No. 23-3545 ___________________________

United States of America

Plaintiff - Appellee

v.

Mani Panoam Deng

Defendant - Appellant ____________

Appeal from United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa - Central ____________

Submitted: May 7, 2024 Filed: June 20, 2024 ____________ Before SMITH, KELLY, and KOBES, Circuit Judges. ____________ KOBES, Circuit Judge.

The Government charged Mani Panoam Deng with being an unlawful drug user in possession of a firearm, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3). He moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that § 922(g)(3) violates the Second Amendment (both facially and as applied to him) and is void for vagueness. The district court 1 denied his facial Second Amendment challenge and deferred ruling on his other claims because they were bound up with facts about his offense conduct that a jury needed to find. Deng then pleaded guilty unconditionally. He appeals, renewing his constitutional challenges to § 922(g)(3) and arguing that the court erred by deferring a complete decision on his motion to dismiss. We affirm.

I.

We start with the Second Amendment. Deng argues that § 922(g)(3) violates the Second Amendment facially and as applied to him under New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022). But after briefing concluded, we held that § 922(g)(3) is facially constitutional. United States v. Veasley, 98 F.4th 906, 918 (8th Cir. 2024). That decision binds us here.

Deng’s as-applied challenge fails too because he waived it by pleading guilty unconditionally. United States v. Seay, 620 F.3d 919, 922 n.3 (8th Cir. 2010). A “knowing and intelligent guilty plea” generally “forecloses independent claims relating to the deprivation of constitutional rights that occurred before the entry of the guilty plea.” United States v. Morgan, 230 F.3d 1067, 1071 (8th Cir. 2000) (cleaned up) (citation omitted). There is a narrow exception for “jurisdictional” claims, or those that attack the “State’s power to bring any indictment at all.” Seay, 620 F.3d at 921 (citation omitted); see also United States v. Nunez-Hernandez, 43 F.4th 857, 860 (8th Cir. 2022) (noting “jurisdiction” in this context has “nothing to do with subject-matter jurisdiction” and is instead shorthand for the “limited class of defenses that survive a guilty plea”). Facial constitutional challenges fit the bill, Morgan, 230 F.3d at 1071; as-applied challenges to § 922(g)(3) do not, Seay, 620 F.3d at 922 n.3; Veasley, 98 F.4th at 908.

1 The Honorable Stephanie M. Rose, Chief Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa. -2- Deng points out that he pleaded guilty without a plea agreement and so did not agree to an appeal waiver. But it is his guilty plea itself that “waives all non- jurisdictional defects and defenses,” independent of any appeal waiver. See United States v. Limley, 510 F.3d 825, 827 (8th Cir. 2007). A defendant may, of course, enter a conditional guilty plea, preserving his right to appeal an issue. See id. (citing Fed. R. Crim. P. 11(a)(2)). That is not what happened here.

Now to Deng’s vagueness challenge. A criminal statute is void for vagueness under the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause “if it fails to give ordinary people fair notice of the conduct it punishes or is so standardless that it invites arbitrary enforcement.” United States v. Turner, 842 F.3d 602, 604 (8th Cir. 2016) (cleaned up) (quoting Jo