Opinion ID: 6111649
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sadler’s 2012 Heroin Sales

Text: We “generally review the district court’s admission or exclusion of evidence for abuse of discretion.” Emmons, 8 F.4th at 473 (quoting United States v. Bell, 516 F.3d 432, 440 (6th Cir. 2008)). “A district court has abused its discretion when its decision rests on the wrong legal standard, a misapplication of the correct standard, or on clearly erroneous facts.” United States v. Gibbs, 797 F.3d 416, 422 (6th Cir. 2015). “If evidence was erroneously admitted, we ask Nos. 19-2217/2221/20-1177 United States v. Sadler, et al. Page 40 whether the admission was harmless error or requires reversal of a conviction.” United States v. Churn, 800 F.3d 768, 775 (6th Cir. 2015) (citing United States v. Martinez, 588 F.3d 301, 312 (6th Cir. 2009)). This standard applies when reviewing a district court’s determination that Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) is inapplicable because the evidence is intrinsic or res gestae. Id. at 774, 779. Here, the district court abused its discretion by admitting evidence of two instances where Sadler sold drugs in 2012. But, ultimately, the error is harmless. Under Rule 404(b)(1), “[e]vidence of any other crime, wrong, or act is not admissible to prove a person’s character in order to show that on a particular occasion the person acted in accordance with the character.” Fed. R. Evid. 404(b)(1). “The purpose of Rule 404(b) is to prevent a jury from ‘convict[ing] a “bad man” who deserves to be punished not because he is guilty of the crime charged but because of his prior or subsequent misdeeds’ and from ‘infer[ring] that because the accused committed other crimes, he probably committed the crime charged.’” Emmons, 8 F.4th at 473 (quoting United States v. Phillips, 599 F.2d 134, 136 (6th Cir. 1979)). However, Rule 404(b) does not apply when the prior bad act forms the basis of the charges for which a defendant is being tried. See United States v. Adams, 722 F.3d 788, 822 (6th Cir. 2013) (Rule 404(b) “is not implicated when the other crimes or wrongs evidence is part of a continuing pattern of illegal activity” (quoting United States v. Barnes, 49 F.3d 1144, 1149 (6th Cir. 1995))). That is, if evidence is “intrinsic,” Rule 404(b) will not apply as long as the acts “are part of a single criminal episode.” Id. (quoting Barnes, 49 F.3d at 1149). “Intrinsic acts are those that are . . . a part of the criminal activity[,] as opposed to extrinsic acts, which are those that occurred at different times under different circumstances from the offense charged.” Churn, 800 F.3d at 779 (quoting United States v. Stafford, 198 F.3d 248 (Table), 1999 WL 1111519, at  (6th Cir. 2012)). A similar but distinct doctrine involves an exception to Rule 404(b) for res gestae, or background, evidence. See Adams, 722 F.3d at 810 (citing United States v. Clay, 667 F.3d 689, 697 (6th Cir. 2012)). Such evidence “consists of those other acts that are inextricably intertwined with the charged offense.”11 United States v. Hardy, 228 F.3d 11We have not always been clear when distinguishing between res gestae and intrinsic evidence. Adams indicates that these concepts are different. See 722 F.3d at 810, 822. However, later cases have merged the two. Nos. 19-2217/2221/20-1177 United States v. Sadler, et al. Page 41 745, 748 (6th Cir. 2000). “Typically, such evidence is a prelude to the charged offense, is directly probative of the charged offense, arises from the same events as the charged offense, forms an integral part of a witness’s testimony, or completes the story of the charged offense.” Id. “Concerned with the potential for abuse of background evidence as a means to circumvent Rule 404(b),” we have recognized “severe limitations as to ‘temporal proximity, causal relationship, or spatial connections’ among the other acts and the charged offense.” Adams, 722 F.3d at 810 (quoting Clay, 667 F.3d at 698). We must be careful not to allow res gestae evidence as a “‘backdoor to circumvent [the] goals’ of Rule 404(b).” Gibbs, 797 F.3d at 423 (quoting Clay, 667 F.3d at 698). Sadler believes the district court improperly admitted evidence relating to his 2012 heroin sales—which he does not dispute happened—as intrinsic evidence. The government alleges that these sales were evidence of the “Polo” conspiracy. The district court overruled Sadler’s objection to this evidence and found that it was “relevant because it’s certain acts alleged[ly] by the defendant . . . during the time frame of the conspiracy relating to the overall charge.” (Trial Tr., R. 706, Page ID #4127). The district court did not consider whether the testimony was admissible under any exception to Rule 404(b), such as proof of motive, opportunity, intent, plan, knowledge, or lack of accident. See Fed. R. Evid. 404(b)(2). The parties’ dispute boils down to the degree of relatedness between Sadler’s 2012 heroin sales and the broader “Polo” conspiracy between 2010 and 2016. The government argues that the jury could reasonably infer that these sales were part of the “Polo” conspiracy. It relies on the following threads to tie Sadler’s 2012 sales to the broader “Polo” conspiracy: Sadler sold heroin; “Polo” sold heroin; Sadler sold heroin in small plastic bags; “Polo” sold heroin in small plastic bags; Sadler sold those bags for roughly $20; “Polo” sold bags for $20; Sadler used a phone to set up drug deals; “Polo” used phones to coordinate drug deals; Sadler’s sales were in 2012; “Polo” allegedly operated in 2012. But, as Sadler notes, “[t]he similarities that the See Churn, 800 F.3d at 779 (“Res gestae is sometimes also known as ‘intrinsic evidence.’”). As we have recognized, “the distinctions among res gestae, inextricably intertwined evidence, intrinsic evidence, and background evidence [are] far from clear.” Id. (quoting Adams, 722 F.3d at 822 n.26). Ultimately, we do not need to split hairs deciding whether this is “intrinsic” or “res gestae” evidence because under either theory, the outcome is the same. Nos. 19-2217/2221/20-1177 United States v. Sadler, et al. Page 42 government claims are unique, are actually so generic that [we] . . . give them no credence whatsoever.” (Def. Sadler Reply Br. at 3). The government’s comparisons are flawed for several reasons. First, they do not indicate that the 2012 sales were intrinsic evidence that was “part of a single criminal episode.” Adams, 722 F.3d at 822 (quoting Barnes, 49 F.3d at 1149). The evidence does not show that Sadler’s sales were “Polo” sales. There is no evidence that Sadler set up the sales using either “Polo” phone, he did not use a runner, and the sales were in a different part of town than “Polo” sales. Sadler pulled up to the undercover officer in a car, driven by the mother of his children, with a child in the backseat. Officers did not see other cars waiting or other drug deals happening at the same time. Sadler’s 2012 drug sales are thus not intrinsic evidence because they have no bearing on whether he agreed, knowingly joined, and participated in the conspiracy. See Williams, 998 F.3d at 728 (listing elements of conspiracy); United States v. Peete, 781 F. App’x 427, 434 (6th Cir. 2019) (noting that evidence is intrinsic if it “tends to logically prove an element of the crime charged” (emphasis added) (quoting United States v. Till, 434 F.3d 880, 883 (6th Cir. 2006))). Indeed, in a similar drug conspiracy case, we found evidence of the defendant’s past drug sales inadmissible extrinsic evidence when the parties involved in those deals were not the alleged co-conspirators, and the prior sales did not “tend to establish the charged conspiracy itself.” United States v. Hardy, 228 F.3d 745, 749–50 (6th Cir. 2000). Without some connection to the conspiracy itself, prior bad acts are not intrinsic to the alleged conspiracy even if the bad act is of the same kind alleged in the conspiracy charge. See id. Second, the 2012 sales are not res gestae or background evidence. Although courts can admit such evidence even when the prior acts are not “identical” to those charged, the facts must be “closely related.” Churn, 800 F.3d at 779 (quoting United States v. Vincent, 681 F.2d 462, 465 (6th Cir. 1982)). Here, Sadler’s 2012 drug deals are not “closely related” to the “Polo” conspiracy. The spatial and temporal connections between “Polo” and Sadler’s 2012 sales are tenuous at best. Most of the evidence at trial concerned “Polo” deals between 2015 and 2016. But even in the earlier “Polo” sales, the evidence showed a clear pattern of “Polo” using the same two phones and the same handful of locations. Although Sterling Heights is a suburb just east of Detroit, it is roughly ten miles away from the small area where “Polo” operated. The Nos. 19-2217/2221/20-1177 United States v. Sadler, et al. Page 43 2012 deals did not happen at a “Polo” stash house or other identifiable “Polo” hotspot like Hamburg Street or the intersection of Bringard and Bradford. Rather, they were in a Meijer parking lot ten miles away. We require a much stronger connection between the prior act and the conduct charged to support a finding that the past act was intrinsic or res gestae evidence. See Churn, 800 F.3d at 779 (admitting evidence of a non-charged fraudulent transaction because that transaction was with the same victim and the fraudulent deals were set up around the same time, and thus it was evidence of “the very scheme alleged in the indictment”); United States v. Hughes, 562 F. App’x 393, 396 (6th Cir. 2014) (admitting “intrinsic” evidence showing that the defendant—who was charged with carjacking a Pontiac Sunfire—used a Sunfire to commit several robberies within three hours of the alleged carjacking). The district court thus abused its discretion by admitting this evidence as intrinsic or res gestae evidence. Because the 2012 sales are not relevant to the charged offense and do not provide any necessary background, the only inference that can be drawn from them is that Sadler’s prior drug-dealing activity makes it more likely that he would join a conspiracy involving those types of crimes. This is precisely the kind of inference that Rule 404(b) seeks to avoid. See Fed. R. Evid. 404(b); see also United States v. English, 785 F.3d 1052, 1059 (6th Cir. 2015) (Clay, J., concurring) (noting that defendant’s prior fraudulent conduct was not res gestae because it involved “discrete instances of fraudulent conduct constituting only gratuitous evidence of [the defendant’s] propensity to commit fraud”). After seemingly concluding that Rule 404(b) was not implicated, the district court did not consider whether any exceptions to Rule 404(b) applied. But we do not need to remand on this issue because the error in admitting evidence of Sadler’s 2012 drug deals was harmless. “[A]n error is harmless unless one can say, with fair assurance[,] that the error materially affected the defendant’s substantial rights—that the judgment was substantially swayed by the error.” Gibbs, 797 F.3d at 425–26 (quoting Clay, 667 F.3d at 700). As discussed above, a rational jury could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that Sadler was guilty of conspiracy under § 846 even without considering the 2012 drug sales. See supra Part II.A.1.b. Nos. 19-2217/2221/20-1177 United States v. Sadler, et al. Page 44