Opinion ID: 2737209
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Admission of Other Act Evidence

Text: The court reviews a district court’s evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion, subject to harmless-error analysis. See United States v. Girod, 646 F.3d 304, 318 (5th Cir. 2011). “For any of the evidentiary rulings to be reversible error, the admission of the evidence in question must have substantially prejudiced the defendant’s rights.” Id. at 318 (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). The district court referred to the evidence relating to the March 14 arrest as both “404(b) evidence” and “intrinsic” evidence. Although the court performed a Beechum analysis, its ruling on admissibility rested on its conclusion that the evidence was intrinsic. We need not decide whether the district court was correct when it held the March 14 arrest evidence to be intrinsic, because that evidence was properly admitted pursuant to Rule 404(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 404(b) provides that “[e]vidence of a crime, wrong, or other act is not admissible to prove a person’s character in order to show that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character.” However, “[t]his evidence may be admissible for another purpose, such as proving motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, absence of mistake, or lack of accident.” Id. This court held in United States v. Beechum, 582 F.2d 898 (5th Cir. 1978), that Rule 404(b) requires a two-step analysis: “[f]irst, it must be determined that the extrinsic offense evidence is relevant to an issue other than the defendant’s character,” and “[s]econd, the evidence must possess probative value that is not substantially outweighed by its undue prejudice and must meet the other requirements of rule 403.” Id. at 911. 10 Case: 13-40322 Document: 00512782290 Page: 11 Date Filed: 09/25/2014 No. 13-40322 “We have previously held that in a conspiracy case, the defendant puts his intent into issue when he pleads not guilty.” United States v. Heard, 709 F.3d 413, 430 (5th Cir. 2013). Accordingly, Schaffer’s possession of a “distributable amount” of cocaine and other drugs on March 14 and the fact that he admitted that he was taking it “to a business partner” are clearly relevant to establishing Schaffer’s intent to participate in the conspiracy at issue here. As for the second prong of the Beechum analysis, “we must take care not to infringe upon the broad discretion of the trial court regarding the relevance, probative value, and prejudicial effect of evidence.” United States v. Bermea, 30 F.3d 1539, 1562 (5th Cir. 1994) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Given that the evidence regarding the March 14 arrest was within the time frame alleged by the indictment and involved possession by Schaffer of a “distributable amount” of cocaine, we conclude that the probative value of the evidence was not substantially outweighed by any undue prejudice. Therefore, the evidence was properly admitted.