Opinion ID: 1036611
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Whether the Evidence of the 2008 Drug Sale

Text: Has a Proper Purpose To serve a proper Rule 404(b) purpose, evidence must be “probative of a material issue other than character.” Huddleston, 485 U.S. at 686. The Government argues that the evidence of Smith’s 2008 drug deal fits into Rule 404(b)’s exception for evidence tending to show a defendant’s motive, because Smith’s 2008 drug dealing shows that Smith had a motive to threaten individuals at the same corner in 2010: to protect his “turf.” We agree that motive was relevant in this case and that the evidence of the 2008 drug sale tends to establish motive. But that is not the end of the inquiry. To meet the first requirement for admissibility, the proponents of Rule 404(b) evidence must do more than conjure up a proper purpose—they must also establish a chain of inferences no link of which is based on a propensity inference. United States v. Echeverri, 854 F.2d 638, 644 (3d Cir. 1988); Sampson, 980 F.2d at 886-87; see also 22 CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT & KENNETH W. GRAHAM JR., FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE: EVIDENCE § 5239, at 8 459 (1978) (“[E]vidence of other crimes can be used to prove the conduct of a person if the inference to conduct can be made without the need to infer the person’s character as a step in the reasoning from the other acts to the conduct in issue.”). As we explain below, that did not occur here. “[T]he line between what is permitted and what is prohibited under Rule 404(b) is sometimes quite subtle,” United States v. Murray, 103 F.3d 310, 316 (3d Cir. 1997), and “despite the recurrence of the issue[], the opinions are often poorly reasoned and provide little guidance to trial judges.” WRIGHT & GRAHAM, § 5239 at 427. The problem stems in part from two competing realities that surround most Rule 404(b) evidence. On the one hand, proponents of Rule 404(b) evidence will normally be able to conceive of a proper purpose other than propensity. But if this were sufficient to admit the evidence, the basic idea embodied by Rule 404(b), that simply because one act was committed in the past does not mean that a like act was again committed, would be threatened. On the other hand, all Rule 404(b) evidence is at least somewhat prejudicial to the party against whom it is admitted and will invite the jury to make inferences about his or her character. This alone cannot lead to exclusion. United States v. Pettiford, 517 F.3d 584, 590 (D.C. Cir. 2008). We resolve this inherent tension by requiring that the purpose of the Rule 404(b) evidence be established without an inference that the party against whom it is admitted acted in conformity with whatever the evidence of the prior act says about his or her character. We therefore do not exclude evidence simply if it invites character inferences, but only evidence that is used to prove a person’s character and that invites the inference that the person acted in conformity with that 9 character, and was therefore more likely to have committed the charged crime. The foregoing resolves this case, which presents a somewhat novel fact pattern. The Government insists that the evidence of the 2008 drug sale does not say anything about Smith’s character, but simply provides his motive for the assault in 2010, “a continuing interest in his turf.” Gov’t Br. at 30; see also id. at 31 (stating that the Government “never argued that Smith likely committed the charged assault because he previously sold drugs,” only that the “prior drug sale showed [Smith’s] interest in the corner”). The problem with this line of reasoning is that, for the evidence of the 2008 drug sale to speak to Smith’s motives in 2010, one must necessarily (a) assume something about Smith’s character based on the 2008 evidence (that he was then a drug dealer), and (b) infer that Smith acted in conformity with that character in 2010 by dealing drugs and therefore had a motive to defend his turf. This clearly violates Rule 404(b) because the Government used the 2008 drug deal “to prove [Smith’s] character [as a drug dealer] in order to show that on a particular occasion [Smith] acted in accordance with th[at] character.” Fed. R. Evid 404(b). 2 Had Smith been observed dealing drugs on that street corner the morning of the incident, the Government would have a much stronger case, as it may have argued that the evidence had the proper purpose of showing a “common 2 The Government cannot explain how or why Smith would have “turf” to protect if he were not a drug dealer and we reject the unpersuasive attempts to separate the concepts of “turf” and “drug dealer.” 10 scheme or plan,” see Rule 404(b)(2), or “as background information which completes the story of the crime,” Green, 617 F.3d at 249. But, “ordinarily, when courts speak of ‘common plan or scheme,’ they are referring to a situation in which the charged and the uncharged crimes are parts of a single series of events.” Gov’t of V.I. v. Pinney, 967 F.2d 912, 916 (3d Cir. 1992). Here, there is no contention that the 2008 drug deal and the 2010 crime were part of a single series of events. Nor could there be. Moreover, the temporal separation between the two events, the lack of similarity between them (in that one involved drugs and no gun and the other a gun and no drugs), and the isolated nature of the 2008 drug deal, all weaken the force of the evidence standing on its own, to the point where the jury has to make inferences about Smith’s character from his 2008 conduct in order to learn something about Smith’s 2010 motivations from that conduct. See, e.g., Murray, 106 F.3d at 318 (reversing inclusion of evidence of a prior uncharged murder in a prosecution for a different murder in part because the method of the first murder was different than the second); United States v. Mayans, 17 F.3d 1174, 1182-83 (9th Cir. 1994) (reversing the admission of the Rule 404(b) evidence because there was not a close connection between the past drug deals and the charged offense). That the Government did not explicitly make a propensity argument does not change the outcome, particularly given that it did invite the jury to make the improper inferential leaps at summation with its explicit and repeated references to Smith’s “turf,” and with the rhetorical questions: “What’s he doing over there? . . . He’s been on that block before, hasn’t he? And not just two years ago.” These circumstances are reminiscent of United States v. Conner, 11 where the Seventh Circuit held that evidence of a prior drug deal was improperly admitted because the Government repeatedly invited the jury to infer that the defendant had acted in conformity with the past conduct, noting that it “was not an ‘isolated incident,’ and not[ing] that the second [act] corroborated the first [act].” 583 F.3d 1011, 1024 (7th Cir. 2009). The court reasoned that “[t]he implication of the prosecutor’s argument was that Conner was more likely to have [committed the charged crime] because he had done so on other occasions.” Id. at 1024-25. See also Murray, 103 F.3d at 320 (overturning the admission of evidence of a prior murder because the prosecutor had asked at closing: “Doesn’t [the prior murder] help establish that this defendant was part of this conspiracy [for the charged murder]? . . . . [D]oesn’t that help establish that this defendant is . . . a killer?”). Moreover, the cases cited in the Government’s brief contrast sharply with, and are distinguishable from this case, as none involved a situation where the jury was required to make an assumption about the defendant’s character based on the past act, or to elucidate the defendant’s motive by assuming that the defendant acted in accordance with that character when committing the charged crime. See, e.g., Green, 617 F.3d at 249-50 (admitting evidence that a defendant on trial for attempting to buy cocaine had threatened to kill an informant, as evidence of the informant’s motive to cooperate); United States v. Sriyuth, 98 F.3d 739 (3d Cir. 1996) (admitting evidence the defendant had sexually assaulted a kidnapping victim, as it established a motive for the charged kidnapping). 3 3 That Smith may have invited the testimony by making an issue of his lack of motive to assault the officers does not 12 The Government also attempts to narrow the scope of Rule 404(b) by contending that the “no link” prohibition is limited to inferences that the defendant committed “the crime charged,” and posits that because the 2008 act (drug dealing) is not the same as the act charged (assault), no error occurred. Gov’t Br. at 30-31 (citing United States v. Himelwright, 42 F.3d 777, 782 (3d Cir. 1994)). But Rule 404(b) is not so limited. The problem with propensity evidence is that it “weigh[s] too much with the jury [because it] overpersuade[s] them as to prejudge one with a bad general record and den[ies] [the defendant] a fair opportunity to defend against a particular charge,” without limitations based on whether the charged and uncharged acts are the same. Michelson v. United States, 335 U.S. 469, 476 (1948). Limiting the reach of the Rule as the Government suggests would curtail these protections in a way that, to our knowledge, no court ever has. See, e.g., Himelwright, 42 F.3d at 785-86 (holding that evidence of purchases of weapons was inadmissible in a trial for a different crime, making threats to postal workers). As a final argument, the Government analogizes this case to a hypothetical situation wherein a defendant is observed breaking into a vacant lot in order to live there, and is later prosecuted for threatening an individual who also attempted to enter that lot. The Government contends that in eliminate the rule that no link in the chain of logical inferences may involve a propensity inference. See, e.g., Pinney, 967 F.2d at 917 (noting that the “need to dispel an exculpatory [explanation] implanted by the defense . . . can fulfill the proper purpose requirement of Rule 404(b)” but excluding the evidence as a violation of the “no link” requirement). 13 that situation, evidence of the prior breaking and entering would be admissible to explain the defendant’s motive to threaten the would-be intruder. But even assuming we agree with that legal proposition, the hypothetical only highlights what is different, and dispositive, about this case—the evidence of the prior breaking and entering does not speak to the defendant’s character as someone likely to make threats, and the motive does not hinge on an inference that he acted in accordance with that character. Additionally, the breaking and entering evidence fairly “completes the story [of the crime]” without a propensity inference. Green, 617 F.3d at 249. Here, however, there is no continuous, ongoing conduct between the 2008 and 2010 acts (that Smith was in jail for some of the intervening months explains but does not eliminate the lack of continuity between the two acts). Moreover, to reach the “motive” purpose from the evidence of the 2008 drug sale, an inference about Smith’s character (that he was a drug dealer) and an inference that he acted in conformance with that character in 2010, are required before the jury may determine that Smith committed the charged crime. As a matter of law, then, the evidence of the 2008 drug sale did not have a proper Rule 404(b) purpose.