Opinion ID: 545175
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Admission Of Drug Paraphernalia Found in the Johnsons' Home

Text: 58 Rosemary Johnson continues to assert on appeal, as she did in the court below, that evidence seized from the basement of the Johnsons' home at the time of their arrest on October 18, 1988 should not have been admitted at trial. The evidence, seized after a written consent search, consisted of a large triple-beam balance scale with cocaine residue on the pan, a sifter with cocaine residue, a bottle of mannitol (a cocaine dilutant), a bottle of procaine (a cocaine adulterant), and a large number of small plastic bags suitable for packaging cocaine for resale in small lots. 59 Rosemary Johnson argues that this evidence should not have been admitted because it does not tend to establish her involvement in the conspiracy as of the last date the conspiracy is alleged to have continued, September 30, 1988 (the date the indictment was returned). She asserts that the evidence tends to establish that she was transacting cocaine at the time of her arrest but does not support the proposition that she was engaged in transactions with the other conspirators at that time. As such, the evidence is highly prejudicial, she claims, and admitting it violates Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) (evidence of other crimes) and/or Rule 403 (more prejudicial than probative). 60 The government argued at trial and on appeal a different purpose for the evidence. It asserts that since the tape recorded conversations linked the Johnsons to the conspiracy and since the evidence does tend to establish that the Johnsons were continuing to distribute cocaine at the time of their arrest, the jury could infer they continued to be a part of the conspiracy at the time of their arrest. 61 Since the evidence was admitted to prove continued involvement in the conspiracy, rather than other similar crimes, we believe that the court correctly determined that Rule 404(b) was inapplicable. Thus Rosemary Johnson's citation to United States v. Zelinka, 862 F.2d 92, 99 (6th Cir.1988), is inapposite. In Zelinka, the government conceded that the conspiracy had ended almost a year and a half prior to the defendant's arrest. Id. at 98. Thus the evidence seized during the arrest could not have been evidence of the conspiracy in which the defendant was charged with participating. Since it was admitted that the evidence did not tend to establish an element of the conspiracy, the evidence had to be admissible, if at all, as evidence of another crime under Rule 404(b). 62 In this case, by contrast, the conspiracy continued at least until the return of the indictment, three weeks before the defendant's arrest. Although the defense disputed Johnson's continued involvement in the conspiracy in 1988, the fact of whether the defendant had actually withdrawn was a jury question. United States v. Hamilton, 689 F.2d 1262, 1268-69 (6th Cir.1982), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1117, 103 S.Ct. 753, 74 L.Ed.2d 971 (1983). 63 The admissibility of the evidence under Rule 403, which allows evidence to be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, is a separate question. Although a strong argument can be made for excluding the evidence given the fact that there was no other evidence of continued involvement in the conspiracy after 1986, on balance, we cannot say that the trial court erred in admitting it. 64