Opinion ID: 811159
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Prior Fight Between Sanchez Brothers

Text: Over objection, the district court allowed the defense to ask Sanchez if he had fought with his brother prior to April 5, 2008, and, more specifically, whether Caballero had ever broken up a fight between them prior to April 5. Sanchez denied that they had ever fought, be it on April 5 or on any other occasion. R. 167 at 38-39. The defense posed that question to Sanchez in anticipation of Caballero’s testimony that he had witnessed a fight between the brothers on an occasion prior to the April 5 incident. Subsequently, when Caballero was on the witness stand, Sanchez’s counsel asked him why he had not indicated on the contact card he completed after the April 5 incident that Sanchez and his brother were fighting. Caballero answered: In this case Efrain and his brother were fighting. I have seen them fighting before, seen Efrain numerous times, and I’ve let him go. He’s begged me to let him go. And at this point I did the same thing. R. 167-1 at 30. Caballero was then asked (by plaintiff’s counsel) about the prior fight Caballero claimed to have witnessed, and Caballero said that he previously had encountered Sanchez and his brother engaged in a shoving match. “We broke them up and they went on their 30 No. 10-3801 way,” Caballero explained. Id. at 31. Defense counsel then explored the subject further when Caballero was recalled in the defense case. R. 169 at 64-65. Sanchez argues that the court erred in permitting the defense to open this subject by allowing the initial questions of Sanchez, which in turn led to Caballero’s testimony about the prior shoving match. The court allowed this evidence as relevant to explain why Caballero and Peterson did not arrest Sanchez or his brother on April 5 nor document a fight between the two brothers on the contact cards they filled out after the incident, despite their testimony that they had observed the brothers in a physical altercation and that Sanchez was bleeding as a result of the fight. This was a subject that Sanchez’s counsel had touched upon in his opening statement to the jury and on which he had questioned both officers. R. 166-1 at 5-6; id. at 74-75, 88, 90-91; R. 167-1 at 25, 26-27. Clearly one inference that Sanchez wanted the jury to draw was that the fight was a fabrication; otherwise, the logic goes, the officers surely would have documented the fight if not arrested one or both of the brothers. Sanchez’s concern is that the jury likely relied on the prior fight not as evidence of what motivated the defendants not to arrest him or his brother on April 5 if they had in fact been fighting as the defense claimed, but rather as confirmation of the defense account that there was a fight between the brothers on April 5. In other words, Sanchez posits that this testimony constituted proof of a prior bad act (the fight), offered to No. 10-3801 31 show a character trait (fighting, especially with one’s brother) with which Sanchez was acting in conformity on the night in question. See Fed. R. Evid. 404(a)(1). Because this evidence was at least minimally relevant to explain why the defendants might have decided legitimately not to arrest the Sanchez brothers on April 5, and thus had a bearing on something other than their propensity to fight, it was within the district court’s discretion to admit the evidence. In any event, we find it difficult to believe that the testimony prejudiced Sanchez. The testimony that the brothers had fought before came from the same, self-interested source (Caballero) who asserted that the brothers were fighting on April 5. The jury was thus unlikely to rely on the testimony regarding the prior fight as independent verification of Caballero’s disputed contention that the brothers were involved in a fight on April 5. Moreover, coming to blows with one’s sibling, although it may technically be illegal, is an experience known to, if not shared by, many individuals, and the disclosure of such a history is not inherently prejudicial as would be the disclosure of other prior crimes. Caballero himself remarked during his testimony, “[M]yself, I fought with every one of my brothers, so I know how that goes, so I didn’t think it was a reason to lock anybody up.” R. 169 at 72; see also R. 167-1 at 30 (“I fought my brothers hundreds of times . . . .”). F. Cumulative Effect of Disputed Evidentiary Rulings Sanchez has argued that even if any of the evidentiary rulings that he contests were not prejudicial individually, 32 No. 10-3801 together they deprived him of a fair trial. We have considered this argument but, upon review of the record, find it to be without merit.4