Opinion ID: 200903
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Admissibility — Evidence of Other Marijuana Growing Operations

Text: 13 Balthazard and Souve first claim that the court should have excluded all evidence that implicated them in marijuana growing operations other than Okie Street. Their theory is that the challenged evidence was irrelevant and unfairly prejudicial because the government failed to connect the operations to the conspiracy described in the indictment. This is primarily an argument about conditional relevancy that we evaluate under Fed.R.Evid. 104(b). When the relevancy of evidence is conditioned on the establishment of a fact — in this case, that the other marijuana growing operations were undertaken in furtherance of the charged conspiracy — the offering party need only introduce sufficient evidence to permit a reasonable jury to find the conditional fact by a preponderance of the evidence to establish that the evidence is relevant. Huddleston v. United States, 485 U.S. 681, 689-90, 108 S.Ct. 1496, 99 L.Ed.2d 771 (1988). Even relevant evidence should be excluded, however, if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice and the prejudicial effect cannot be addressed by a limiting instruction. See Fed.R.Evid. 403. This concern is particularly acute when the challenged evidence implicates a defendant in uncharged criminal activity because if such evidence is admitted improperly, there is a real danger that it could be misused. Accordingly, even if the challenged evidence is conditionally relevant under Rule 104(b), we must also consider defendants' contention that the evidence nevertheless should have been excluded under Rule 403. 2 14 Viewing the record in this light, the trial court's decision to admit the challenged evidence is unassailable. Several witnesses testified that Balthazard and St. Jacques worked together throughout the 1990s to grow, process, and sell marijuana and that Souve joined the conspiracy in 1997 or 1998. The conspirators used the same core group of bud pickers to assist them in their operations throughout this period and the conspirators' goals and methods remained the same while the conspiracy was in existence. For these reasons, and because all of the challenged operations fell within the temporal limits of the charged conspiracy, we find little support for defendants' contention. 15 Balthazard and Souve nevertheless argue that the prior marijuana growing operations could not have been a part of the charged conspiracy both because the conspirators grew and processed the marijuana at different sites and because the prior operations were completed before Souve joined the conspiracy. Neither argument has merit. A single conspiracy does not fracture into multiple conspiracies merely because the conspirators shift the locations at which they conduct their operations. See United States v. Walker, 142 F.3d 103, 112 (2d Cir.1998); see also United States v. Brandon, 17 F.3d 409, 451 (1st Cir.1994). Nor does one conspiracy necessarily end and a new one begin each time a new member joins the organization. See United States v. Bello-Perez, 977 F.2d 664, 668 (1st Cir.1992). Given the abundant evidence to support the government's single conspiracy theory, the changes in the conspiracy that the defendants seek to highlight do not come close to raising a legitimate challenge under either Rule 104(b) or Rule 403. 3 16