United States v. John W. Rogers

270 F.3d 1076, 2001 U.S. App. LEXIS 22872, 2001 WL 1285584
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedOctober 25, 2001
Docket01-2097
StatusPublished
Cited by38 cases

This text of 270 F.3d 1076 (United States v. John W. Rogers) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. John W. Rogers, 270 F.3d 1076, 2001 U.S. App. LEXIS 22872, 2001 WL 1285584 (7th Cir. 2001).

Opinion

EASTERBROOK, Circuit Judge.

Federal agents found in John Rogers’s garage a home-made silencer for a MAC-11 semiautomatic pistol. He has been convicted of possessing a “firearm” (the silencer, see 18 U.S.C. § 921 and 26 U.S.C. § 5845(a)(7)) not registered to him in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record. Every “firearm” (a term of art, see Staples v. United States, 511 U.S. 600, 114 S.Ct. 1793, 128 L.Ed.2d 608 (1994)) must be registered in this Record, see 26 U.S.C. §§ 5822, 5841, by its maker and by each transferor. The initial entry into the Record and each transfer *1078 occasion a $200 tax. See 26 U.S.C. §§ 5811, 5821. Possessing an unregistered firearm is a felony. 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d). Rogers has been sentenced to 70 months’ imprisonments-well short of the 120-month maximum, 26 U.S.C. § 5871, but twice the presumptive Guideline range for the offense. He contests both the conviction and the sentence.

Section 5861(d) makes it unlawful for any person “to receive or possess a firearm which is not registered to him in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record”. Rogers possessed a device that the jury found to be a “firearm.” He concedes that this firearm was not registered to him. Nonetheless, Rogers insists, he did not violate § 5861(d)— and, if he did, that § 5861(d) is unconstitutional. His reasoning is that § 5861(d) could not be sustained under the Commerce Clause because it does not depend on any link between the firearm and interstate commerce. Thus the legislative authority must depend on the taxing power. See United States v. Copus, 93 F.3d 269, 275-76 (7th Cir.1996). Yet Congress has not “really” tried to raise revenues, Rogers insists, and to support this argument he observes that the Secretary of the Treasury will not register a firearm that the maker or transferee cannot lawfully possess in the state where the firearm would be kept. “Applications [for making or registering firearms] shall be denied if the making or possession of the firearm would place the person making the firearm in violation of law.” 26 U.S.C. § 5822. See also 26 U.S.C. § 5812. It is unlawful to possess any silencer in Illinois, the state where Rogers lives. See 720 ILCS 5/24-1(a)(6). Thus the Secretary would have denied an application for permission to make the silencer, and a nonexistent silencer cannot be registered and taxed.

This line of argument encounters difficulties, the first of which is that Rogers is presenting it for the first time on appeal. He says that jurisdictional arguments may be advanced at any time, but the district court had subject-matter jurisdiction. The indictment charged Rogers with an offense against the United States; no more was necessary. Courts sometimes call the link between a statute and a source of national authority a “jurisdictional” requirement, but arguments along these lines must be raised in the district court as objections to the indictment. Only limits on the adjudicatory power of the court are open at any time. We used the word “jurisdiction” loosely in Copus, the case that gave Rogers the idea that he could bypass the district court. United States v. Martin, 147 F.3d 529 (7th Cir.1998), clarifies the different uses of “jurisdiction” by holding that proof of an interstate transaction is no different from proof of any other element of a federal crime. “[T]he nexus with interstate commerce, which courts frequently call the ‘jurisdictional element,’ is simply one of the essential elements of [the offense]. Although courts frequently call it the ‘jurisdictional element’ of the statute, it is ‘jurisdictional’ only in the shorthand sense that without that nexus, there can be no federal crime.... It is not jurisdictional in the sense that it affects a court’s subject matter jurisdiction, i.e., a court’s constitutional or statutory power to adjudicate a case, here authorized by 18 U.S.C. § 3231.” 147 F.3d at 531-32 (citation omitted). Martin modified earlier cases in this circuit that had occasionally failed to distinguish precisely among a “jurisdictional element” of the offense, the legislative power of Congress under Article I, and the subject-matter jurisdiction of the court. “Even if the government fails to establish the connection to interstate commerce [or some other source of national power], the district court is not deprived of jurisdiction to hear" the case.” 147 F.3d at 532. See also, e.g., Hugi v. United States, 164 F.3d *1079 378, 380 (7th Cir.1999); McCoy v. United States, 266 F.3d 1245, 1252 (11th Cir.2001). So to get anywhere on appeal Rogers must establish plain error, Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(b), under the standards of Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 117 S.Ct. 1544, 137 L.Ed.2d 718 (1997), and United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 113 S.Ct. 1770, 123 L.Ed.2d 508 (1993).

Section 5861(d) prohibits possessing any unregistered firearm; a silencer is a firearm; Rogers possessed a silencer; that silencer was unregistered. Where’s the error, plain or concealed? True enough, Rogers could not have registered the silencer while it was in Illinois — the national government will not put its imprimatur on firearms that are contraband under state law — but this differs from saying that Rogers could not have registered it at all. He just had to keep it elsewhere. (Wisconsin, for example. See Wis. Stat. § 941.298(3)(e).) Or Rogers could have complied with both state and federal laws by refraining from making or possessing a silencer in Illinois. See United States v. Ross, 9 F.3d 1182, 1192-94 (7th Cir.1993), remanded on other grounds, 511 U.S. 1124, 114 S.Ct. 2129, 128 L.Ed.2d 860 (1994), decision on remand, 40 F.3d 144 (7th Cir.1994). It was Rogers’s decision to violate Illinois law that rendered him unable to comply with federal law.

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Bluebook (online)
270 F.3d 1076, 2001 U.S. App. LEXIS 22872, 2001 WL 1285584, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-john-w-rogers-ca7-2001.