United States v. Tanzymore , 175 F. App'x 593 ( 2006 )

UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 05-4120
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
versus
DARIUS DANTONI TANZYMORE,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of
Maryland, at Baltimore. J. Frederick Motz, District Judge. (CR-
04-22-JFM)
Submitted: January 19, 2006 Decided: April 6, 2006
Before WIDENER, NIEMEYER, and MICHAEL, Circuit Judges.
Vacated and remanded by unpublished per curiam opinion.
Kenneth W. Ravenell, SCHULMAN, TREEM, KAMINKOW, GILDEN & RAVENELL,
P.A., Baltimore, Maryland, for Appellant. Rod J. Rosenstein,
United States Attorney, Barbara S. Sale, Assistant United States
Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Baltimore,
Maryland, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
See Local Rule 36(c).
PER CURIAM:
Darius Tanzymore was indicted on one count of possession
of a firearm while being a felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §
922(g)(1). Tanzymore pleaded not guilty. During trial, the
district court rejected Tanzymore’s justification defense as a
matter of law. Tanzymore argued that he possessed the firearm
because he feared for his safety and that of his family.
Tanzymore then entered a guilty plea during trial
conditioned on his right to appeal the justification defense. The
court accepted the conditional plea and sentenced Tanzymore to 188
months' imprisonment. This appeal followed.
Disposition of this appeal is controlled by our decision
in United States v. Bundy, 392 F.3d 641 (4th Cir. 2004). In Bundy,
we held that a conditional guilty plea that attempts to preserve
non-case-dispositive issues for appellate review is invalid. An
issue is case-dispositive only if a ruling in the defendant's favor
would require dismissal of the charges or suppression of essential
evidence, or a ruling in the government's favor would require
affirming the conviction. "In short, there should be no trial
after the specified issues are resolved by the court of appeals."
392 F.3d at 648.
In this case, Tanzymore’s conditional guilty plea
attempted to preserve for appeal a non-case-dispositive issue. If
we were to find that Tanzymore was entitled to present a
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justification defense, the case would be returned to the district
court and proceed to trial. As in Bundy, we conclude that "the
presence of one non-case-dispositive issue in this conditional plea
renders the entire plea invalid." Id. And as in Bundy, we
therefore vacate the judgment of conviction and remand for further
proceedings.
VACATED AND REMANDED
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