Opinion ID: 2998220
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Admission of Evidence of Prior Uncharged Bank

Text: Robbery Was Improper Prior bad act evidence may be admitted either pursuant to Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), see United States v. Wilson, 31 F.3d 510, 514-15 (7th Cir. 1994), or where it is intricately related to the current charged crime or necessary to complete the story of the crime on trial, see United States v. Ramirez, 45 F.3d 1096, 1102 (7th Cir. 1995); United States v. Hargrove, 929 F.2d 316, 320 (7th Cir. 1991). Here, the district court found the evidence suggesting Owens’s involvement in the 1995 Harris Bank robbery admissible under both standards. However, Owens argues that this past bad act evidence fits neither, and that the admission of such evidence constituted an abuse of discretion.
ble Under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) Under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), “[e]vidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts is not admissible to prove the character of a person in order to show action in conformity therewith,” but may be admissible for “other purposes, such as proof of motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident.” However, before admitting evidence under Rule 404(b), the court must determine whether (1) the evidence is directed toward establishing a matter in issue other than the defendant’s propensity to commit the crime charged; (2) the evidence shows that the other act is similar enough and close in time to be relevant to the matter in issue; (3) the evidence is sufficient to support a jury finding that the defendant committed the similar act; and (4) the proba- tive value of the evidence is not substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. 6 No. 04-2793 Wilson, 31 F.3d at 514-15 (citing cases). With regard to this first prong, the government argues that the evidence of the 1995 robbery was properly admitted toward establishing three alternative matters in issue other than propensity: (1) defendant’s participation in, and control of, the charged offense; (2) the absence of mistake or accident in finding himself involved in the charged offense; and (3) his knowledge of the particular bank that he chose to rob. We address first the “participation in and control of” argument, in which the government contends that the evidence of the prior robbery was properly admitted to show that Owens was not an “innocent pawn” in the commission of the charged offense. In United States v. Lightfoot, 224 F.3d 586, 588 (7th Cir. 2000), we held that evidence of a defendant’s past violent abuse of a female roommate was admissible to refute his defense that she was the real drug dealer in the charged offense, and that he was at best an innocent pawn in her nefarious undertakings. Id. Citing Lightfoot, the government argues that the past act evidence here was properly admitted to rebut Owens’s defense that Davis was the real robber who implicated Owens merely to reduce his own sentence; to prove that Owens was not merely a pawn whose note paper was used to create a demand note, but rather the brains behind the operation who picked the bank that Davis ultimately robbed. This dog just doesn’t hunt. Owens never claimed that he was a pawn in the robbery; rather, he claims that he was not involved at all. To construct an innocent pawn defense, Owens would first have to concede his presence in the car with Davis on the day of the robbery, consistent with Davis’s account, and then insist that he was no more than an unwitting “wheelman.” Only then would the evidence of the 1995 robbery be putatively admissible to establish his participation and control of the instant offense. But that is not the defense Owens chose to mount. His is an alibi defense, rendering No. 04-2793 7 the government’s participation and control argument a nonstarter. In the alternative, the government argues that the past bad act evidence was properly admitted to prove absence of accident or mistake. Prior bad act evidence may be admitted “as proof of an element of a crime, such as intent, if the act demonstrates how the defendant’s behavior was purposeful rather than accidental.” United States v. Brown, 34 F.3d 569, 573 (7th Cir. 1994); see also United States v. Best, 250 F.3d 1084, 1089 (7th Cir. 2001). However, 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a) is a general intent crime, and thus specific intent need not be proven to establish the instant offense. See Carter v. United States, 530 U.S. 255, 270 (2000) (holding that 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a) is not a specific intent crime); United States v. Fazzini, 871 F.2d 635 (7th Cir. 1989) (rejecting defendant’s diminished capacity defense to 18 U.S.C. § 2113 charges because “armed bank robbery is a general intent crime . . . and diminished capacity is a defense only to specific intent crimes.”) (emphasis in original). And where specific intent is not an essential element—as in the case of general intent crimes—evidence of past bad acts shall not be admitted to prove such intent unless the government has reason to believe that the defendant will place it in issue. United States v. Shackleford, 738 F.2d 776, 781 (7th Cir. 1984) (“[W]hen intent is only a formal issue, so that proof of the proscribed act gives rise to an inference of intent, then unless the government has reason to believe that the defense will raise intent as an issue, evidence of other acts directed toward this issue should not be used in the government’s case-in-chief and should not be admitted until the defendant raises the issue.”), modified on other grounds by Huddleston v. United States, 485 U.S. 681, 685 (1988). Thus, the absence of accident or mistake is not a matter in issue here unless Owens made it one. Here, the government argues that Owens did place 8 No. 04-2793 accident in issue by arguing that his fingerprint landed on the demand note only by coincidence—that the note paper belonged to the defendant but was taken by Davis for commission of the robbery without his knowledge. Toward that end, the government contends that the evidence of the 1995 robbery, which suggests that Owens robbed the same bank by sliding a similar note to a teller in similar fashion, tends to disprove Owens’s claim of accidental association with the note here. We cannot accept this argument. That Owens allegedly committed a robbery at the same bank seven and a half years earlier does absolutely nothing to prove or disprove how Owens’s fingerprint ended up on a note used to rob the bank victimized here. This prior bad act that he may or may not have committed does not make him any more or less likely to have intentionally touched and penned the demand note used in the charged offense. If the issue of absence of accident or mistake was placed in issue at all, this evidence of the 1995 robbery has done nothing to address it. Rather, the only value of such evidence is to show the defendant’s propensity to commit crime, and that value, if it ever held currency, went bankrupt long ago. In yet another alternative, the government argues that evidence of the 1995 robbery may be admitted to demonstrate Owens’s knowledge of the Harris Bank branch that was robbed, and to explain why he chose to target that branch. It argues Owens’s alleged prior robbery demonstrates that he knew the bank well enough to decide that it was a better target for Davis—i.e., proving how he knew that the branch had more African-American customers and that Davis would feel more comfortable there. However, knowledge is not in any way at issue in this case—either as an element of the crime or in rebuttal to a defense. Furthermore, even if knowledge was in issue, the evidence of the 1995 robbery does not demonstrate any special knowledge of the bank used to commit the No. 04-2793 9 present crime. While both the 1995 and the 2002 robberies were committed in substantially the same way, in that both involved the use of a demand note, the same may be said of most all bank robberies. Thus, even with an unwarranted assumption of relevance getting it past prong one of our Rule 404(b) inquiry, this evidence could not overcome prong four: its probative value is quite slight, while its danger of inspiring unfair prejudice is great. As the evidence of the 1995 robbery is not directed toward establishing any matter in issue other than the defendant’s propensity to commit the crime charged, it is not admissible under Rule 404(b). 2. Evidence of the Prior Robbery Is Not Intricately Related To Charged Offense As an alternative basis for admission of past bad act evidence, the government argues that the 1995 robbery is “intricately related” to the charged crime. “Evidence of other acts which are ‘intricately related to the facts of the case’ is admissible without reference to Rule 404(b), provided that it passes the balancing test under Rule 403.” United States v. Hargrove, 929 F.2d 316, 320 (7th Cir. 1991). Such intricately related evidence includes information necessary to provide the jury with a complete story of the crime on trial, Ramirez, 45 F.3d at 1102; United States v. Roberts, 933 F.2d 517, 520 (7th Cir. 1991), to avoid a conceptual or chronological void, United States v. Lahey, 55 F.3d 1289, 1295-96 (7th Cir. 1995); United States v. Hattaway, 740 F.2d 1419, 1424-25 (7th Cir. 1984), or to explain the basis of relevant relationships between coconspirators, United States v. Zarnes, 33 F.3d 1454, 1469 (7th Cir. 1994). Here, the government contends that the 1995 robbery is inextricably intertwined with Davis’s narrative of the 10 No. 04-2793 2002 robbery—in particular, the moments leading up to the robbery—and is part and parcel of testimony crucial to establishing that Owens, contrary to his alibi defense, robbed the bank as charged. The government further argues that the evidence lends crucial credibility to Davis—its star witness—by serving as one of several explicit details recalled by Davis from a pre-robbery conversation that Owens, by virtue of his alibi defense, claims never occurred. And finally, the government contends that the evidence of the prior robbery completes the story of the crime on trial by explaining how Owens chose the bank, and how he knew particular facts about the bank that he would use to reassure Davis before the crime. Each of the government’s arguments succeed in highlighting an intricately related element to Davis’s story—but that element is not Owens’s alleged involvement in the 1995 robbery. Rather, it is his familiarity with the targeted branch, and to a lesser extent the basis for that familiarity, that is inextricably intertwined with the narrative the government wants to tell. Toward that end, all the government needed was testimony from Davis to the effect that Owens had expressed familiarity with the robbed branch based on the (ambiguous) fact that he had been there before. Had the government shown such self-restraint, it would have just as effectively completed its narrative of the crime, provided sufficient detail of the pre-robbery conversation so as to bolster Davis’s credibility, and supplied the basis for Owens’s alleged decision to target that particular bank. Instead, the government got greedy, invoked the specter of the 1995 robbery, thereby tainting the record, inviting the risk of unfair prejudice, and placing its case in jeopardy. Because it is Owens’s familiarity with the bank, and not his alleged involvement in the 1995 robbery, that is intricately related to the charged offense, we find the evidence of the 1995 robbery to be inadmissible under this standard as well. And, devoid of any basis for admitting No. 04-2793 11 this past bad act evidence, we find that the district court abused its discretion in doing so. 3. Admission of the Past Bad Act Evidence Was Not Harmless Error Furthermore, we cannot say that the district court’s error in admitting this prior bad act evidence was harmless. “The test for harmless error is whether, in the mind of the average juror, the prosecution’s case would have been ‘significantly less persuasive’ had the improper evidence been excluded.” United States v. Eskridge, 164 F.3d 1042, 1044 (7th Cir. 1998). Without the improperly admitted evidence, the government’s case against Owens consisted of physical evidence tying him to the demand note, and a cadre of biased witnesses. While we do not discount the persuasive weight of the physical evidence, the patent bias found in each government witness—save those testifying as to the 1995 robbery—give us great pause. First there is Davis, the government’s star witness, who testified against Owens in return for a reduced sentence on two different crimes; and then there are several of Davis’s closely related family members and friends. Confronted with this far from disinterested lineup, the average juror would likely look elsewhere for evidence to corroborate their accounts. In such an event, the evidence of Owens’s alleged prior bad act may very well have taken on a central role in the jury’s deliberations. Indeed, the very danger of over-reliance on the past bad act evidence was made all the more likely by the district court’s failure to issue a limiting instruction regarding the proper use of that evidence. Here, both parties and the court agreed prior to the instruction of the jury that such a limiting instruction should be given. In fact, the government drafted the instruction itself. Yet for some reason, the 12 No. 04-2793 court never provided one. This oversight makes the evil spawned by the improper admission of the past bad act evidence all the more glaring.1 The egregiousness of the error is exacerbated further by the admission of the 1995 lineup photo as part of the prior bad act evidence. The photo shows Owens and five other men seated, barefoot, and wearing large signs with numbers around their necks and what appears to be identical prison jumpsuits. The picture clearly portrays Owens as a prisoner in police custody. Not only was this highly inflammatory piece of inadmissible prior bad act evidence admitted into evidence, but it also was published to the jury, and even allowed to accompany the jurors into deliberations. In the jury room throughout, while jurors contemplated Owens’s fate, the lineup photo festered as a constant reminder that Owens had at least once before been a prisoner, undermining the fairness of the factfinding process in its potential to taint the jury’s judgment. 1 Because we find that the prior bad act evidence should never have been admitted in the first place, we do not reach the issue of whether the district court should have issued a limiting instruction regarding such evidence, save for a few words in passing. True enough, the responsibility for pointing out this omission by the court falls squarely on the shoulders of defense counsel, see, e.g., United States v. McKinney, 954 F.2d 471, 479 (7th Cir. 1992) (holding that a defendant who fails to request a limiting instruction at trial cannot complain on appeal that such an instruction was not given), and in that regard, Owens’s attorney failed his client. But it is a surprise to find the government, which, as drafter of the omitted limiting instruction, was clearly aware of the past bad act evidence’s prejudicial potential, willing to jeopardize its own case by not itself ensuring that such an instruction be given. While we cannot say that the government shares the obligation to point out the oversight, it is fair to posit that its failure to do so now and in the future is done at its own peril. No. 04-2793 13 See Estelle v. Williams, 425 U.S. 501, 503-05 (1976) (finding that a “constant reminder of the accused’s condition implicit in such distinctive, identifiable attire [prison clothes] may affect a juror’s judgment,” and thereby unacceptably “undermine the fairness of the fact-finding process”). With such potent, and improper, evidence removed from the jury’s consideration, the government’s case against Owens—consisting only of Davis, Davis’s family and friends, and a sole fingerprint—would be significantly less persuasive in the mind of an average juror. For that reason, we find that the district court’s abuse of discretion in admitting that prior bad act evidence was not harmless error.