Opinion ID: 757051
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Evidence of Unadjudicated Offenses

Text: 83 Hall contends that the district court improperly admitted evidence of unadjudicated offenses during the penalty phase. Specifically, Hall complains of the district court's permitting the government to introduce the testimony of Erma Willis and her son, Geren Willis, that, in May 1994, Hall waited in a car outside their home with a gun on the dashboard while Hall's cousin forced another individual to attempt to obtain money from Ms. Willis. David Baker, who at that time was employed as an Arkansas parole officer, testified that Ms. Willis reported the incident to him and that he forwarded the information to Hall's parole officer in Pine Bluff. Additionally, Hall complains of the testimony of Larry Nichols, an inmate in the same correctional facility where Hall was held prior to his trial, regarding Hall's plans to escape from prison and his threats against Beckley, discussed in Part II.A.4, supra. 84 Hall complains that introduction of the above testimony violated due process and the Eighth Amendment's heightened 'need for reliability in the determination that death is the appropriate punishment in a specific case.'  Caldwell v. Mississippi, 472 U.S. 320, 340, 105 S.Ct. 2633, 86 L.Ed.2d 231 (1985) (quoting Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 305, 96 S.Ct. 2978, 49 L.Ed.2d 944 (1976)). He contends that this problem was compounded by the fact that the district court did not instruct the jury that, in order to consider unadjudicated criminal offenses in determining whether the government had established a particular aggravating factor, it was required to conclude that the government had proven the occurrence of the unadjudicated offense by a particular quantum of proof. With respect to Nichols's testimony, Hall contends that the district court's failure to instruct the jury regarding the evidentiary standard by which it was required to determine whether the conduct about which Nichols testified actually occurred allowed the jury to conflate the process of fact-finding and risk assessment by concluding that the nature of the conduct Nichols alleged was so menacing that only a marginal amount of proof would suffice to warrant consideration of that conduct in support [of] the government's claim of future dangerousness. 85 To the extent that Hall alleges that evidence of prior unadjudicated offenses is per se inadmissible on constitutional grounds, his claim lacks merit. See Harris v. Johnson, 81 F.3d 535, 541 (5th Cir.1996) (We previously have held that the use of evidence of unadjudicated extraneous offenses, at the sentencing phase of Texas capital murder trials, does not implicate constitutional concerns.); Williams v. Lynaugh, 814 F.2d 205, 208 (5th Cir.1987) (holding that the admission of unadjudicated offenses in the sentencing phase of a capital trial does not violate the eighth and fourteenth amendments); Milton v. Procunier, 744 F.2d 1091, 1097 (5th Cir.1984) (same). 86 We are likewise unpersuaded by Hall's contention that the absence of an instruction regarding the evidentiary standard by which the government must prove the existence of unadjudicated offenses and other conduct that it advances in support of an aggravating factor constitutes reversible error. As we understand it, Hall's argument appears to be that, when the government offers evidence of an unadjudicated offense in support of an aggravating factor, the jury must be instructed that it cannot consider this evidence in determining whether the government has carried its burden of proving the aggravating factor beyond a reasonable doubt unless it has first determined that the evidence establishes by some quantum of evidence that the unadjudicated offense occurred. 12 Hall has offered no legal support for this proposition, and the only precedent that we have found militates against it. See Harris, 81 F.3d at 541 (Fully aware that the due process clause clearly requires that for conviction the state must prove the elements of the offense charged beyond a reasonable doubt, neither we nor the Supreme Court has stated that a similar burden exists regarding the admission of evidence of unadjudicated offenses in a capital case sentencing hearing.). 87 In any event, Hall neither proffered a proposed jury instruction informing the jury of the existence of the government's purported threshold evidentiary burden regarding unadjudicated offenses nor objected to the absence of such an instruction. He therefore did not preserve any error regarding the absence of this instruction. See FED.R.CRIM.P. 30 (No party may assign as error any portion of the charge or omission therefrom unless that party objects thereto before the jury retires to consider its verdict, stating distinctly the matter to which that party objects and the grounds of the objection.). The dearth of authority supporting Hall's position indicates that, even if the district court erred in failing to instruct the jury on the existence of a threshold evidentiary burden regarding unadjudicated offenses, such error was far from clear and obvious and thus did not constitute plain error warranting reversal. See FED.R.CRIM.P. 52(b); Dupre, 117 F.3d at 817.