Opinion ID: 203972
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Admission of the firearm (Calderón)

Text: At trial, a Puerto Rico police officer testified that he seized a gun from Calderón. The seizure took place outside of the housing project. When asked to identify Calderón in court, the officer identified Pomales instead. The gun was admitted into evidence over defense objections. Calderón argues that the court should have excluded the gun under Rule 403 of the Federal Rules of Evidence because the firearm's probative value was substantially outweighed by its unfairly prejudicial impact. [4] Fed.R.Evid. 403; United States v. Griffin, 524 F.3d 71, 81 (1st Cir.2008). Calderón minimizes the relevance of the gun, noting that the government failed to connect the weapon to the housing project where the alleged conspiracy operated. He also claims that the court should have considered the officer's in-court identification of Pomales as the person from whom the gun was seized as an aggravating factor when conducting Rule 403's required balancing. The trial court's decision to admit the weapon is reviewed for abuse of discretion. United States v. Upton, 559 F.3d 3, 15 (1st Cir.2009). [O]nly rarely  and in extraordinarily compelling circumstances  will we, from the vista of a cold appellate record, reverse a district court's on-the-spot judgment concerning the relative weighing of probative value and unfair effect. United States v. Dunbar, 553 F.3d 48, 58 (1st Cir.2009) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The gun clearly was relevant evidence. [5] [I]n drug trafficking firearms have become `tools of the trade' and thus are probative of the existence of a drug conspiracy. United States v. McGuire, 389 F.3d 225, 230 (1st Cir.2004) (citations omitted). Here, the government introduced evidence that the drug distribution network active at La Placida used guns to further its operation. Accordingly, that an officer retrieved a gun from a man named José Rivera Calderón, who was carrying the gun during the life of the conspiracy and in the vicinity of the housing project, made it more probable that Calderón was a member of this particular conspiracy. And it was similarly probative of Pomales' connection to the conspiracy, as the officer identified him in open court as the person who possessed the gun. But if the gun was most likely seized from Pomales, as the officer's in-court identification indicated, then one might argue that Calderón was unfairly prejudiced by the court's decision to admit the gun into evidence with his name effectively still attached to it. Doing so, the argument runs, created a risk that the jury would convict him of the conspiracy charge based on an improper basis  the possession of a deadly weapon. Fed.R.Evid. 403 advisory committee's note (`Unfair prejudice' within its context means an undue tendency to suggest decision on an improper basis.). But this risk was so small that we cannot say that the Rule 403 balance weighed in favor of exclusion. The gun was most clearly associated with Pomales, not Calderón. Given two opportunities to identify the person who possessed the gun, the officer identified Pomales both times. Calderón's counsel made a point to underscore the officer's failure to associate the gun with his client, noting before the jury that [the officer] has not been able to identify [Calderón]. Even the government itself acknowledged before the jury that the officer had failed to identify Calderón as the person from whom the gun was seized. In fact, the identification problem arguably inured to Calderón's benefit, as it suggested a weakness in the government's proof against him. In any event, any error would be harmless. Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(a) (Any error, defect, irregularity, or variance that does not affect substantial rights must be disregarded.). As our sufficiency analysis above indicates, the government introduced ample evidence of Calderón's involvement in the charged conspiracy. See United States v. Adams, 375 F.3d 108, 113 (1st Cir.2004) (Even if we found a violation of Rule 403, we would regard any error as harmless because this evidentiary ruling could not have affected the outcome.) (citation omitted).