United States v. Aaron Lyons

── United States v. Aaron Lyons ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Date: April 28, 2026 Category: General U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT No. 24-2740 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. AARON LYONS, Appellant _____________________________ On Appeal from the U.S. District Court, W.D. Pa. Judge David S. Cercone, No. 2:17-cr-00053-001 Before: SHWARTZ, BIBAS, and PHIPPS, Circuit Judges Argued: Mar. 2, 2026; Filed: Apr. 28, 2026 _____________________________ OPINION OF THE COURT BIBAS, Circuit Judge. Our legal system tempers fairness with finality. So habeas petitioners may not raise new argu- ments based on new precedents if the bases of those arguments were “reasonably available” earlier on. Otherwise, Monday- morning quarterbacking would flood post-conviction courts with new claims, gutting finality. Yet that is what Aaron Lyons asks us to allow. Lyons pleaded guilty to possessing an offensive weapon. The judge warned him that the crime was punishable by five years in prison and that the conviction meant he could not have a gun again; he said he understood. Then he possessed a gun again and pleaded guilty to possessing a gun despite his con- viction. At the time, no court required the government to prove that the defendant knew of his qualifying conviction. Yet more than a year later, the Supreme Court held that prosecutors must prove that the defendant had such knowledge when he pos- sessed the gun. Based on that new ruling, Lyons collaterally attacks his conviction. But he could have made his argument when he pleaded guilty in federal court to possessing a gun as a convicted felon. Because Lyons defaulted the argument, and because the record forecloses his claim of actual inno- cence, we will AFFIRM the District Court’s dismissal. I. LYONS POSSESSES A GUN DESPITE HIS CRIMINAL RECORD Late one afternoon in 2012, Lyons and his friends were hanging out at an elementary-school playground in Pittsburgh. He was eighteen. Police caught him there with a gun. He pleaded guilty to possessing an offensive weapon and was sen- tenced to one year of probation. 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 908(a). Unfortunately, that was not Lyons’s last run-in with the law. A few months after he finished probation, police found him leaning against a car in Pittsburgh. The officers asked him to come talk with them. Before Lyons approached them, he dropped something on the ground—a loaded pistol. He was in- dicted for, and pleaded guilty to, violating the federal felon-in- possession law. It forbids a person from knowingly possessing a gun after being convicted of “a crime punishable by impris- onment for a term exceeding one year.” 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1), 924(a)(8) (requiring knowledge). Despite the law’s nickname, it sweeps in many crimes that state law calls misdemeanors. See 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20)(B). 2  When Lyons was charged in 2017 with violating § 922(g)(1), there was a consensus among the federal courts of appeals. All ten circuits to address the issue (including ours) had held that the crime had only three elements: (1) the defend- ant had to have been convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year; (2) the defendant had to know that he was pos- sessing a gun; and (3) the gun possession had to touch interstate or foreign commerce. See Rehaif v. United States, 588 U.S. 225, 256 n.6 (2019) (Alito, J., dissenting) (collecting cases); United States v. Huet, 665 F.3d 588, 596 (3d Cir. 2012). So at the plea colloquy, the district court went over those three ele- ments with Lyons and told him that the government would have to prove all three beyond a reasonable doubt at trial. Lyons pleaded guilty and was sentenced. Though he filed an appeal raising a Second Amendment issue, he voluntarily dismissed the appeal. Shortly afterwards, the Supreme Court abrogated the cir- cuits’ consensus. In Rehaif v. United States, it he