The Third Circuit closed out June with a burst of precedential criminal decisions — five opinions each announcing at least one holding that will matter in federal criminal practice going forward. Rather than give each case a full write-up, this post collects the holdings in one place and flags what each decision stands for. The most significant of the group is United States v. Rosario, which announces two new rules — one bad for defendants, one quite good — so I’ll start there.
Rosario: Guns-for-Drugs Trades Are Now Per Se § 924(c) Violations — But the Categorical Approach Governs § 841(b)(1)(C) Life Sentences
United States v. Rosario, No. 23-1242 (3d Cir. July 1, 2026), arose from a fatal overdose. A jury convicted Rosario of distributing the drugs that killed his customer and, separately, of possessing firearms in furtherance of drug trafficking after he accepted an assault-style rifle and a shotgun as payment for methamphetamine. Because Rosario had two prior Pennsylvania drug convictions, the district court imposed the mandatory life sentence under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C), which applies when a defendant with a prior “felony drug offense” distributes drugs that result in death or serious bodily injury.
The opinion resolves two open questions in the circuit.
First, the guns-for-drugs question. In Watson v. United States, 552 U.S. 74 (2007), the Supreme Court held that a person who receives a firearm in trade for drugs does not “use” the firearm under § 924(c). But Watson left open whether that same person possesses the firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking — a question the Third Circuit had expressly reserved in Holland v. Warden Canaan USP, 998 F.3d 70 (3d Cir. 2021). Rosario answers it: a defendant who accepts a firearm as payment for drugs both possesses the firearm under § 924(c) and does so in furtherance of drug trafficking. The court called these trades per se violations, joining what is now essentially every other circuit. For defense lawyers, this closes off a once-viable argument. If your client took a gun in trade, the § 924(c) count will survive.
Second — and this is the defense win — the court held that the traditional categorical approach of Taylor v. United States, 495 U.S. 575 (1990), governs whether a prior state conviction qualifies as a “felony drug offense” triggering § 841(b)(1)(C)’s mandatory life sentence. The district court had used a “looser,” conduct-based comparison, reasoning that the statute keys on conduct relating to narcotics rather than on a federal offense definition. The Third Circuit rejected that view. Because the enhancement is triggered by a prior conviction, not prior conduct, courts must compare the elements of the state statute to the federal definition without looking at what the defendant actually did. The court adopted the Seventh Circuit’s reasoning in United States v. Elder, 900 F.3d 491 (7th Cir. 2018), and remanded for resentencing.
Rosario argued that Pennsylvania’s drug statutes sweep more broadly than the substances listed in the federal definition at 21 U.S.C. § 802(44) — an argument the panel expressly declined to reach. On remand, that categorical-mismatch argument is live, and it’s the same style of argument that has unwound career-offender designations and ACCA enhancements across the country. Anyone with a client facing a § 841(b)(1)(C) death-results enhancement predicated on a Pennsylvania conviction should be making it.
The court also rejected Rosario’s constitutional attacks on § 841(b)(1)(C)’s sentencing scheme — the Eighth Amendment and equal protection arguments both fail under existing precedent — and affirmed the convictions themselves, applying the good faith exception to a Facebook search warrant without ever deciding whether the warrant was supported by probable cause or sufficiently particular. The court skipped the Fourth Amendment merits entirely and went directly to good faith, as it did in United States v. Caesar, 2 F.4th 160 (3d Cir. 2021).
Williams: A Botched Faretta Warning Isn’t Fatal — and a Quiet Fight Over How Courts Review Waivers of Counsel
United States v. Williams, No. 25-1545 (3d Cir. June 30, 2026), is a self-representation case with an unusually sharp methodological disagreement beneath the surface.
Williams, facing federal child-exploitation charges, waived counsel twice after full Faretta hearings. Both times, the district court misinformed him — based on the government’s erroneous submission — that one count carried a ten-year maximum when it actually carried life. He was convicted and sentenced to life, then argued his waivers were unknowing.
Judge Bibas, writing for the majority, affirmed. The court held that the waivers were knowing based on the Farettahearings alone: Williams was correctly told he faced up to 120 years on the other counts, which for a man in his mid-thirties is a life sentence in everything but name. The mistaken figure on one count didn’t mislead him about the reality of his exposure. That distinguishes United States v. Booker, 684 F.3d 421 (3d Cir. 2012), where the district court’s cumulative errors understated the defendant’s mandatory exposure by twenty years.
But the opinion goes further. The Third Circuit has long taken the position — announced in United States v. Jones, 452 F.3d 223 (3d Cir. 2006) — that a waiver’s validity is assessed from the Faretta colloquy itself, not from a roving review of the whole record. Williams now carves out an exception: when a defendant seeks self-representation in bad faith, as a delay tactic or to bait structural error, the court will review the entire record to confirm the waiver was knowing. Williams’s record made that easy — he told the judge and jury he was “facing a life sentence” nine separate times during trial.
Judge Phipps concurred in the judgment only. He points out that every other circuit to consider the question uses whole-record review as the general rule, not as an exception for bad-faith requests, and that the Supreme Court’s cases from Johnson v. Zerbst forward have always framed waiver as a totality-of-the-circumstances question. As a matter of precedent-counting, Phipps has the better of the argument — the Jones rule is a genuine outlier.
But here’s the thing: the outlier rule is the defense-protective one. Colloquy-focused review forces district courts to get the Faretta hearing right, because they can’t count on the rest of the record to bail them out. Whole-record review invites exactly the kind of after-the-fact rationalization that Booker warned against. The majority’s approach — keep the colloquy rule, but deny its benefit to defendants gaming the system — strikes me as the sounder balance, even if it sits awkwardly against the weight of authority. Defendants who invoke Faretta in good faith keep the stronger protection. Defendants like Williams don’t get a new trial for a technicality they helped engineer.
The court also rejected Williams’s Wiretap Act challenge (undercover officers posing as a victim are “parties” to the communication under 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(c)) and his evidentiary challenges to other-acts evidence under Rules 413 and 414.
Aumiller: A False IRS Financial Disclosure Form Is an Affirmative Act of Tax Evasion
United States v. Aumiller, No. 24-2742 (3d Cir. July 1, 2026), fills a gap in the circuit’s tax evasion case law. Evasion under 26 U.S.C. § 7201 requires an affirmative act — something beyond simply not paying. Mere nonpayment, and even mere failure to disclose an account, isn’t enough under United States v. McGill, 964 F.2d 222 (3d Cir. 1992).
Aumiller owed back taxes, and during collection the IRS required him to submit Forms 433-A and 433-B — financial disclosure statements listing all bank accounts. He submitted the forms but omitted his M&T Bank accounts. The Third Circuit held that intentionally filing a false Form 433 is an affirmative act of evasion, joining the Fifth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Crandell, 72 F.4th 110 (5th Cir. 2023). The court distinguished McGill: a taxpayer who passively fails to volunteer an account’s existence hasn’t committed an affirmative act, but a taxpayer who is asked to disclose everything and responds with a false statement has.
The line the court draws is between silence and misrepresentation. Silence isn’t evasion. Lying on a form the IRS asks you to fill out is. The decision also matters for the statute of limitations — the six-year clock under 26 U.S.C. § 6531(2) runs from the last affirmative act, so a false Form 433 filed late in a long collection saga can refresh limitations on conduct stretching back years. Anyone advising clients in IRS collections should treat those forms with the same gravity as a sworn statement, because for criminal purposes they now function like one.
Craddock: One Defaced Serial Number Triggers the Enhancement, Even If Another Is Legible
United States v. Craddock, No. 25-2573 (3d Cir. July 1, 2026), answers a small but recurring guidelines question. Modern pistols often bear more than one serial number — Craddock’s Glock had one on the slide and one on the frame. The frame number was mostly scratched off; the slide number was untouched and fully legible.
The court held that the four-level enhancement under U.S.S.G. § 2K2.1(b)(4)(B)(i) applies when a serial number has been modified to be illegible or unrecognizable to the unaided eye, regardless of whether another legible serial number remains on the firearm. The analysis is pure text: “any firearm” with “a serial number” that “was modified” means one defaced number is enough. At least six other circuits agree, and the 2024 amendment to the guideline — which replaced “altered or obliterated” with the illegibility standard — was meant to resolve a circuit split over “altered,” not to create an escape hatch for guns with duplicate markings.
The practical point for defense counsel is that there’s no partial-credit argument here. If any serial number on the gun has been scratched to illegibility, expect the four levels.
Riddy: The “Manager or Supervisor” Enhancement Survives Nasir — Without the Commentary
United States v. Riddy, No. 25-2995 (3d Cir. July 1, 2026), continues the Third Circuit’s post-Nasir project of re-examining guidelines provisions without automatic deference to the Sentencing Commission’s commentary. Since United States v. Nasir, 17 F.4th 459 (3d Cir. 2021) (en banc), courts in this circuit may defer to guidelines commentary only when the guideline text is genuinely ambiguous.
Riddy ran a crack distribution operation with a codefendant, Brown, who delivered drugs at Riddy’s direction, drove Riddy’s car, and moved only after Riddy — who controlled the Cash App account — confirmed payment. The district court applied the two-level manager-or-supervisor enhancement under § 3B1.1(c), leaning on the factors in Application Note 4 without first asking whether the guideline was ambiguous. That was error under Nasir.
But it was harmless. The panel held that “manager” and “supervisor” are not genuinely ambiguous: applying the ordinary-meaning analysis from United States v. Adair, 38 F.4th 341 (3d Cir. 2022), the terms reach any person with oversight over operations or other persons, sitting a rung below “organizers” and “leaders” in culpability. Riddy directed Brown’s deliveries and controlled the money. That’s oversight, so the enhancement applies with or without the commentary.
The enhancement made Riddy ineligible for safety-valve relief under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(f)(4), locking in the ten-year mandatory minimum. Riddy is a reminder that after Nasir, the first move in any guidelines dispute is a textual one. Sentencing courts that reflexively reach for the application notes are committing legal error, and while the error was harmless here, it won’t always be. Preserve the objection.
What Ties These Together
Three of the five decisions — Rosario, Craddock, and Riddy — are sentencing cases, and all three turn on close reading of statutory or guidelines text. The panel in each case starts with ordinary meaning, consults dictionaries, and treats the text as the whole ballgame. That interpretive posture cuts both ways for the defense: it produced the categorical-approach holding in Rosario (good) and the single-serial-number holding in Craddock (bad). But it rewards lawyers who do the textual analysis themselves rather than arguing from fairness or policy. In this circuit, right now, the text is where sentencing arguments are won and lost.