second, other motions may implicate the general issue, but they present
themselves for resolution before trial because they don’t require a trial of the
general issue. So, for example, a court may always ask “whether the allegations
in the indictment, if true, are sufficient to establish a violation of the charged
offence” and dismiss the indictment if its allegations fail that standard. United
States v. Todd, 446 F.3d 1062, 1068 (10th Cir. 2006). Even if this question can
be fairly said to implicate the general issue, it doesn’t require a trial because it
focuses solely on the facts alleged in the indictment and their legal adequacy. See
United States v. Sampson, 371 U.S. 75, 78-80 (1962). Of course and likewise,
courts may entertain motions that require it to answer only pure questions of law.
See, e.g., Covington, 395 U.S. at 60; Serfass v. United States, 420 U.S. 377, 382
(1975); see also Wright & Leipold, supra, § 191, at 392-93. And, we have held,
courts may entertain even motions to dismiss that require resort to facts outside
the indictment and bearing on the general issue in the “limited circumstances”
where “[1] the operative facts are undisputed and [2] the government fails to
object to the district court’s consideration of those undisputed facts,” and [3] the
district court can determine from them that, “as a matter of law, the government
is incapable of proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt.” United States v.
Hall, 20 F.3d 1084, 1088 (10th Cir. 1994).
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We have explained that dismissals under this latter rubric are the “rare
exception.” Id.; see also Todd, 446 F.3d at 1068. This is because they are “not
made on account of a lack of evidence to support the government’s case” or, put
differently, the government’s refusal to come forward with evidence to support its
case in the face of a defendant who has presented his own proof. Todd, 446 F.3d
at 1068. And this is because, again, the parties to a criminal proceeding have
comparatively few obligations to present their evidence to their adversaries prior
to trial; Rule 12 is not a parallel to civil summary judgment procedures. Instead,
dismissals under the rubric we set forth in Hall can be had only when and
“because undisputed evidence shows that, as a matter of law, the Defendant could
not have committed the offense for which he was indicted.” Todd, 446 F.3d at
1068. The extra-indictment evidence thus must be undisputed in the sense that it
is agreed to by the parties — neither side having expressed any objection to its
consideration or any objection to its completeness and accuracy. Indeed, we have
held even latent factual disputes over circumstances surrounding the commission
of the alleged offense can sometimes prevent pretrial determination of a defense.
See Reed, 114 F.3d at 1070 (rejecting the district court’s pretrial determination of
an as-applied challenge based upon a mere proffer of facts, even when the
opposing party didn’t object to that proffer). To warrant dismissal, it must be
clear from the parties’ agreed representations about the facts surrounding the
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commission of the alleged offense that a trial of the general issue would serve no
purpose.
B
Applying these principles to the case before us confirms that Mr. Pope’s
motion to dismiss isn’t one eligible for resolution before trial because it
implicates the general issue and requires trial. 1
To begin, the general issue. Mr. Pope’s motion doesn’t seek dismissal on
the basis of issues collateral to the question of his guilt or innocence. His is no
motion based on a Speedy Trial Act violation or seeking the suppression of
evidence, for example. Instead, Mr. Pope seeks to vindicate an affirmative
defense bearing directly on his guilt or innocence, arguing that he cannot be
guilty of the charged offense by dint of the Constitution’s guarantees. Proving as
much is the whole point of Mr. Pope’s motion to dismiss. Furthermore, the “facts
surrounding the commission of [Mr. Pope’s] alleged offense,” Covington, 395
U.S. at 60, are hardly irrelevant to deciding his defense: the who, what, where,
when, why, and how of his firearm possession will determine the validity of his
1
The parties have not identified any precedent in this court concerning the
appropriate standard of appellate review for assessing a district court’s Rule
12(b)(2) decision denying a pretrial motion to dismiss. Because it doesn’t matter
to the outcome of this case, we review this appeal de novo, the most favorable
standard potentially available to Mr. Pope, and do so without holding that
standard necessarily applicable to future disputes. As a matter of judicial
restraint, we generally leave the resolution of questions of law to cases where
they make a difference. See, e.g., Hydro Res., Inc. v. Envtl. Prot. Agency, ___
F.3d ___, 2010 WL 2376163, at *12 n.10 (10th Cir. 2010) (en banc).
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as-applied challenge. He does not claim, after all, that § 922(g)(9) is facially
unconstitutional on any set of facts, but instead claims only that it’s
unconstitutional as applied to his particular circumstances. In other words, he
contends the statute is unconstitutional only in light of the “facts surrounding the
commission of the alleged offense,” Covington, 395 U.S. at 60 — the very facts a
court may not consider before trial.
Mr. Pope’s motion likewise requires a trial of the general issue. This is
because it does not rest on a pure question of law, the facts charged in the
indictment itself, or agreed extra-indictment facts. Instead, Mr. Pope concedes
that, to prevail on his motion, certain disputed facts outside the indictment must
be found in his favor, facts that allegedly show he retained a gun only on his
property and only to protect himself, others, or his home. We must ask whether
he was threatened by the neighbor’s dogs (as he alleges) or not (as the
government contends). And we must ask whether he was seeking simply to
protect himself, others, and his place of residence from dangerous dogs (as he
suggests) or whether he also threatened to injure the dogs’ owner and did so
without provocation (as the government suggests). The resolution of these
contested facts is essential to the resolution of his affirmative defense. In all
these ways, Mr. Pope’s affirmative defense implicates trial of the general issue.
See United States v. La Cock, 366 F.3d 883, 889 (10th Cir. 2004) (holding that “a
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contested affirmative defense” generally “should be resolved at trial, not during a
motion to dismiss the indictment”).
This is not to say that affirmative defenses are categorically ineligible for
pretrial resolution. Even among affirmative defenses that implicate the general
issue of the defendant’s guilt or innocence, not all require a trial of the general
issue: some involve only a pure question of law and others implicate only facts
found in the indictment or facts agreed to by the parties. See, e.g., United States
v. Poulin, 588 F. Supp. 2d 58, 61 (D. Me. 2008). At the same time, though, we
must acknowledge, as many have before us, that many affirmative defenses do
depend on the resolution of disputed facts bearing on the question of guilt or
innocence. This is just another in a long line of cases recognizing as much. See,
e.g., Knox, 396 U.S. at 83-84 (affirmative defense of duress must be determined
at trial because it implicates trial of the general issue); Reed, 114 F.3d at 1070-71
(vagueness); United States v. Tafoya, 376 F. Supp. 2d 1257, 1260 (D.N.M. 2005)
(sufficiency of the evidence); La Cock, 366 F.3d at 889 (affirmative defense that
device was not designed as a weapon within the meaning of the statute); Fadel,
844 F.2d at 1430-31 (entrapment); United States v. Doe, 63 F.3d 121, 125 (2d Cir.
1995) (affirmative defense that crime was committed as a public authority);
Poulin, 588 F. Supp. 2d at 60-62 (as-applied constitutional challenge).
To all this, Mr. Pope offers two replies meriting mention. First, he says,
the government never objected to the district court’s consideration of facts
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outside the indictment. Mr. Pope stresses that the government offered its own
competing facts and, he suggests, this amounted to a “tacit[]” acquiescence to Mr.
Pope’s wish to look to facts outside the indictment. Reply Br. at 1. In fact,
however, the government expressly noted that a motion challenging the
indictment’s ability to state a criminal violation should normally be decided
“solely on the basis of the allegations made on [the indictment’s] face, and such
allegations are to be taken as true.” R. Vol. I at 29 (quoting Hall, 20 F.3d at
1087); see also Gov’t App. Br. at 27-28; supra Section I. The government then
argued that it is a “rare exception” when facts outside the indictment may be
considered; that this exception exists only when the motion is based on
“undisputed facts” agreed to by the parties; and that this “exception is
inapplicable here.” R. Vol. I at 29 (quoting Hall, 20 F.3d at 1088); see also supra
Section I. Plainly, the government did contest the district court’s ability to
resolve Mr. Pope’s motion on the basis of facts outside his indictment. While the
government proceeded to offer its own (disputed) extra-indictment facts and
suggest that Mr. Pope’s motion would also fail in light of them (something it
again does on appeal), this only serves to highlight that Mr. Pope’s motion lacks
the sort of genuinely undisputed factual record that might render it amenable to
pretrial resolution under Rule 12(b)(2).
Second, Mr. Pope submits that at least some of the extra-indictment facts he
presented in connection with his motion to dismiss in the district court were
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agreed to by the parties, and he invites us to decide his case based on them. He
says, for example, that it’s agreed (1) he wasn’t carrying the gun (only an ax
handle) when he spoke to the owner of the dogs; (2) he possessed the gun only on
the property where he was then living; and (3) his reason for carrying the gun was
for the protection of himself and his property. But, as it happens, the government
has actively disputed (3), never agreed to (2), and contested the significance of
(1) and (2). The hard reality of the case for Mr. Pope is that the material facts
that might shed light on whether his gun possession was really and only for the
defense of self, others, or property are outside the indictment and fiercely
disputed. In these circumstances, we can hardly say it was error for the district
court to deny his pre-trial motion to dismiss. 2
***
2
On appeal, the government argues that the agreed extra-indictment facts
actually undercut Mr. Pope’s Second Amendment argument, pointing to certain
(unhelpful to his cause) factual admissions Mr. Pope made in his plea agreement.
Mr. Pope replies that the plea agreement came after the denial of his motion to
dismiss, so the agreement’s factual recitations were not “before the district court
when it issued the order denying Mr. Pope’s motion to dismiss the indictment,”
Reply Br. at 3; and, he argues, this court generally (if not always) confines its
review of a district court’s ruling to the materials that were before that court at
the time of its decision. This dispute, however, makes no difference to our
outcome: we need not and do not rest anything on the plea agreement or its
recitation of facts in reaching our decision today.
Separately, Mr. Pope’s motion for leave to withdraw his earlier motion to
strike portions of the government’s brief is granted. While Mr. Pope’s motions
were pending, the clerk’s office permitted the government’s brief to remain filed
under seal. We now direct the clerk’s office to lift the seal and make the
government’s brief part of the public record.
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The district court’s denial of Mr. Pope’s motion to dismiss his indictment is
Affirmed.
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