Opinion ID: 4543350
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Sinaloa-Cartel Testimony

Text: Finally, Defendant argues that the district court erred in admitting testimony that might suggest a connection between this case and the Sinaloa drug cartel. The following exchange occurred as the prosecution elicited evidence that Defendant had transferred $2300 to an address in the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, his place of birth according to his passport: Prosecutor: Where was the destination for this money? Agent Epps: Culiacan, Sinaloa, Mexico. Prosecutor: Is that a location in Mexico that is rather notorious? Agent Epps: Yes, it is. Prosecutor: Is there a cartel in Mexico with a similar name? Defense Counsel: Objection, Your Honor. That is really prejudicial. It calls for speculation. The Court: Well, I don’t know if it calls for – go ahead, Mr. Wallace. Prosecutor: I intend for everything that this witness testifies to be prejudicial to the defendant and that’s why we are here. The Court: State your objection again, Mr. McGuire. I am sorry. That puts you on the spot. Defense Counsel: No. It is prejudicial and it is irrelevant. We don’t have any information about a cartel in this case. There are a lot of cartels in Mexico and one of them is called Sinaloa. The Court: Okay, overruled. Thank you. Prosecutor: As Mr. McGuire has just told us, Agent, isn’t there a cartel called the Sinaloa. Agent Epps: Yes. Prosecutor: And where is it based? Agent Epps: Sinaloa, Mexico. Prosecutor: And do you know where the defendant is from? Agent Epps: According to the passport and the address used to send this money, Culiacan, Sinaloa. R., Vol. II at 194–95. 23 As noted, Defense counsel objected at trial that the testimony was irrelevant and prejudicial.2 “We review a district court’s evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion, considering the record as a whole.” United States v. Martinez, 923 F.3d 806, 814 (10th Cir. 2019) (internal quotation marks omitted). “Evidence is relevant if: (a) it has any tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence; and (b) the fact is of consequence in determining the action.” Fed. R. Evid. 401. But even relevant evidence should be excluded under Federal Rule of Evidence 403 “if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of . . . unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, [or] misleading the jury.” Fed. R. Evid. 403. The only reason we can see for mentioning the Sinaloa cartel is to suggest that Defendant was connected with the cartel. But the fact that money was sent to Sinaloa is too slim a reed without additional evidence. Cf. Vasquez v. Lewis, 834 F.3d 1132, 1138 (10th Cir. 2016) (“It is wholly improper to assume that an individual is more likely to be engaged in criminal conduct because of his state of residence, and thus any fact that would inculpate every resident of a state cannot support reasonable suspicion.”). The evidence had very little probative value. On the other hand, it could suggest to the jury that the trained narcotics agent who was testifying believed that Defendant posed a special danger because he was part of a notorious cartel. In our view, the district court abused its discretion in failing to rule that the probative value of the evidence was 2 The government asserts we should review only for plain error because defense counsel did not object to “[a]ny comments or questions beyond the one question.” Aplee. Br. at 26–27. But we think the objection adequately alerted the court to the problem with the testimony. 24 substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. Cf. United States v. PinedaTorres, 287 F.3d 860, 864–65 (9th Cir. 2002) (where no evidence connected defendant to a drug-trafficking organization and no conspiracy was charged, expert testimony about structure of drug-trafficking organizations to “attribute[] knowledge to the defendant by attempting to connect him to an international drug conspiracy and thus impl[ying] that the defendant participated in a large-scale operation” was impermissible as “this method of imputing knowledge lacks any probative value” (internal quotation marks omitted)); United States v. Irvin, 87 F.3d 860, 864 (7th Cir. 1996) (recognizing “substantial risk of unfair prejudice attached to gang affiliation evidence,” since such evidence “is likely to be damaging to a defendant in the eyes of the jury” because of the negative public view of gangs (internal quotation marks omitted)). But not every error in a criminal trial requires reversal. Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(a), entitled “Harmless Error,” “Any error, defect, irregularity, or variance that does not affect substantial rights must be disregarded.” Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(a). Under long-standing authority originating with the Supreme Court, “[a] nonconstitutional error is harmless unless it had a ‘substantial influence’ on the outcome or leaves one in ‘grave doubt’ as to whether it had such effect.” United States v. Rivera, 900 F.2d 1462, 1469 (10th Cir. 1990) (en banc) (quoting Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 765 (1946)). “[T]he government ordinarily has the burden of proving that a nonconstitutional error was harmless.” Id. In light of the evidentiary record, we hold that the government carried its burden. We need not recapitulate all the incriminatory evidence set forth in the Background 25 section of this opinion or recite all the adverse inferences that can be drawn from the evidence. Suffice it to say that not only was the evidence of Defendant’s connection to the drugs quite strong, but his explanations for the evidence bordered on the preposterous. We mention a few points. There were some damning texts on the cell phone he was holding at the time of the stop. The person who sent the damning text was no stranger to Defendant but was identified in the phone’s contact list as “TN [the standard abbreviation for Tennessee] Bro 2.” Yet Defendant said that even though the cell phone was his, Arce had used it from time to time despite the ready availability of two other cell phones in the vehicle console (and Arce was the named subscriber for one of them). Defendant testified that on less than a week’s notice he had asked Arce, whom he had just met, to help him move from Phoenix to Tennessee for his health and he would be looking for work in Nashville. But he admitted that he had no job lined up, said he did not know anyone there, and had brought along minimal personal items and only a few tools (including tools necessary to open the light bar where the drugs were stored). His bank records showed large transfers of cash from Nashville in recent months. But he denied that the money was for him, testifying that he was only doing a favor for a man named Ahlen, his boss and landlord, who wanted to use Defendant’s account to transfer cash. The Durango had purportedly been acquired a few days earlier by Arce, but Defendant’s phone had pictures of the registration (which used a recent address of Defendant) and insurance documents for the vehicle, and one document in the vehicle showed that Ahlen had bought or sold the vehicle several months earlier. We think it 26 would be quite hard for a reasonable juror not to convict Defendant on the evidence at trial. Defendant’s best argument against the weight of the evidence is that the jury had difficulty reaching a verdict, doing so only after the district court instructed it on the importance of trying to reach a verdict. But we cannot know what was going on in the jury room. The problem may have been a single irrational holdout. For this reason, our review of harmless error “is an objective one,” independent of the specific composition of the jury in the particular case. United States v. Thompson, 287 F.3d 1244, 1254 (10th Cir. 2002); see Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 18 (1999) (stating harmlessness test for constitutional error as whether it is “clear beyond a reasonable doubt that a rational jury would have found the defendant guilty absent the error” (emphasis added)). Because we are not left with anything like a grave doubt that the erroneous admission of the Sinaloa-cartel testimony had a “substantial influence” on the outcome of the trial, the error does not require reversal.