Greer v. United States
The Court ruled that defendants convicted of illegally possessing firearms cannot win a new trial simply because their trial court failed to instruct the jury — or warn a pleading defendant — that they had to know they were felons at the time they had the gun.
The decision makes it very difficult for convicted felons to undo their convictions based on the Court's 2019 Rehaif ruling, because most felons know they are felons and must at least argue otherwise on appeal to have any chance of relief.
How it got here: Greer's conviction was upheld by the Eleventh Circuit; Gary's guilty plea was vacated by the Fourth Circuit; the Supreme Court took both cases to resolve the resulting circuit split.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Gregory Greer fled from police and was found near a discarded gun in a stairwell while wearing an empty holster; he was already a convicted felon. Michael Gary was caught with a firearm on two separate occasions; he too was a convicted felon. Both were convicted — Greer at trial and Gary through a guilty plea — before the Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that prosecutors must prove a defendant knew they were a felon when they possessed a gun. Neither trial court gave the required instruction or advice about this mental-state element.
The question before the Court
When a felon-in-possession defendant was convicted before courts required prosecutors to prove the defendant knew he was a felon, can he get a new trial on appeal based solely on that omitted instruction — without ever claiming he actually didn't know he was a felon?
The Court's answer
No — defendants whose trial courts failed to properly instruct juries, or who were not warned during guilty pleas, that they had to know they were felons cannot automatically get a new trial. Because neither man raised this objection at the time of their proceedings, they face the demanding "plain error" standard on appeal, which requires showing a reasonable probability that the outcome would have been different without the error.
Since convicted felons ordinarily know they are felons, a defendant who never argues otherwise on appeal — and never claims he actually didn't know his status — cannot carry that burden. The Court also rejected two alternative arguments: a "futility" exception for defendants who say objecting at trial would have been pointless given the law at the time has no support in the rules or the Court's precedents, and Rehaif errors are not so fundamental that they require automatic reversal without any showing of prejudice.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Thousands of people convicted before 2019 of being felons in possession of a firearm cannot automatically reopen their cases based on the Rehaif ruling. To have any chance at a new trial, they must make a credible, specific argument that they genuinely didn't know they were felons when they had the gun — a showing that will be very difficult for most convicted felons to make.
What changes now
Greer's conviction stands. Gary's case returns to the Fourth Circuit with its earlier ruling reversed; Gary must now make a specific showing — which he has so far not made — that he actually didn't know he was a felon for his claim to go further. Going forward, defendants in felon-in-possession cases who didn't object to a Rehaif error at trial must put forward a credible, case-specific argument that they lacked knowledge of their felon status to have any chance of plain-error relief on appeal.
What this does not decide
The ruling does not decide whether defendants who did properly object at trial to a Rehaif error — and thus get harmless-error review — can win on appeal; Justice Sotomayor emphasized that the majority's reasoning does not extend to that context. Nor does it decide whether a defendant who specifically and credibly claims he didn't know he was a felon could succeed on plain-error review.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent in part — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor agreed with the majority that Greer was not entitled to plain-error relief and that automatic reversal in Gary's case was wrong. She wrote separately to make clear that the majority's reasoning — examining evidence outside the trial record and weighing the defendant's silence — does not carry over to cases where a defendant properly objected, and that today's ruling creates no legal presumption that all felons know they are felons. As to Gary, she would have sent the case back to the Fourth Circuit to decide whether Gary could make a specific, case-by-case showing of prejudice, rather than resolving that question at the Supreme Court level.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- Both defendants failed to raise the Rehaif mens rea argument during their trial-court proceedings, so they forfeited the claim. Under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, a missed objection triggers 'plain error' review on appeal — the most demanding standard for getting a conviction overturned — rather than the more lenient 'harmless error' review that applies when a defendant does object at the time.
- Plain error review has four requirements: (1) there was an error; (2) the error was obvious; (3) the error affected the defendant's 'substantial rights,' meaning there is a reasonable probability the outcome would have been different without it; and (4) the error had a serious effect on the fairness of the proceedings. Everyone agreed the first two requirements were met, so the Court focused on whether each defendant could show a reasonable probability of a different result.
- Because convicted felons ordinarily know they are felons — serving prison time tends to make that obvious — the third requirement is very hard to meet in a felon-in-possession case. A defendant who never argues that he didn't actually know his status gives an appellate court no reason to think a properly instructed jury would have reached a different verdict, or that a properly advised defendant would have gone to trial instead of pleading guilty.
- Neither Greer nor Gary argued on appeal that he genuinely didn't know he was a felon. Both had multiple prior felony convictions and had served significant prison time. Without any such argument or representation, neither could show the required 'reasonable probability' of a different outcome — so neither satisfied the substantial-rights prong.
- Gary's 'futility' argument — that ordinary plain-error review shouldn't apply because objecting at trial would have been pointless, since every federal appeals court at the time held that knowledge of felon status was not required — had no support. Rules 51 and 52 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure draw the line based on whether a defendant actually preserved the objection, not on whether the objection was likely to succeed; and the Court's prior decisions confirm that uniformity of contrary authority does not exempt a defendant from plain-error review.
- Gary's 'structural error' argument — that Rehaif errors are so fundamental they should require automatic reversal no matter what, without any showing of prejudice — also failed. The Court has reserved the structural error category for a very narrow class of problems, such as denying someone a lawyer or a public trial. Omitting a single element from jury instructions or a guilty-plea warning is a discrete, fixable defect that can be analyzed for prejudice, not a flaw that corrupts the entire proceeding from start to finish.