A Detroit man who tried to rob an East Side convenience store at gunpoint with a weapon wrapped in duct tape has been sentenced to 40 months in federal prison. Clark Hall pleaded guilty to possession of an unregistered firearm after a failed holdup at Vogue Market just after 9 a.m. on April 1, 2025, a case that moved from a local stickup to a federal courtroom once investigators traced the gun's origins.
According to ClickOnDetroit, a store clerk told police a man tried to rob Vogue Market at gunpoint before running off. Detroit police later recovered a gun the suspect had at the store, and surveillance footage reviewed by the ATF showed a man matching Hall's description armed with what police believed appeared to be the same weapon. The suspect was described as wearing a tan Carhartt jacket, a black hooded sweatshirt, and black or grey jeans.
Grosse Pointe police K9 officers helped track the suspect's last known area, a detail that reflects how routine cross-border cooperation is along the Detroit-Grosse Pointe line. Vogue Market sits at 9200 Cadieux Road on Detroit's East Side, in the Denby neighborhood near the municipal border with Grosse Pointe, according to a LoopNet property listing, and Grosse Pointe departments maintain formal mutual aid agreements with Detroit that allow specialized K-9 units to assist across city boundaries, per C & G Newspapers.
From Local Stickup to Federal Case
Police arrested Hall, who reportedly acknowledged the gun was his and told police he got it from a light-skinned individual, according to the same account. Hall also told police he was a convicted felon, a status that traces back to a July 9, 2020 guilty plea to felony larceny from a person, for which he received three years of probation. Under Michigan law, that charge carries a maximum of up to 10 years in state prison regardless of the value of the property taken, according to Boria Law, underscoring how the state treats taking property directly from a person as a serious felony.
The case became a federal matter on April 3, 2025, when an ATF special agent concluded the gun was manufactured outside Michigan. Establishing that interstate commerce connection is the evidentiary step that allows federal prosecutors to bring charges under firearms statutes, per ClickOnDetroit. The gun's unusual condition — wrapped in duct tape — didn't change its legal status. Federal firearms statutes regulate weapons based on their technical characteristics, not their appearance, meaning physical modifications like tape don't exempt a possessor from registration requirements under 26 U.S.C. § 5861, according to Scrofano Law.
Sentence and What Comes Next
Hall was sentenced last Tuesday to 40 months in federal prison, followed by up to three years of supervised release. That sentence falls well below the statutory maximum for possession of an unregistered firearm under 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d), which allows for up to 10 years in prison and a fine of as much as $250,000, per Leppard Law. Federal sentencing guidelines weigh criminal history when setting terms below that ceiling, which helps explain why Hall's prior felony record factored into his case.
The case was prosecuted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, based at the Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse in downtown Detroit, a court that handles federal prosecutions across 34 eastern Michigan counties. Firearms offenses made up 24.6% of all sentenced federal cases in that district in fiscal year 2024, according to U.S. Sentencing Commission data cited by White Collar Defense — a rate nearly double the national average, reflecting how often federal prosecutors in metro Detroit pursue illegal firearm possession cases. National sentencing data also show that people convicted of federal firearm offenses have among the highest rearrest rates of any federal crime category after release, according to Azhari Law, a pattern that underpins Hall's mandated supervised release term.
A Crime That Bucked the City's Trend
Hall's arrest came during a period when violent crime in Detroit was falling sharply. Preliminary police data for 2025 showed homicides dropped 19% to 165 cases — the city's lowest annual total since 1965 — while robberies fell 21% to 953 cases, according to FOX 2 Detroit. The attempted Vogue Market robbery stands as one incident within that broader decline, one that nonetheless carried serious consequences once federal authorities got involved.
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