Opinion ID: 72120
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Evidence of Prior Crossings with a Trailer

Text: 11 No. 08-41362 Edica and Zonia next argue that the district court erred by admitting evidence of their prior border and checkpoint crossings with the trailer because there was no proof that they transported marijuana on those prior occasions. The Government avers that it proved that the defendants hauled the trailer and that it was not required to prove that the defendants transported marijuana on these prior occasions. As required by Federal Rule of Evidence 406(b), the Government notified the defendants before trial of its intent to offer this evidence. Both defendants filed motions in limine and objected at trial to the use of this evidence. The district court overruled the defendants’ objections, finding that, under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), the prior acts did not have to be bad acts and the evidence was admissible to show knowledge or lack of mistake. Relevant evidence “is admissible, except as otherwise provided by the Constitution of the United States, by Act of Congress, by [the Federal Rules of Evidence], or by other rules prescribed by the Supreme Court pursuant to statutory authority.” FED. R. EVID. 402. Rule 404(b) provides that “[e]vidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts is not admissible to prove the character of the person in order to show action in conformity therewith.” FED. R. EVID. 404(b). However, such evidence may be still admissible for “other purposes, such as proof of motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident.” Id. “The purpose of Rule 404(b) is to ‘guard against the inherent danger that the admission of ‘other acts’ evidence might lead a jury to convict a defendant not of the charged offense, but instead of an extrinsic offense.’” United States v. Stephens, 571 F.3d 401, 409 (5th Cir. 2009) (quoting United States v. Sumlin, 489 F.3d 683, 689 (5th Cir. 2007)). This court reviews a decision to admit Rule 404(b) evidence under an abuse of discretion standard. United States v. McCall, 553 F.3d 821, 827 (5th Cir. 2008). Such review is necessarily heightened in a criminal case, however, 12 No. 08-41362 which demands that evidence be strictly relevant to the particular offense charged. Id. Nevertheless, erroneous admissions under Rule 404(b) are subject to a harmless error inquiry if abuse is found. Id. An error is harmless when it does not affect the substantial rights of the defendant. Id. This court applies the two-step test outlined in United States v. Beechum, 582 F.2d 898, 911 (5th Cir. 1978) (en banc), to determine whether the district court erred in admitting extrinsic evidence.2 McCall, 553 F.3d at 827. “First, it must be determined that the extrinsic offense evidence is relevant to an issue other than the defendant’s character. Second, the evidence must possess probative value that is not substantially outweighed by its undue prejudice and must meet the other requirements of [R]ule 403.” Beechum, 582 F.2d at 911.
Evidence is relevant “if it makes the existence of any fact at issue more or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” United States v. Williams, 900 F.2d 823, 826 (5th Cir. 1990). But whether extrinsic evidence is relevant under Rule 404(b) “is a function of its similarity to the charged offense.” Beechum, 582 F.2d at 911 (quotation marks and citation omitted). “[S]imilarity, and hence relevancy, is determined by the inquiry or issue to which the extrinsic offense is addressed.” Id. For example, if the issue is intent, then the extrinsic evidence of a prior act is relevant if it required the defendant have the same state of mind or intent as the charged offense; if the issue is knowledge then extrinsic act evidence must “be of such a nature that its commission involved the same knowledge required for the offense charged.” Id. at 911, 912 n.15. 2 “Rule 404(b) is only implicated when the offered evidence is extrinsic; evidence intrinsic to the charged offense does not implicate the rule.” United States v. Crawley, 533 F.3d 349, 353-54 (5th Cir. 2008). “‘Other acts’ evidence is intrinsic when it is inextricably intertwined with the charged offense, when both acts are part of the same criminal episode, or when the ‘other act’ was a necessary preliminary step toward the completion of the charged crime.” Id. at 354. None of the parties argue that the evidence at issue was intrinsic. 13 No. 08-41362 “[S]imilar act evidence is relevant only if the jury can reasonably conclude that the act occurred and that the defendant was the actor.” Huddleston v. United States, 485 U.S. 981, 689 (1988) (citing Beechum, 582 F.2d at 911). This court has held that evidence of a prior drug smuggling attempt using the defendant’s trailer was not admissible under Rule 404(b) to show the defendant’s knowledge of drugs hidden in his trailer, where there was no evidence that the defendant committed the prior smuggling offense. United States v. GonzalezLira, 936 F.2d 184, 190 (5th Cir. 1991); but see id. at 193 (evidence of defendant’s trailer’s involvement in the prior smuggling operation should be admissible under Rule 406(b) to demonstrate defendant’s “knowledge and absence of mistake”) (Garwood, J., concurring). Because the prior act must be similar to that at issue in the charged offense, both the Supreme Court and this court have required that the prior offense be a bad act in order to be relevant to prove criminal intent. For example, in Huddleston v. United States, the Supreme Court held that at the defendant’s trial for selling stolen videotapes, where the contested issue was whether the defendant knew that the videotapes were stolen, the defendant’s prior sales of televisions that he likely knew were stolen was relevant only because the Government presented evidence showing that the televisions had in fact been stolen. 485 U.S. at 689, 691. In Beechum, this court held that evidence that the defendant had, for ten months, wrongfully possessed credit cards belonging to other people was relevant to whether the defendant intended to turn in a silver dollar stolen that day from the mail. 582 F.2d at 916. The court reasoned that the wrongful possession of the credit cards required the same intent, or state of mind, as the wrongful possession of the silver dollar. Id. However, Rule 404(b) covers “other crimes, wrongs, or acts,” and this court stated in United States v. Williams that “‘[o]ther act’ extrinsic evidence need not be evidence of other wrongful acts but may be evidence of any extrinsic acts 14 No. 08-41362 relevant to the criminal act charged.” Williams, 900 F.2d at 826 n.2. In Williams, a package of cocaine bearing a fictitious return address was delivered by mail to an address in New Orleans on March 7. Id. at 825. The defendant then arrived at that address to recover the package. Id. The defendant was arrested and indicted with drug trafficking, although he insisted that he expected the package to contain a shipment of jogging suits for resale. Id. At trial, the Government had sought to introduce evidence of nineteen prior, similar packages that had been mailed to various addresses in New Orleans. Id. at 825. Relying on Huddleston, the district court granted the defendant’s motion to exclude the evidence regarding the other mailings on the basis that the presence of cocaine in the prior mailings was not supported by sufficient evidence. Id. at 826. This court applied the Beechum analysis and concluded that extrinsic evidence of the nineteen prior packages was admissible under Rule 404(b). Id. at 825-27. On the relevance prong, the court reasoned that the evidence of the prior mailings would be relevant to the defendant’s knowledge of the contents of the March 7 package and intent to perpetrate the crime if: “1) there existed a pattern of mailings similar to the March 7 mailing, and 2) the defendant was involved in those mailings.” Id. at 826. “If a jury could reasonably find those conditional facts by a preponderance of the evidence, then the extrinsic evidence of the prior mailings would contribute to a showing of knowledge and intent through demonstration of a modus operandi.” Id. The court held that the district court erred by requiring that, to establish the relevancy of extrinsic evidence, the Government had to offer evidence of the presence of cocaine in the prior mailings. Id. at 826. The court explained that: Even if the prior mailings did not contain cocaine, they may still be relevant to show modus operandi. They might, for example, have been used to test whether packages with fictitious return addresses would be delivered without incident. Because we find that the presence of cocaine was not a fact upon which relevancy of the 15 No. 08-41362 extrinsic evidence is conditioned, and because we find sufficient evidence to support jury findings that there existed a pattern of mailings similar to the March 7 mailing and that defendant was involved in those prior mailings,3 we find that the relevancy prong of the Beechum test is met in this case. Id. Under the abuse of discretion standard, the court reversed the district court’s exclusion of the evidence of the prior mailings of similar packages. Id. at 827. Under the circumstances of the instant case, Williams controls. As Edica and Zonia argue, here there was no evidence presented at trial that any of their prior border-crossing trips involved marijuana and the ICE agent and CBP officer testified that they had no reason to believe that the trailer was loaded with drugs on prior occasions. But as the Government argues, it presented sufficient proof for a jury to find by a preponderance of the evidence that both Edica and Zonia had towed the trailer across the border and through the checkpoint, and “the pertinent conditional facts in this case do not include whether the [trailer] contained [marijuana].” Id. The extrinsic evidence of the defendants’ prior travel with the trailer—regardless of whether it was loaded with marijuana on each occasion—contributed “to a showing of knowledge and intent through demonstration of a modus operandi.” Id. The modus operandi evidence was relevant because it tended to show that Edica and Zonia lied to the ICE agents about their relationship with Pancho, that this was not an isolated incident in which they borrowed the trailer from Pancho, and that Edica was not “merely present” but was a regular and willing participant in hauling the trailer.
We proceed to the second prong of the Beechum test: whether the probative value of the extrinsic evidence substantially outweighs its potential for prejudice. Probative value “is not an absolute; it must be determined with regard to the extent to which the defendant’s unlawful intent is established by other evidence, stipulation, or inference. It is the incremental probity of the evidence 16 No. 08-41362 that is to be balanced against its potential for undue prejudice.” Beechum, 582 F.2d at 914. Thus, probative value is determined in reference to the “necessity” for the extrinsic evidence. Id. at n.18. The district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that the probative value of the evidence of Edica and Zonia’s prior crossings with the trailer were not substantially outweighed by its possible prejudicial effects. The Government alleged and was required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Edica and Zonia were intentional participants in the trafficking conspiracy, and that they knowingly possessed with intent to distribute and imported the marijuana. By pleading not guilty, Edica and Zonia both placed their intent at issue. United States v. Duffaut, 314 F.3d 203, 209 (5th Cir. 2002). Under Beechum, probative value is augmented if there is slight direct evidence. 582 F.2d at 914; see Williams, 900 F.2d at 827 (“The very limited evidence the government could thus adduce on the issues of knowledge and intent increases the incremental probity of the extrinsic evidence.”) Here, the probative value of the extrinsic offense evidence was relatively great because there was slight direct evidence. Edica’s specific defense was that she was merely present; Zonia’s was that she did not know the marijuana was in the trailer. Without admission of the extrinsic evidence in the instant case, the Government’s evidence would be limited to a showing that Edica and Zonia towed a borrowed trailer across the border with marijuana hidden in it, and their explanations regarding borrowing the trailer were confused and contradictory. Other than the testimony of the CBP officers and ICE agents regarding their contradictory stories, the admitted evidence shed little light on Edica and Zonia’s intent. Additionally, the district court properly instructed the jury that it could not use evidence of the prior crossings in deciding if the defendants were guilty of the charged offenses, and could consider that evidence only for the limited purposes of determining whether the defendants “had the state of mind or intent 17 No. 08-41362 to commit the crime charged in the indictment, whether the defendant acted according to a plan or in preparation for commission of a crime, or whether the defendant committed the acts for which he or she is on trial by accident or mistake.” See, e.g., United States v. Peterson, 244 F.3d 385, 392 (5th Cir. 2001) (holding that a limiting instruction given at the conclusion of trial mitigated prejudice from 404(b) evidence). We therefore hold that the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting evidence of Edica and Zonia’s prior border and checkpoint crossings towing the trailer. C. Sentencing Enhancement for Drugs Estimated to Have Been Smuggled on Prior Crossings Edica and Zonia argue that the district court erred in sentencing them based on an amount of marijuana not proven in court and arrived at on the basis of pure speculation. The Government asserts that the court’s conclusion that Zonia and Edica were part of an ongoing marijuana trafficking operation is plausible; prior trafficking by them was more likely than not to have occurred. This court reviews the district court’s sentencing decisions for reasonableness under an abuse of discretion standard. Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 50 (2007). The “district court’s interpretation or application of the Sentencing Guidelines is reviewed de novo, and its factual findings . . . are reviewed for clear error. There is no clear error if the district court’s finding is plausible in light of the record as a whole.” United States v. Cisneros-Gutierrez, 517 F.3d 751, 764 (5th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Remand is required if such an error occurred “unless the proponent of the sentence establishes that the error ‘did not affect the district court’s selection of the sentence imposed.’” United States v. Delgado-Martinez, 564 F.3d 750, 753 (5th Cir. 2009). 18 No. 08-41362 This court has “repeatedly held that a district court may find the facts relevant to a defendant’s Guidelines calculation by a preponderance of the evidence,” and has rejected arguments that relevant conduct should be determined under a standard greater than a preponderance of the evidence. United States v. Scroggins, 485 F.3d 824, 834 (5th Cir. 2007). “The district court’s calculation of the quantity of drugs involved in an offense is a factual determination.” United States v. Betancourt, 422 F.3d 240, 246 (5th Cir. 2005). (quoting United States v. Alford, 142 F.3d 825, 831 (5th Cir. 1998)). The Pre-Sentence Report noted that the “offense conduct” involved 121.24 kilograms of marijuana seized from the trailer being towed by Zonia’s vehicle. This would have resulted in a base offense level of 26, because the offense involved at least 100 kilograms but less than 400 kilograms of marijuana. U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(c)(7).3 However, the probation officer determined that the defendants should be held responsible for a total of 1,561.27 kilograms based on both the offense conduct and their relevant conduct, resulting in a base offense level of 32. The probation officer relied on the evidence that Zonia drove her vehicle, towing the empty trailer, through the Border Patrol Checkpoint on Interstate Highway 35, on six separate dates between September 2007 and April 2008 and then drove her vehicle without the trailer back to Laredo on the same or following dates. Similarly, the border cameras recorded Edica’s vehicle, towing the empty trailer, passing through the Checkpoint on six separate dates and then returning to Laredo without the trailer on the same or the following dates. The probation officer concluded: Since the modus operandi was similar to the instant offense, the defendants made twelve successful trips north of Laredo, Texas, and on each trip they delivered 120 kilograms of marijuana. Therefore, they are held responsible for an additional 1,440 kilograms of marijuana for a total of 1,561.24 kilograms of marijuana. 3 The 2007 edition of the Sentencing Guidelines was used in this case. 19 No. 08-41362 With a total offense level of 32, Edica’s advisory guidelines range was 121 to 155 months. See U.S.S.G. Ch. 5, Pt. A, Sentencing Table. With a total offense level of 34, Zonia’s advisory range was 151 to 188 months. Id. The district court found the amount of marijuana attributed by the PreSentence Report troubling. The court stated on the record that defendants “clearly ha[d] access to some group or organization that’s moving a lot a marijuana” and found that “the strong preponderance of the evidence—which simply means it’s more likely true than not . . . [was] that [the defendants] have been moving marijuana [ ] as a joint operation, for a good while.” However, the court declined to “make the quantum leap that each trip was a smuggling trip of this amount of marijuana.” On that basis, the court placed the defendants’ base offense level at 28, “somewhere more than 400 kilos, but less than 700.” The district court then calculated that this base offense level gave Zonia a total offense level of 30. Because she had no criminal history points, this resulted in a guidelines range of 97 to 121 months. See U.S.S.G. Ch. 5, Pt. A, Sentencing Table. The court sentenced Zonia at the low end of the resulting range to 97 months. See U.S.S.G. Ch. 5, Pt. A, Sentencing Table. Edica’s total offense level was 28. Id. She had no criminal history points, resulting in a guidelines range of 78-97 months. See U.S.S.G. Ch. 5, Pt. A, Sentencing Table. The court sentenced her to 86 months. The base offense level for unlawful importing and possession of drugs is determined by the quantity of drugs involved. See § 2D1.1(a)(3). In determining a defendant’s base offense level, the district court may consider drug quantities not specified in the count of conviction if they are part of the defendant’s relevant conduct. § 2D1.1 cmt. n.12. Relevant conduct includes all acts and omissions “that were part of the same course of conduct or common scheme or plan as the offense of conviction.” § 1B1.3(a)(2). When an amount of drugs seized “does not reflect the scale of the offense, the court shall approximate the 20 No. 08-41362 quantity of the controlled substance.” § 2D1.1 cmt. n.12. Drug estimates may be calculated based on extrapolating from “any information that has sufficient indicia of reliability to support its probable accuracy . . . even hearsay.” United States v. Valdez, 453 F.3d 252, 267 (5th Cir. 2006). In this case, the Government presented photographic evidence that Edica and Zonia together had previously transported the same trailer via the same route on numerous prior occasions, using either Edica or Zonia’s vehicle. The district court also possessed the following information at the time of sentencing: Edica and Zonia had both been found guilty by a jury, implicitly rejecting Zonia’s contradictory testimony that she did not know the marijuana was concealed in the trailer; border agents discovered that all ten of the planks of the homemade trailer had been carefully hollowed out and stuffed full with 120 kilogram bundles of marijuana; after first telling the agents a lie, Edica eventually admitted that she had agreed to accompany the trailer into the United States, that she knew it contained narcotics, and that she was going to be paid some $2,000 to $3,000; and Zonia had told five different versions of the events of that day and provided various accounts of her relationship with Pancho. Given the totality of the record in this case, including the persuasive evidence of a modus operandi, the district court’s finding that Zonia and Edica were part of an ongoing marijuana trafficking operation is “plausible in light of the record as a whole,” and we therefore affirm. Cisneros-Gutierrez, 517 F.3d at 764.