D.C. Felon Sentenced to 18 Months for Illegal Gun Possession After Marijuana Stop

Daveion Antonio Ervin, 28, of Washington, D.C., received an 18-month prison sentence Tuesday after pleading guilty to illegally possessing a loaded Springfield Armory pistol, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia announced.

The case began when D.C. police stopped Ervin for smoking marijuana on a public street. Officers discovered the firearm during the encounter. Court records show Ervin had a prior felony conviction that barred him from possessing any firearm or ammunition under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).

Ervin pleaded guilty on an unspecified date prior to sentencing. The 18-month term falls within federal sentencing guidelines for the offense. He must serve the full sentence in Bureau of Prisons custody with no credit for time served noted in the release. Upon release he faces three years of supervised release that includes standard prohibitions on new criminal conduct and firearm possession.

The sentence changes Ervin’s status from pretrial release to immediate incarceration. Federal law permanently prohibits him from future firearm possession unless his civil rights are restored, a rare outcome for felons. The case also activates standard federal firearms tracing requirements for the recovered Springfield Armory pistol, which will be entered into the ATF’s National Tracing Center database.

Downstream, the conviction counts as a new predicate offense for any future federal or D.C. prosecution. It requires the U.S. Attorney’s Office to update its felon-in-possession case tracking and closes one open firearms investigation in the District. The Bureau of Prisons must now designate a facility for Ervin within the next several weeks under normal classification procedures.

This marks the latest local felon-in-possession prosecution stemming from a routine street stop in the District. The Department of Justice has pursued such cases under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) since the statute’s enactment in 1968, with annual filings in the D.C. federal court typically numbering in the low hundreds.