Opinion ID: 223510
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Motion to sever the counts

Text: Rule 14 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure provides that the district court may order separate trials of counts or grant a severance if it appears that a defendant or the government will be prejudiced by a joinder of offenses. We will reverse a denial of a motion to sever if the appellant demonstrates an abuse of discretion resulting in clear prejudice. United States v. Al-Esawi, 560 F.3d 888, 891 (8th Cir.2009). Only in an unusual case, however, will the prejudice resulting from a joint trial be substantial enough to outweigh the general efficiency of joinder. United States v. Kirk, 528 F.3d 1102, 1107 (8th Cir.2008) (internal quotation marks omitted). Even if two counts are improperly joined we will reverse a court's denial of a motion to sever only if the misjoinder results in actual prejudice, i.e., the misjoinder has a substantial and injurious effect or influence on the verdict. Al- Esawi, 560 F.3d at 891-92. Huggans argues that the government improperly joined two marginal cases, using them to bolster one another into a better chance for conviction. Specifically, Huggans contends that no fact-finder would have believed Stiles's testimony regarding Huggans's participation in the Sais conspiracy absent the evidence that Huggans had negotiated with Rice to purchase twenty kilograms of cocaine and brought nearly $340,000 in cash to a hotel room as payment for that purchase. Similarly, he maintains that he could have persuaded the fact-finder that bringing the money to the hotel room did not constitute a substantial step in furtherance of the attempt offense but for Stiles's testimony that Huggans bought hundreds of kilograms of cocaine from him during a recent six-month period. [5] After reviewing Huggans's arguments and the evidence, we cannot conclude that denial of his severance motion constituted an abuse of discretion resulting in clear prejudice. We have recognized that [p]rejudice may result from a possibility that the jury might use evidence of one crime to infer guilt on the other or that the jury might cumulate the evidence to find guilt on all crimes when it would not have found guilt if the crimes were considered separately. United States v. Davis, 103 F.3d 660, 676 (8th Cir.1996). However, a defendant does not suffer any undue prejudice by a joint trial if the evidence is such that one crime would be probative and admissible at the defendant's separate trial of the other crime. Id. In United States v. Boyd, 180 F.3d 967 (8th Cir.1999), we affirmed the denial of a motion to sever ten different criminal counts because [t]here [was] nothing in the record to suggest the trial judge could not keep separate the relevant evidence on each count, and [f]urther, ... much, if not all, of the evidence on each would have been admissible in a separate trial on the other counts under Rule 404(b). Id. at 982-83. Similarly, here, Huggans has not alleged that the district court improperly considered evidence as to one count that was relevant only as to the other, and much, if not all, of the evidence on the conspiracy count would have been admissible in a separate trial on the attempt count under Rule 404(a) or 404(b) and vice versa. Thus, Huggans simply has not shown that the district court's refusal to sever the counts caused him prejudice. Id. at 983. Accordingly, finding no actual prejudice nor any abuse of discretion, we affirm the district court's denial of Huggans's motion to sever the counts.