Opinion ID: 3002245
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Government’s Motion in Limine

Text: In a related vein, Dimitrov challenges the district court’s refusal to allow him to present evidence that he was unaware of the Illinois money transmitting license requirements. Before trial, the government moved in limine to prevent Dimitrov from testifying that he believed his Limited Business License sufficed. The district court granted the government’s motion after reviewing the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Talebnejad and concluding that Dimitrov’s intended defense would be unavailing. We review the district court’s evidentiary decision for No. 07-2759 13 abuse of discretion. See United States v. Watts, 535 F.3d 650, 657 (7th Cir. 2008). As discussed above, Congress explicitly removed the defense Dimitrov planned to present when it amended § 1960. Because a defendant’s lack of knowledge of the state licensing requirement is not a defense to prosecution, the district court appropriately concluded that Dimitrov’s proposed evidence would be irrelevant. It was therefore not an abuse of the court’s discretion to grant the government’s motion in limine. See United States v. Krankel, 164 F.3d 1046, 1054 (7th Cir. 1998) (trial court did not abuse its discretion excluding evidence that did “not tend to prove or disprove an element of the crime charged”). D. Unconstitutional Delegation of Legislative Authority Finally, Dimitrov attacks the constitutionality of § 1960 on the grounds that it amounts to an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power. He claims that by relying on state law to dictate whether the operation of a money transmitting business without a license is criminal, § 1960(a) unconstitutionally delegates legislative power to the states. See, e.g., A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495, 529-30 (1935). Dimitrov maintains that because the operation of a money transmitting business is only a federal crime if the state legislature has made it a felony or misdemeanor, § 1960(a) transfers to the states its legislative function. There are several problems with Dimitrov’s argument, but the most pertinent one here is that he failed to preserve it when he pleaded guilty. Following the district court’s 14 No. 07-2759 grant of the government’s motion in limine, Dimitrov abandoned his plan to proceed to trial. To facilitate his plea, the government drew up an “agreed statement of facts.” In it Dimitrov admits that he operated a money transmitting business without the license required by Illinois law. It also states that Dimitrov possessed a Limited Business License to do business in the City of Chicago, and that he believed the license satisfied any licensing obligations required of him. In agreeing to plead guilty, Dimitrov reserved “the right to object to the constitutionality and construction of Title 18 U.S.C. § 1960 as it relates to the mental state required to be in violation of the law.” Nowhere does the agreed statement of facts identify the unconstitutional delegation argument Dimitrov now raises. Rule 11(a)(2), which allows conditional guilty pleas, is a narrow exception to the ordinary rule that a defendant who pleads guilty cannot appeal from his conviction or challenge the sufficiency of the indictment on appeal. United States v. Doherty, 17 F.3d 1056, 1058 (7th Cir. 1994). A conditional plea must be in writing and “precisely identify which pretrial issues the defendant wishes to preserve for review.” United States v. Markling, 7 F.3d 1309, 1313 (7th Cir. 1993). Dimitrov’s “conditional plea” as memorialized in the agreed statement of facts identifies and preserves only his objection to the constitutionality of the “mental state” required to sustain a violation of § 1960(a). Because Dimitrov neither objected to § 1960 as an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power before entering his plea nor specified that ground in his conditional plea, he cannot raise it now on appeal. See Doherty, No. 07-2759 15 17 F.3d at 1058-59 (“Doherty’s ‘conditional’ plea thus necessarily reserved the right to appeal only the denial of his motion to dismiss the indictment on the ground the motion had stated.”).