Wire
St. Thomas shootout keeps federal gun case alive
The Third Circuit said a territorial murder charge can back a federal firearms count under the law prosecutors used here. It also upheld a district judge’s power to hold the government to a capital-notice deadline.
A federal appeals court in the Third Circuit handed Virgin Islands prosecutors two answers that matter far beyond one courtroom. In a precedential opinion filed June 1, 2026, the court said a judge may set and enforce a deadline for the government to decide whether it will seek the death penalty, and it said Virgin Islands territorial offenses can qualify as predicate crimes of violence under federal gun law.
The case grew out of charges against Richardson Dangleben, Jr., who was accused of first-degree murder and using a firearm in the commission of a crime of violence. He had been on pretrial release with a weapons restriction when he later got into a shootout with police on St. Thomas. Detective Delbert h Phipps, Jr. was shot and died about an hour later.
Two holdings, one harder road
The gun-law ruling matters because it gives prosecutors a firmer path to keep firearm counts alive when the underlying violence is charged under territorial law. The court rejected the argument that only federal offenses can serve as the violent predicate for 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1)(A), the statute prosecutors often use to add prison time for using a gun during a violent crime.
That closes off one defense route in serious Virgin Islands cases. If a territorial murder or assault charge can support the federal gun count, prosecutors do not have to lose that enhancement just because the violence is defined by local law rather than a federal statute.
The death-penalty clock
The court also backed a different kind of leverage. It held that a district court can require the government to meet a deadline under 18 U.S.C. § 3593(a), the federal death-penalty notice statute, rather than letting the timing sit entirely with prosecutors.
The ruling does not say Dangleben should face a death sentence. What it does say is that once a court sets a notice deadline, the government has to live with it. For future serious cases in the Virgin Islands, that gives district judges and federal prosecutors a clearer rulebook when capital charges and territorial offenses collide.