Opinion ID: 755176
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Claim Based on the Exclusion of Expert Testimony

Text: 51 Hill argues that the district judge erred in not allowing him to question Officer Richardson about the significance of the half-bundled, half-wadded up manner in which Gunn carried the money in his pocket. Hill contends that Richardson's testimony would have indicated that Gunn was carrying money in a manner consistent with the way drug dealers carry it. The district court did not allow Richardson to testify on this issue since the testimony would not be particularly helpful to anyone and since it did not deem Richardson to be an expert in this area. 52 This court reviews a district court's decision not to admit expert testimony based on a lack of qualification for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Diaz, 25 F.3d 392, 394 (6th Cir.1994). We find the district court's evidentiary ruling to be within the bounds of its discretion; Richardson's testimony may well have been overly prejudicial to defendant Gunn, and thus subject to exclusion under Fed.R.Evid. 403. In any event, even if the district court's evidentiary ruling did constitute an abuse of discretion, we view any such error as harmless since the jury could infer Hill's guilt from other evidence, as the following section will show. 53