U.S. v. Fleischli

• Decision Date: 12 September 2002
• Docket Number: No. 01-2703.,01-2703.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Joseph H. FLEISCHLI, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

305 F.3d 643

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Joseph H. FLEISCHLI, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 01-2703.

United States Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit.

Argued January 7, 2002.

Decided September 12, 2002.

Rehearing En Banc Denied October 23, 2002.

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Patricia A. Tomaw (argued), Office of U.S. Atty., Springfield, IL, for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Richard E. Gardiner (argued), Fairfax, VA, for Defendant-Appellant.

Before MANION, ROVNER and EVANS, Circuit Judges.

ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge.

Joseph Fleischli was convicted by a jury of two counts of possession of machine guns in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(o)(1), one count of transportation of a firearm by a felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), one count of possession of a firearm by a felon in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), one count of unlawful manufacture of a machine gun in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 5861(f), and one count of possession of an unregistered destructive device in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d). Fleischli was sentenced to 120 months' imprisonment, three years of supervised release and a $600 special assessment. He appeals from both his conviction and his sentence on numerous constitutional, statutory and factual grounds. We affirm.

I.

Fleischli concedes that prior to the events that led to his indictment, he had been convicted of four felonies. Two convictions related to the illegal manufacture and possession of firearms and two related to illegal drugs. In March and May of 1998, an informant told the Springfield, Illinois ATF office that Fleischli had an aircraft machine gun (sometimes called a "mini-gun") and that Fleischli had taken it to Missouri in the Spring of 1998. The informant said that in Missouri, Fleischli and others had fired the minigun. Around this same time, Donald Gibbs, an associate of Fleischli, approached Deputy James Malone in the Macoupin County Sheriff's Department with an unusual request. Gibbs wanted the Sheriff's Department to issue a letter to the Treasury Department requesting a demonstration of a Steyr machine gun in anticipation of a possible purchase. Gibbs gave the deputy Fleischli's business card which listed Fleischli as president of Springfield Armaments Services, Inc. ("SAS"), a Class II licensed firearms manufacturer. Gibbs told the deputy that Fleischli was a licensed firearms manufacturer who owned a minigun and wanted to add to his collection. Gibbs provided the deputy with a sample letter to use in drafting the letter to the Treasury Department, requesting permission for Fleischli, as a licensed dealer, to purchase the gun. The deputy recognized Gibbs as a convicted felon and notified his captain who, in turn, notified the Springfield ATF about this strange encounter.

The ATF learned that SAS was incorporated in 1996 by Delmar and Diamonda Tobias, who were Fleischli's father-in-law and mother-in-law, and by Vernon Medlock. These three made up the board of directors as well. Delmar Tobias¹ was listed as president and Medlock was the secretary/treasurer. Apparently, Fleischli had attempted (and failed) to obtain a federal firearms license in 1991 and sought restoration of his federal explosives privileges in 1993. The ATF was therefore already familiar with Fleischli when Captain Jeff Rhodes called from the Sheriff's Department to tell them about Gibbs' conversation with Deputy Malone. The ATF agents decided to investigate, with the aid of Deputy Malone, possible firearms violations by Fleischli.

The ATF subsequently recorded a number of calls between Malone and Fleischli. The deputy initiated contact by calling the number listed on the business card provided by Gibbs. That number turned out to belong to Otto American Boiler, a business Fleischli owned in Springfield. During these recorded calls, Fleischli told the deputy about his firearms manufacturing business, the minigun he had constructed, and other machine guns he owned. To persuade the Sheriff's Department to issue the Treasury letter, Fleischli agreed to demonstrate the minigun on August 11, 1998 at the Brittany Range in Macoupin County. At the August 11 demonstration, ATF seized the minigun. ATF agents questioned Fleischli, Delmar Tobias and Medlock about SAS. Fleischli said the minigun belonged to SAS, that SAS was Tobias's company and that he (Fleischli) was just an employee. Fleischli admitted he possessed other machine guns in a safe at Otto American Boiler and other firearms at his home. Fleischli volunteered that an ATF agent previously told him he could not obtain a federal firearms license in his wife's name so he decided to use his father-in-law instead. As the finger-pointing escalated, Tobias told the agents that SAS was Fleischli's idea and that Tobias was simply a partner. Tobias told the agents that Fleischli purchased all the guns that were registered to SAS. Medlock also washed his hands of blame, telling the agents that Fleischli asked him to be secretary/treasurer of SAS but that he received no pay and played no active role in the company.

On that same day, ATF agents armed with warrants obtained before this questioning searched Otto American Boiler, SAS and Fleischli's home. The agents recovered approximately seventy-five firearms from Fleischli's home. They seized machine guns, machine gun parts and explosive devices from his place of business. Machine guns registered to SAS were found at Otto American Boiler. Registration forms and other paperwork related to the guns were found at Otto American Boiler in Fleischli's office in his desk drawer. Following these seizures on August 11, the agents gathered evidence about the prior shooting demonstration in Missouri. They obtained witness statements, a videotape of the event, and photographs. A six-count indictment against Fleischli followed.

Fleischli moved to suppress evidence seized from his home and business and moved to dismiss the indictment. He argued that the search warrants were not based on probable cause because one of the informants supplying information used to obtain the warrant was not reliable. That informant, Danny Dapron, told the agents he had last seen the minigun and other guns at Fleischli's home and business on February 1, 1998. Dapron had a checkered past himself and Fleischli argued he could not have seen the guns on February 1, 1998 because he (Dapron) was in jail at that time, The court denied the motion to suppress because Dapron was just one of several sources of information supporting the warrant. Indeed, Fleischli himself had independently corroborated Dapron's statements during his many recorded conversations with Deputy Malone. The district court therefore denied the motion to suppress and also rejected Fleischli's arguments in support of his motion to dismiss the indictment. A jury subsequently found Fleischli guilty on all six counts and the district court sentenced him to 120 months' imprisonment. In determining Fleischli's sentence, the court included a two-level increase for his role in the offense as manager of an illegal business. Fleischli appeals.

II.

Fleischli raises eleven challenges to his conviction and one to his sentence for an even dozen. He contends that: (1) there was no probable cause to issue the warrants used to search his home and business premises on August 11, 1998; (2) he was exempt from section 922(o)(1) by virtue of section 922(o)(2) because he was an authorized agent of a licensed firearms manufacturer; (3) section 922(o)(1) exceeds Congress's powers under the Commerce Clause; (4) the government failed to prove in the section 922(g)(1) possession count that Fleischli's possession of firearms substantially affected interstate commerce; (5) section 922(g)(1) exceeds Congress's powers under the Commerce Clause to the extent that it applies to Fleischli's mere possession of firearms in his home and business; (6) section 5822 does not encompass Fleischli's manufacture of machine guns because he was acting as an agent of a licensed manufacturer; (7) the minigun was not a machine gun within the meaning of section 5845 because it does not fire automatically and does not have a trigger; (8) the term "similar device" in the definition of the term "destructive device" in section 5845 is unconstitutionally vague; (9) the four alleged destructive devices seized from Fleischli did not come within the purview of section 5845(f) because they were used only as fireworks; (10) Fleischli could not be convicted of transporting firearms under section 922(g)(1) because he was merely a passenger in a vehicle used to transport firearms; (11) evidence of Fleischli's possession of firearms in Missouri was inadmissable under the Sixth Amendment which requires that a person be tried within the state and district in which the crime occurred; and (12) the court erred in applying a two-level enhancement for Fleischli's role in the offense because there were no other participants in the offense. A number of Fleischli's arguments are easily resolved by well-settled law and we will address them in summary fashion.

A.

On August 11, 1998, ATF agents searched Fleischli's home and business pursuant to two warrants. The warrants were issued on the basis of probable cause established by the affidavit of ATF Special Agent Robert Schmidt. Fleischli maintains that the warrants were improperly issued and not based on probable cause because Agent Schmidt credited information from Danny Lee Dapron, an unreliable informant, in drafting his affidavit. In the affidavit, Schmidt reported that he interviewed Dapron, a former employee of Otto American Boiler. Dapron told Schmidt that he saw the minigun at Otto American Boiler on February 1, 1998, and that Fleischli kept another gun in a safe on the premises as well. Dapron also reported seeing a number of firearms in a vault in the basement of Fleischli's home on that same day. Fleischli complains...