Opinion ID: 620393
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Reverse Stings and the Interstate Commerce Element

Text: Sarraj does not challenge any factual basis for the indictment but instead disputes its legal sufficiency. We review questions of law in a district court's ruling on a motion to dismiss an indictment de novo. United States v. White, 610 F.3d 956, 958 (7th Cir.2010). Sarraj also does not dispute that Congress was operating within its enumerated commerce power in enacting section 922(g)(1) and thereby making a federal crime out of a felon's firearm possession in or affecting commerce. His constitutional arguments focus on reverse sting operations by agents seeking to enforce section 922(g)(1)  though by their own logic the arguments would admittedly apply to all reverse stings where the government, rather than the defendant, is the party responsible for creating the interstate nexus. [2] We have repeatedly and consistently held that a firearm's single past journey across a state line satisfies the interstate commerce element of section 922(g)(1). See, e.g., United States v. Rice, 520 F.3d 811, 815 (7th Cir.2008) (as long as a firearm moved across state lines at some point prior to the defendant's possession of it, the possession satisfies § 922(g)(1)'s `in or affecting commerce' requirement), citing Scarborough v. United States, 431 U.S. 563, 97 S.Ct. 1963, 52 L.Ed.2d 582 (1977). We have also specifically addressed whether the Supreme Court's Lopez decision narrowed the scope of section 922(g)(1), and we have repeatedly found that it did not. E.g., United States v. Lemons, 302 F.3d 769, 772 (7th Cir.2002) (collecting cases); United States v. Lewis, 100 F.3d 49, 52 (7th Cir.1996). Lopez distinguished the statute it invalidated from those like section 922(g)(1) containing an interstate commerce element that would ensure, through case-by-case inquiry, that the firearm possession in question affects interstate commerce. See Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561-62, 115 S.Ct. 1624, referring to United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336, 92 S.Ct. 515, 30 L.Ed.2d 488 (1971), and a predecessor statute prohibiting possession in commerce or affecting commerce. As a practical matter, we have held that the required interstate nexus under section 922(g)(1) can be established merely by evidence that the gun was manufactured outside the state in which it was possessed, from which we infer that the gun must have traveled in interstate commerce at least once. United States v. Humphreys, 468 F.3d 1051, 1053 (7th Cir. 2006). The interstate nexus requirement is a factual predicate, not a mens rea element of the crime that would require proof of defendant's knowledge of facts supporting the nexus. See United States v. Lindemann, 85 F.3d 1232, 1241 (7th Cir.1996) (Thus it has consistently been held that for statutes in which Congress included an `interstate nexus' for the purpose of establishing a basis for its authority, the government... need not prove that the defendant knew the `interstate nexus' of his actions.); United States v. Castor, 937 F.2d 293, 298 (7th Cir.1991) (same). A history in or affecting interstate commerce is only a necessary property of the subject gun, not something the defendant must know. That interstate history operates to establish federal authority under our Constitution of limited powers, but it does not in any way add to, or subtract from, the wrong that is addressed by felon-in-possession statutes. It follows that the defendant need not have been involved with bringing the gun into the state, nor is there a time limit or other requirement of a temporal link between the interstate movement and the defendant's possession. See Lemons, 302 F.3d at 771; Rice, 520 F.3d at 816. A firearm can be stashed away in a friend's closet for decades prior to a defendant's offending possession, and can still satisfy the required interstate nexus. See, e.g., Lewis, 100 F.3d at 52. By the same reasoning, the firearm can satisfy the nexus even if it has been locked up in an ATF storage locker. Reviewing these and other prior cases, the district court correctly rejected Sarraj's arguments that the interstate nexus evaporated when government agents allegedly removed the guns from the stream of commerce by adding them to the Bureau's prop gun collection. Our cases have not endorsed, and we do not adopt here, any distinction that would allow passage of time, or acquisition by the government, to strip a firearm of its interstate nexus. We do not evaluate and weigh the scope of an effect on interstate commerce arising from a particular firearm possession. It is sufficient that the firearm once had a minimal connection to interstate commerce. This minimal nexus requirement reflects the intent of Congress in broadly criminalizing possession of firearms by convicted felons. See, e.g., Scarborough, 431 U.S. at 572-75, 97 S.Ct. 1963 (analyzing the legislative history of a predecessor statute and finding no indication of any concern with either the movement of the gun or the possessor or with the time of acquisition). [3] On appeal, Sarraj emphasizes more his argument that federal agents should not be permitted, in the exercise of their discretion, to federalize local gun-possession offenses by offering suspects interstate prop guns rather than letting them buy local. We assume that federal agents will double-check their factual predicates when setting up a sting and are unlikely to waste time selling suspects guns that do not satisfy the requirements of the statute. Good federal agents will therefore opt to use interstate prop guns in every section 922(g)(1) investigation. As a practical matter, Sarraj is arguing that federal reverse sting operations are never constitutionally acceptable where federal agents supply the link to interstate commerce but could instead have called in state authorities to investigate and arrest under state law. Sarraj asserts that federal agents, by affirmatively ensuring that factual predicates for their authority are satisfied, intrude into an area of traditional state sovereignty and exercise an impermissible general police power. [4] To the extent Sarraj is suggesting that federal law enforcement officials must defer to state authorities who may wish to prosecute locally under state law, we reject the suggestion. We also reject any suggestion that section 922(g)(1) prosecutions must be confined to contexts that are uniquely and necessarily federal. In enacting section 922(g)(1), Congress chose to exercise the full extent of its power over interstate commerce, treating gun possession by convicted felons as an issue of national interest in most circumstances  an interest that is concurrent with that of the several States. See Scarborough, 431 U.S. at 572, 97 S.Ct. 1963 (in implementing these findings by prohibiting both possessions in commerce and those affecting commerce, Congress must have meant more than to outlaw simply those possessions that occur in commerce or in interstate facilities). Congress intended to regulate to the full extent of its commerce power, and permit federal authorities to reach every violation where a minimal nexus was established. Id. Section 922(g)(1) is facially constitutional, and a single past interstate trip sufficiently affects commerce (as our cases hold), so possessing a firearm of foreign manufacture as a felon can be both a federal and a state crime. It is up to the various state and federal agencies to work out together how to share the job of investigating and prosecuting these crimes. In general, and particularly in areas of overlapping authority, we limit our review of decisions by prosecutors to evaluating allegations of illegal conduct or invidious bias in the exercise of executive branch discretion. E.g., United States v. Podolsky, 798 F.2d 177, 181 (7th Cir. 1986) (observing that judges lack the information necessary to evaluate prosecutorial decisions in areas of concurrent federal and state criminal jurisdiction). Returning then to Sarraj's core argument, we conclude that the government here did not violate Sarraj's federal constitutional rights by investigating him and prosecuting him for violation of section 922(g)(1), including by providing him the opportunity for his firearm possession to violate federal law. Sarraj does not claim that he was entrapped by the agents who sold him the guns, or that the agents violated any of his constitutional rights in the process. His only objection is to the agents' selection of the guns they would sell him to ensure the elements of a federal crime would all be met. In analogous reverse sting cases, this court has approved of conduct by federal agents that ensured a required interstate commerce nexus. In Podolsky, agents offered to pay a suspect to burn down a commercial building for insurance purposes. They steered the aspiring arsonist to a building that was in fact used for interstate commerce rather than letting him burn down an unoccupied target building next door. Id. at 177-78. We held that although federal agents could have turned the evidence over to the local authorities rather than induce Podolsky to commit a federal crime, the responsibility for wise management of scarce prosecutorial and other governmental resources is not a judicial responsibility. Id. at 179. Similarly, in United States v. Skoczen, 405 F.3d 537 (7th Cir.2005), agents borrowed a truckload of cigarettes from a tobacco company in Virginia and drove them to Illinois for use in a reverse sting. We found no problem with the agents' actions, although we noted that matters might be different if the defendant had expressed an interest in buying local that agents had frustrated. Id. at 542. [5] We see no meaningful distinction between these cases and the reverse sting here. The agents here did not offend the Constitution with their choice to provide interstate prop guns. Accordingly, the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.