Opinion ID: 790007
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: District Court Errors

Text: 50 Finally, Banks claims that he was denied a fair trial due to cumulative errors of the district court. District court errors must be considered in the aggregate on appeal; while individual errors might be considered harmless, there are some cases in which the cumulative harm done is no longer insignificant. United States v. Santos, 201 F.3d 953, 965 (7th Cir.2000). This, however, is not such a case. We find no error in most of the decisions with which Banks takes issue. The error that might have been made with respect to a dog alert was clearly harmless; corrective jury instructions were given, and Banks was ultimately acquitted of the charge related to the cocaine ejected from Jackson's car, which was the only charge to which the dog sniff would have been relevant.
51 The district court allowed testimony from April about Banks's history of storing cocaine in her apartment to be admitted. Banks argues that this was an impermissible use of character evidence. See Fed.R.Evid. 404(b) (prohibiting evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts from being used to prove the character of a person in order to show action in conformity therewith). We review the district court's evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion. United States v. Rangel, 350 F.3d 648, 650 (7th Cir.2003). 52 The government elicited the testimony regarding Banks's prior practice of storing cocaine in her apartment on redirect examination, after the defense questioned April about where she obtained all of the cocaine she used. We agree with the district judge that the cross-examination opened the door for testimony on the cocaine Banks had stored in her apartment prior to this incident. Rather than being impermissible character evidence, the testimony was properly admitted as evidence to show that Banks had opportunity, knowledge, and intent to store drugs in April's apartment. See Fed.R.Evid. 404(b). All four prongs of the test for admissibility set forth in United States v. Anifowoshe are met: (1) the evidence is directed to April's reason for believing the cocaine seized belonged to Banks and absence of mistake rather than to his propensity to commit the crime; (2) Banks's use of April's apartment for cocaine storage occurred within five years of the charged offense, making it close enough in time to be relevant; (3) April's testimony was corroborated by Evans and by Banks's fingerprint, making it sufficient to support a jury finding that Banks committed a similar act; and (4) the evidence was highly probative of the central issues of whether Banks intentionally and knowingly possessed the cocaine in April's apartment and was not unfairly prejudicial. See 307 F.3d 643, 646 (7th Cir.2002).
53 The district court allowed the government to introduce evidence of the gun found in Banks's Jeep the night of his arrest. After a proper Miranda warning, Banks admitted to the arresting officer that he owned the gun. Banks now argues that the district court erred in admitting evidence of the gun because it was unfairly prejudicial and its probative value was outweighed by the prejudice. See Fed.R.Evid. 403. Again, we review the district court's ruling on admissibility for abuse of discretion. See Rangel, 350 F.3d at 650. 54 This court has often said that guns are tools of the trade for drug dealing. See, e.g., United States v. Wyatt, 102 F.3d 241, 248 (7th Cir.1996). It seems obvious, then, that the gun found in Banks's Jeep immediately after he met with Jackson would be relevant to the question of whether Banks had sold Jackson the cocaine ejected from his (Jackson's) car as charged. Banks argues that the gun evidence was unfairly prejudicial, and that the district judge's comment that [the gun evidence] is tremendously prejudicial shows she did not know she had the discretion to exclude evidence of the gun. (Tr. at 1421.) We think it much more likely that the district court judge understood the rules of evidence and admitted the gun evidence because, although it was unquestionably prejudicial, it was not so unfairly prejudicial as to substantially outweigh its probative value. Admitting evidence of the gun was not an abuse of discretion.
55 In its rebuttal, the government offered evidence that Banks's Jeep was inspected by a narcotics-trained dog and that the dog alerted to the driver's seat of the vehicle. The district court conducted a hearing and voir dire of the dog's handler, and initially allowed the evidence to be presented to the jury. After the dog handler's testimony, though, and after court had been adjourned for a weekend, the district court decided to strike the evidence. Banks claims that the district court's error of allowing the evidence to be presented prejudiced him, and that the subsequent jury instructions to disregard the dog handler's testimony were insufficient. 56 Banks offers nothing to show how the weekend lapse between the introduction of the dog alert evidence and the instructions to disregard that evidence was prejudicial to him. We find it implausible that the jury considered this testimony in convicting Banks of possessing the cocaine found in April's apartment. On the contrary, it appears that the jury was able to put the testimony out of their minds, since they acquitted Banks of the charge of selling cocaine to Jackson the night of the dog inspection. See Smith, 308 F.3d at 739-740.