Opinion ID: 407597
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Sample Transactions

Text: 9 The defendants object to the district court's admission of evidence of the May 28 and June 10 sample transactions. Their claim is based on Fed.R.Evid. 404(b), which provides: 10 Evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts is not admissible to prove the character of a person in order to show that he acted in conformity therewith. It may, however, be admissible for other purposes, such as proof of motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident. 11 According to the defendants, evidence of these other acts should have been excluded because it was not admitted for any of the other purposes enumerated in Rule 404(b). 12 The short answer to this argument is that the sample transactions were not extrinsic to the acts for which Messrs. Figueredo, Reinosa, and Torres were indicted. An act is not extrinsic, and Rule 404(b) is not implicated, where the evidence of that act and the evidence of the crime charged are inextricably intertwined. United States v. Killian, 639 F.2d 206, 211 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 451 U.S. 1021, 101 S.Ct. 3014, 69 L.Ed.2d 394 (1981); United States v. Aleman, 592 F.2d 881, 885 (5th Cir. 1979). We explained this principle in Aleman: 13 In the usual case, the other acts occurred at different times and under different circumstances from the crime charged. The policies underlying the rule are simply inapplicable when some offenses committed in a single criminal episode become other acts because the defendant is indicted for less than all of his actions. If a person breaks into a house, murders the occupants, and steals a television set, the individual offenses do not become wholly separate and independent crimes merely because they are made the subject of separate indictments. 14 592 F.2d at 885. In this case, although the other acts occurred at different times, they clearly were part of a single criminal episode. The government demonstrated that the sample transactions were necessary preliminaries to the larger sale that led to the defendants' arrests. It was during those transactions that the plans for the purchase of the larger quantity of cocaine were laid. These were not other acts of the type contemplated by Rule 404(b). Evidence concerning them was necessary to provide coherence to the government's case. 15 The defendants counter by arguing that the inextricably intertwined standard was not met because Reinosa and Torres played no role in the preliminary sales and the evidence connecting Mr. Figueredo to them was insubstantial. In effect, they argue that evidence concerning the sample transactions is not admissible against them because they had not yet joined the conspiracy when those transactions were consummated. 16 We rejected a similar argument in United States v. Bates, 600 F.2d 505 (5th Cir. 1979). There the defendant objected to testimony concerning events related to a smuggling operation that took place before he joined the operation. We stated: 17 The appellant's objections misapprehend both the Federal Rules of Evidence and the substantive law of conspiracy. 18 As the district court recognized, it is a misnomer to characterize the acts and backgrounds of the co-conspirators as extraneous offense evidence. The testimony was not evidence of other crimes committed by Bates himself. Rather, the testimony was fully admissible evidence of an ongoing conspiracy as charged in the indictment. 19 600 F.2d at 509 (citations omitted). 20 In this case, unlike in Bates, the indictment does not allege that the prior acts were part of the conspiracy. But this is a distinction without a difference. Although not included in the indictment, the evidence of the sample transactions formed an integral and natural part of the agents' accounts of the circumstances surrounding the offenses for which (the defendants were) indicted. United States v. Bloom, 538 F.2d 704, 707 (5th Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1074, 97 S.Ct. 814, 50 L.Ed.2d 792 (1977). 21 In sum, the evidence of the sample transactions was essential to explain the background of the one kilogram sale; it was not introduced to impugn the character of any of the defendants, the use that Rule 404(b) proscribes. The evidence was relevant, and its probative value outweighed any possibility of unfair prejudice. The district court properly admitted it.