Opinion ID: 614798
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Job Performance Testimony

Text: Mireles also argues that the Job Performance Testimony was improper 404(b) character evidence. Vargas, the CBP Port Director, testified that Mireles “was not doing the work that, that was producing with the same grade level officers,” that Mireles “was doing the minimum work,” and that Vargas recommended that the CBP terminate Mireles. Vargas did not testify that Mireles broke CBP rules or that he performed any illegal activities while at work. Vargas’s testimony that Mireles was an underperforming employee, without more, is not evidence of Mireles’s character for rule-breaking. It is however, evidence of the lack of importance he placed on his job and serves to rebut his counsel’s prior assertion that Mireles valued his job too much to risk losing it by harboring an illegal alien. Therefore, the testimony served a valid purpose and the district court did not abuse its discretion in overruling Mireles’s Rule 404(b) objection to the Job Performance Testimony.