No. 22-3564 ___________________________

United States of America

Plaintiff - Appellee

v.

Henry Mike Watkins, Jr.

Defendant - Appellant ____________

Appeal from United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas - Central ____________

Submitted: September 22, 2023 Filed: January 30, 2024 ____________ Before SHEPHERD, KELLY, and STRAS, Circuit Judges. ____________ SHEPHERD, Circuit Judge.

Henry Watkins, Jr., was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), and sentenced to 202 months’ imprisonment. After Watkins successfully moved for resentencing, arguing that application of the armed career criminal enhancement was inappropriate, he was resentenced to 110 months’ imprisonment and 3 years of supervised release. Watkins now appeals, claiming the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction and raising several alleged sentencing errors. Having jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, we vacate Watkins’s sentence and remand to the district court for a resentencing.

I.

Watkins was driving his fiancée’s car late one night when North Little Rock Police Officer Tyler Grant pulled him over after discovering that the license plate was registered to another vehicle. When Grant approached the vehicle, he noticed that the driver, later identified as Watkins, was the vehicle’s sole occupant. Grant also smelled a marijuana odor through the open car window. After Watkins ignored Grant’s repeated requests to exit the vehicle and answer his question about whether Watkins had any drugs, Watkins began to reach between the driver’s seat and center console. Grant again asked Watkins to exit the vehicle, and Watkins complied. After Grant searched Watkins and the vehicle, he found what he suspected to be cocaine and ecstasy in Watkins’s pocket and a 9-millimeter handgun loaded with eight rounds of ammunition on the vehicle’s front passenger floorboard. Grant arrested Watkins, and a grand jury indicted him for being a felon in possession of a firearm. Watkins was later convicted by a jury.

Watkins was initially sentenced based on a United States Sentencing Guidelines range of 262 to 327 months’ imprisonment, calculated with the armed career criminal enhancement because of two prior drug offenses and a crime of violence. The district court varied downward and sentenced him to 202 months’ imprisonment and 3 years of supervised release. Watkins later moved to be resentenced, arguing that under recent Eighth Circuit case law, these prior convictions did not qualify as predicate offenses under the Armed Career Criminal Act. The district court agreed and ordered him to be resentenced. Watkins’s Guidelines range was recalculated to 110 to 137 months’ imprisonment, adjusted to 110 to 120 months based on the statutory maximum, and 1 to 3 years of supervised release. Watkins objected to the Guidelines calculation, arguing that his offense level should be 20 instead of 24 and no four-level firearm enhancement should apply. The district court overruled Watkins’s objections and, after noting its intent to “give -2- him a low end of the guidelines range” because “nothing ha[d] changed,” sentenced him to 110 months’ imprisonment and 3 years of supervised release. In orally pronouncing Watkins’s sentence, the district court explicitly ordered a term of supervised release with conditions including participation in both substance abuse and mental health t