Opinion ID: 867120
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Booking photographs of defendant

Text: As we noted earlier, some of the photographs underlying the section 2251(a) charge in this case depicted a man engaged in sexual intercourse with EV. EV would later testify that the man was Roux. The photographs themselves showed only the man’s lower torso, not his face. One identifying characteristic that was evident from the photographs was that the male had a bit of a belly and was thus slightly overweight. By the time of trial, however, Roux (by EV’s estimate) weighed some 30 to 40 pounds less than he had at the time of his arrest and appeared noticeably thinner to both EV and her mother at trial. The government was concerned that the jury, on observing a slender Roux in court, might be No. 10-2192 17 inclined to discredit EV’s testimony that the male torso depicted in the photographs belonged to Roux. The government thus sought to introduce at trial photographs taken of Roux at the time of Roux’s arrest on state charges in May 2008 and again in February 2009, when federal authorities took over the prosecution and took him into their custody. These were standard booking photographs of Roux from the neck up; but they revealed a somewhat heavier Roux that the jury would see at trial, and to that end would support the government’s position (and EV’s testimony) that Roux was the individual shown in the photographs. Roux objected to the admission of the photographs out of concern that the jury would surmise (correctly) from the nature and dates of the photographs (which were communicated to the jury) not only that Roux had been arrested and incarcerated prior to trial, but also that his pretrial incarceration was a sign that he was a particularly dangerous individual. The district court found that the photographs were admissible for the purpose articulated by the government. None of the photographs contained any formal indicia (such as prison garb, booking numbers, or height indicator strips) indicating that they were jailhouse booking photographs. To minimize the possibility that the jury would recognize them as such, the court allowed into evidence only the two photographs depicting Roux facing forward and excluded photographs taken of Roux in profile. Roux renews on his appeal his contention that the admission of the photographs undermined the presumption of innocence to which he was entitled for 18 No. 10-2192 the reasons he articulated to the district court. Notwithstanding the absence of overt signs that these were jailhouse booking photographs, he asserts that it was obvious to the jury that the admitted photos were, in fact, mug shots. And because the jury knew that the photographs were taken on two different dates some nine months apart, he posits that jurors would have suspected either that he was regarded as so dangerous that he was denied release on bail, or that he committed a second offense resulting in another arrest (and photo) while on pretrial release for the first offense. He adds that there was no genuine need for the government to introduce the photographs, as he had not argued and never did argue based on his weight at the time of trial that he could not be the person depicted with EV in the charged photographs. At the same time, he could not explain that his weight loss was unintentional rather than purposeful and calculated, because to do so would have required him to confirm that he was incarcerated prior to trial and suffered weight loss due to bad jail food and a jailhouse attack that resulted in an injury requiring surgery and a lengthy stay in the jail infirmary. The district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the photographs. The government had a legitimate reason for offering them into evidence: Whether or not Roux argued that he could not be the man depicted in the charged photographs based on his trim physique at the time of trial (and, as we pointed out at oral argument, this was a suggestion that Roux could have reserved for closing argument), the jury might have wondered about this point on its own. The photographs No. 10-2192 19 themselves do not strike us as particularly prejudicial. Having been informed that they are booking photos, it is easy to recognize them as such. Without that foreknowledge, they also appear consistent with passport, driver’s license, and workplace identification photographs, which are often just as unflattering as these photographs of Roux are. Even if jurors correctly guessed the origin of these photographs, it would not have been a surprise to them that Roux had been arrested and photographed at that time, given that he had, after all, been indicted and placed on trial. The notion that they would have further inferred that he was denied bail because he was deemed too dangerous to be released (as opposed to lacking the money to post a bond, for example) or alternatively had committed another offense resulting in a subsequent arrest strikes us as too speculative to have compelled the exclusion of the photographs. Nor are we convinced that the photographs called for some type of explanation from Roux for the weight loss: the government did not argue at trial that he had lost weight deliberately.