United States v. Banuelos

── United States v. Banuelos ── Court: Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Date: May 01, 2026 Category: Direct Criminal Case: 23-50731 Document: 181-1 Page: 1 Date Filed: 05/01/2026 United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit United States Court of Appeals ____________ Fifth Circuit FILED No. 23-50731 May 1, 2026 ____________ Lyle W. Cayce Clerk United States of America, Plaintiff—Appellee, versus Luis Manuel Banuelos, Defendant—Appellant. ______________________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas USDC No. 3:22-CR-903-1 ______________________________ Before Elrod, Chief Judge, and Ho and Ramirez, Circuit Judges. Per Curiam: * An indictment charged Luis Manuel Banuelos with being a felon in possession of a firearm in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). That charge was based on a 2005 state-court felony conviction for possession of between 50 and 2,000 pounds of marijuana. Banuelos moved to dismiss the federal indictment, arguing that § 922(g)(1) violates the Second Amendment as applied to his felony conviction of simple possession of marijuana. The _____________________ * This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5. Case: 23-50731 Document: 181-1 Page: 2 Date Filed: 05/01/2026 No. 23-50731 district court denied Banuelos’s motion to dismiss and convicted him after a stipulated bench trial. Banuelos now appeals the denial of his motion to dismiss. Because intervening precedent holds that simple possession of drugs is an insufficient basis for permanent disarmament, we REVERSE the denial of Banuelos’s motion to dismiss and VACATE Banuelos’s conviction and sentence. I When the district court rejected Banuelos’s challenge, it did not have the benefit of our decision in United States v. Hembree, 165 F.4th 909 (5th Cir. 2026). There, we held that “the government did not meet its burden to prove that history and tradition support simple possession as a valid felony predicate under § 922(g)(1).” Id. at 918. We accordingly are constrained to reverse Banuelos’s conviction. The government makes two arguments as to why Hembree is not controlling, but neither is persuasive. A First, the government argues that even though Banuelos was convicted only of simple possession in Texas state court, an examination of the facts underlying that conviction shows that Banuelos was trafficking in drugs. See United States v. Kimble, 142 F.4th 308, 318 (5th Cir. 2025) (holding that “Congress can categorically disarm individuals convicted of violent felonies like drug trafficking”). That approach is inconsistent with Hembree. In Hembree, the government attempted the same argument, noting that “Hembree’s prior conviction for simple possession [w]as necessarily the same as possession with intent to distribute” because Hembree was indicted for possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute and pleaded that charge down to simple possession. 165 F.4th at 917. Indeed, the government provided the court with reports from a prior investigation of Hembree that supported its