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Parties Involved:
Santana Drapeau
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eighth Circuit

___________________________

No. 14-3890

___________________________

United States of America

lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiff - Appellee

v.

Santana Drapeau

lllllllllllllllllllll Defendant - Appellant

____________

Appeal from United States District Court 

for the District of South Dakota - Pierre

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 Submitted: December 14, 2015

 Filed: July 1, 2016 

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Before WOLLMAN, LOKEN, and BYE, Circuit Judges.1

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WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.

Santana Drapeau was convicted of one count of assault and two counts of

domestic assault by a habitual offender, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 117. He argues

This opinion is being filed by Judge Wollman and Judge Loken pursuant to 1

8th Cir. Rule 47E.

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that the district court improperly admitted testimony by his then girlfriend, Dondee

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St. John, about the facts underlying Drapeau’s three prior tribal-court convictions for

domestic abuse. He further argues that his uncounseled prior convictions in tribal

court cannot serve as predicate offenses under § 117. We affirm.

I.

On the night of May 17, 2014, Drapeau attended a party with his sister, Tessa

Bad Moccasin; St. John; and several others. At one point in the evening, Drapeau

approached St. John and demanded that she leave the party with him. When she

refused, he struck her on the side of her face, knocking her to the ground. Drapeau

then left the party with Bad Moccasin.

Some time later, St. John returned to the house that she shared with Drapeau

and fell asleep on the couch. Later, Drapeau, Bad Moccasin, and Drapeau’s father

arrived at the house. Drapeau awakened St. John, and the two went into their

bedroom, where they argued and Drapeau once again assaulted St. John. 

Early the following morning, St. John left the house and walked across the

street to the house in which her mother, Shelly Taylor, was living. At St. John’s

request, Taylor called the police and wasthereafter informed by St. John that Drapeau

had choked her. Taylor walked across the street, woke up Drapeau, and told him that

the police were on the way. Taylor then left the house, followed closely by Drapeau,

who proceeded to strike the windshield and most of the windows of St. John’s car

with a baseball bat, damaging the windshield and shattering the windows. Drapeau

then drove away in Bad Moccasin’s car and was later arrested.

The HonorableRoberto A. Lange, United States DistrictJudge for the District 2

of South Dakota.

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Drapeau filed a motion in limine that sought to exclude testimony by St. John

regarding Drapeau’s prior tribal-court convictions for domestic abuse in which St.

John was the victim. The motion argued that St. John’s testimony would constitute

inadmissible evidence of prior bad acts, that her testimony would be irrelevant, and

that the risk of unfair prejudice from that testimony would outweigh its probative

value. The motion also sought to exclude the judgments from his tribal-court

convictions, in which he had pleaded no contest. The district court denied the

motion. Prior to St. John’s testimony about Drapeau’s prior domestic-abuse

convictions, and without any objection from Drapeau, the district court issued a

limiting instruction to the jury: 

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you are about to hear testimony,

the Court anticipates, about an alleged assault that occurred on a

previous occasion by this Defendant. He is not on trial for that assault,

and you cannot take into consideration the prior assault as evidence that

he did anything wrong on May 18, 2014; that is, this is not evidence of

any character or habit or bad acts or traits.

This is simply being received as evidence that there is a predicate

offense; that is, that there is a previous conviction of an offense

that—and you need to find this as part of the elements—that if it had

been subject to federal jurisdiction would be an assault against a spouse

or intimate partner. And that’s the limited purpose for which the Court

is receiving this evidence.

St. John then proceeded to describe three prior occasions on which Drapeau had

abused her. She first testified that in 2010, while she and Drapeau were living

together, he broke a window at her mother’s house and “pulled [her] around by [her]

hair.” She next testified that in January 2012, while she and Drapeau were living

together with their child, Drapeau “beat [her] up” and hit her in the face. Finally, she

testified that in September 2012, Drapeau threatened her and broke the windows of

their home with a shovel.

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The jury returned a verdict of not guilty on the charge of assault by

strangulation, but found Drapeau guilty of the lesser-included offense of assault. The

jury also found Drapeau guilty of both counts of domestic abuse by a habitual

offender. The district court sentenced Drapeau to 41 months’ imprisonment. 

Drapeau argues on appeal that the district court erred in admitting St. John’s

testimony about the facts underlying his prior convictions, as well as in admitting

evidence regarding his uncounseled tribal-court convictions.

II.

We review a district court’s admission of objected-to evidence for abuse of

discretion. United States v. Whitetail, 956 F.2d 857, 861 (8th Cir. 1992). We will

reverse the district court’s decision “only when an improper evidentiary ruling affects

the substantial rights of the defendant, or the error had more than a slight influence

on the verdict.” United States v. Thomas, 791 F.3d 889, 895 (8th Cir. 2015) (quoting

Finan v. Good Earth Tools, Inc., 565 F.3d 1076, 1080 (8th Cir. 2009)). Drapeau

argues that because St. John’s testimony about the facts underlying his prior

convictions for domestic abuse wasirrelevant and highly prejudicial, it was admitted

in violation of Federal Rules of Evidence 402 and 403.

Drapeau argues first that the district court’s conclusion that St. John’s

testimony was relevant stemmed from the court’s erroneous belief that Drapeau’s

conduct, rather than the elements ofthe domestic-abuse offense alone, was admissible

to show that the prior convictions constituted assaults under federal law. The statute

provides:

Any person who commits a domestic assault within . . . Indian country

and who has a final conviction on at least 2 separate prior occasions in

Federal, State, or Indian tribal court proceedingsfor offenses that would

be, if subject to Federal jurisdiction[,] . . . any assault . . . against a

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spouse or intimate partner . . . shall be fined under this title, imprisoned

for a term of not more than 5 years, or both . . . .

18 U.S.C. § 117. Accordingly, the government was required to prove beyond a

reasonable doubt (1) that Drapeau had at least two prior convictions, (2) that the prior

convictions were for offenses that would be considered “any assault” under federal

law, and (3) that the convictions were for offenses committed against a spouse or

intimate partner. Even if we were to accept Drapeau’s argument that the elements of

the crimes to which he had pleaded guilty would by themselves have been sufficient

to prove that his prior convictions qualified as assaults, St. John’s testimony was

nonetheless relevant to prove that the convictions had occurred—the first

element—and that she was a “spouse or intimate partner”—the third element. 18

U.S.C. § 117; cf. Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172, 178-79 (1997) (“If, then,

relevant evidence is inadmissible in the presence of other evidence related to it, its

exclusion must rest not on the ground that the other evidence has rendered it

‘irrelevant,’ but on its character as unfairly prejudicial, cumulative or the like, its

relevance notwithstanding.”). Thus, regardless of whether St. John’s testimony was

relevant to prove that his prior crimes constituted “any assault” under § 117, it was

admissible for other purposes.

3

It is unnecessary for us to reach the merits of Drapeau’s argument that the

3

elements of his prior conviction, rather than his underlying conduct, can be used to

prove that his prior convictions constituted assaults under federal law. With respect

to Drapeau’s Rule 402 irrelevancy objection, which he properly preserved, St. John’s

testimony was relevant and thus admissible. Drapeau did not otherwise preserve his

elements/underlying-conduct argument, and so plain error review applies. Fed. R.

Crim. P. 52(b). Even if it could be said that the district court committed error by

permitting the government to present evidence of Drapeau’s conduct rather than

limiting it to the elements of the crimes Drapeau had been convicted of, the error was

not “plain.” See United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 734 (1993) (discussing the

plain error rule).

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Drapeau also contends that St. John’s testimony was irrelevant because the

court, not the jury, was responsible for deciding whether the domestic-abuse

convictions qualified as predicate crimes. Because it is raised for the first time on

appeal, we review this contention for plain error only. The government is required

to prove “each element of a crime . . . to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt,” Alleyne

v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 2151, 2156 (2013), and thus we cannot say that it was

error of any kind, and certainly not plain error, to admit St. John’s testimony for the

purpose of proving the predicate crimes.

Drapeau next argues that even if relevant, the probative value of St. John’s

testimony was substantially outweighed by its prejudicial effect. Fed. R. Evid. 403. 

Relying on Old Chief v. United States, Drapeau asserts that the district court abused

its discretion in admitting the details of his prior offenses. In Old Chief, the

defendant was charged with possession of a firearm by someone with a prior felony

conviction in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). 519 U.S. at 174-75. The Court

reaffirmed the accepted rule that “the prosecution is entitled to prove its case by

evidence of its own choice,” but it held that, although the evidence was relevant, the

district court had abused its discretion by admitting the record ofthe defendant’s prior

conviction of assault resulting in serious bodily injury to prove the prior-conviction

element in the face of the defendant’s offer to stipulate to that element. Id. at 189,

191-92. We have repeatedly emphasized the narrowness of the Court’s holding in

Old Chief, see, e.g., United States. v. Jandreau, 611 F.3d 922, 924 (8th Cir. 2010)

(limiting the Court’s holding to evidence of prior convictions), and whatever the

result might have been had he done so, Drapeau did not offer to stipulate that his prior

convictions constituted predicate offenses. Moreover, any prejudicial effect that St.

John’s testimony might have had on the jury was mitigated by the district court’s

several-times-repeated curative instruction. Accordingly, we conclude that the

district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting St. John’s testimony.

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Drapeau finally argues that two of his three prior convictions cannot serve as

predicate crimes under 18 U.S.C. § 117 because although indigent, he was not

afforded his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The Supreme Court recently decided

this issue adversely to Drapeau, holding that because the Sixth Amendment right to

counsel does not apply in tribal-court proceedings, the “use of [validly obtained

tribal-court] convictions as predicate offenses in a § 117(a) prosecution does not

violate the Constitution.” United States v. Bryant, No. 15-420, 2016 WL 3221519,

at *12 (U.S. June 13, 2016).

III.

The judgment is affirmed.

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