Opinion ID: 409612
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Concealment of Identity

Text: 68 When Kalish was arrested by state police on January 23, 1980, for possession of cocaine, he gave the arresting officer an alias and a false driver's license. He repeated the alias when asked his name by the state booking officer. The district court allowed the prosecution to prove the fact of arrest and the use of the alias, but not the offense leading to the arrest. The court reasoned that the evidence showed Kalish's consciousness of guilt. 69 This court has long and consistently held that a defendant's attempt to conceal his identity from an arresting officer by the use of an alias is relevant as proof of consciousness of guilt. E.g., Jordan v. United States, 324 F.2d 178 (5th Cir. 1963); United States v. James, 576 F.2d 1121, 1125 (5th Cir. 1978), adopted in relevant part en banc, 590 F.2d 575, 577 (5th Cir.), 442 U.S. 917, 99 S.Ct. 2836, 61 L.Ed.2d 283 (1979); United States v. Khamis, 674 F.2d 390, 395 (5th Cir. 1982); cf. United States v. Mesa, 660 F.2d 1070, 1077-78 (5th Cir. 1981) (renting hotel room under assumed name). Similarly, we have consistently held evidence of flight to be relevant evidence. E.g., United States v. Meneses-Davila, 580 F.2d 888, 896 & n.16 (5th Cir. 1978) (collecting cases); United States v. Stewart, 579 F.2d 356, 359 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 936, 99 S.Ct. 332, 58 L.Ed.2d 332 (1978). Since use of an alias is relevant evidence, our standard of review is whether the trial judge has abused his discretion in determining that the probative value of the evidence outweighs the danger of unfair prejudice. Fed.R.Evid. 403; see United States v. Stewart, 579 F.2d at 359; United States v. Blevinal, 607 F.2d 1124, 1128 (5th Cir. 1979) (standard of review of trial judge's Rule 403 determinations), cert. denied, 445 U.S. 928, 100 S.Ct. 1315, 63 L.Ed.2d 761 (1980). 70 We find no abuse of discretion here. Kalish was arrested within weeks of his alleged involvement in, and within days of his indictment for, operations involving 140,000 pounds of marijuana. Cf. Jordan v. United States, 324 F.2d at 178 (defendant not arrested until 8 months after the offense); United States v. Alonzo, 571 F.2d 1384, 1386 (5th Cir.) (defendant living under assumed name not arrested until 18 months after his co-conspirators had been tried), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 847, 99 S.Ct. 147, 58 L.Ed.2d 149 (1978). That the immediate cause of Kalish's arrest was an unrelated offense does not destroy the permissible inference that Kalish was attempting to avoid being brought to trial for the MR. JAKE operation. See United States v. $364,960.00 in United States Currency, 661 F.2d 319, 324 (5th Cir. 1981) (forfeiture action) (possibility that suspects were fleeing because they were illegal aliens, not because of their possession of narcotics, does not make evidence of flight inadmissible); cf. United States v. Mesa, 660 F.2d at 1078 (possibility that use of alias may have had innocent motive neither affects admissibility nor makes flight instruction erroneous). 71 Kalish argues that the evidence was inadmissible under United States v. Myers, 550 F.2d 1036, 1048-51 (5th Cir. 1977), after remand, 572 F.2d 506 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 847, 99 S.Ct. 147, 58 L.Ed.2d 149 (1978). Myers, however, did not involve the question of admissibility of alias evidence; rather, it involved the question of the propriety of a flight instruction when the evidence of flight was insufficient. The court held that a flight instruction is improper unless the evidence is sufficient to furnish reasonable support for four necessary inferences. Id. at 1050. 11 The court acknowledged, however, the firm rule of this circuit that flight evidence is generally admissible, see id. at 1049 (collecting cases), and it implicitly recognized that the standard for determining admissibility was not its new rule on flight instructions, but Rule 403, see id. at 1050 n.20. 72 In this case, Kalish made no objection to any of the trial court's instructions. 12 Instead, he reads the Myers four-inference test as a test of admissibility for evidence of flight, as well as for evidence of concealment of identity. He argues that the third Myers inference-that the defendant's behavior indicates consciousness of guilt of the particular crime charged-cannot be drawn with confidence here because it is more likely that Kalish's use of an alias showed consciousness of guilt only of the unrelated offense for which he was arrested. 73 We recognize that Kalish's reading of Myers has some basis. If Myers holds only that a jury cannot be instructed on the use of evidence of flight until there is sufficient evidence to support the four inferences, but that the evidence may nevertheless be admitted, then the Myers opinion may create a worse danger of unfair prejudice from evidence of flight than it attempted to eliminate. If evidence is admitted, then the jury should be instructed on its proper use. 74 Nevertheless, this court has not analyzed questions of admissibility under the Myers four-inference test. To the contrary, we have most often cited Myers for the rule that evidence of flight is generally admissible to prove consciousness of guilt. 13 We have read Myers to hold only that the flight instruction was erroneous because the allegations of flight were without support in the (Myers) record. United States v. $364,960.00 in United States Currency, 661 F.2d at 324 n.13. 75 Even if Myers implies the test for admissibility of the evidence, however, we believe that the third inference-that Kalish's behavior indicated consciousness of guilt of this crime and not merely of the unrelated crime for which he was arrested-may be drawn here. An attorney called by Kalish testified that, prior to the indictments, he advised Kalish that Kalish might be indicted. The attorney said that he had no trouble communicating with Kalish in the period following the seizure of the MR. JAKE, but that Kalish became unavailable after the indictments were filed. We think that Kalish's sudden unexplained unavailability tends to prove a pattern of concealment or flight that began before his state arrest and continued with his use of the alias. 14 Kalish was carrying around the false identification card before he ever knew that the state police would arrest him for a separate offense. The close proximity in time between the crimes, the indictments, and the use of the alias further supports the inference of guilty knowledge concerning the loads of marijuana. 76 Finally, we note that the evidence played a small role in Kalish's trial. The crucial question was Troutwein's credibility; if believed, Troutwein's testimony was much more than sufficient to convict. The evidence of concealment had little bearing on this central issue.