Court Opinion

ID: 9486053
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:36:50.6258+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:30.553685
License: Public Domain

WILLIAM A. NORRIS, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the judgment and in all but part IIA of the majority’s opinion. I agree with the majority that the admission of Breit-kreutz’s three prior felonies was error and that the error was not harmless. I write separately, however, to express my disagreement with the majority’s view that the government is entitled to put into evidence the complete record of a prior conviction to prove that the defendant was a convicted felon at the time he was in possession of a firearm.
I
The majority assumes without discussion that the nature of the past conviction is relevant to prove the crime of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon under § 922(g). In so doing, the majority creates a conflict with United States v. Barker, 1 F.3d 957, 959 n. 3 (9th Cir.1993) (“The underlying facts of the prior conviction are completely imlevant under § 922(g)(1); the existence of the conviction itself is not” (emphasis added)). Barker held that a prosecution for the offense of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm may not be bifurcated into two separate proceedings, one for each element of the offense, because the government must be permitted to prove each element to a jury. Unlike the majority in this case, however, Barker makes clear that while the government may put on evidence “proving an essential element of the charged offense,” Id. at 959 (citing United States v. Campbell, 774 F.2d 354, 356 (9th Cir.1985)), it may not *694inform the jury of the facts underlying the defendant’s prior conviction, because they are not probative of whether the defendant is a convicted felon.
The majority creates a conflict not only with Barker, but also with the Fourth Circuit, which has held that once a defendant offers to stipulate to his status as a convicted felon, the prosecution may not put on evidence of the nature of the prior felony. See United States v. Poore, 594 F.2d 39, 41-43 (4th Cir.1979) (requiring prosecution to strike reference in indictment to nature of defendant’s prior felony conviction after defendant offered to stipulate to his status as convicted felon).
The logic of Barker and Poore is compelling. An unredacted conviction judgment tells the jury something it has no need to know: the nature of the felony for which the defendant stands convicted. The elements of the crime charged are (1) the defendant’s status as a convicted felon, and (2) his knowing possession of a firearm. The nature of the prior felony is wholly immaterial to his status as a convicted felon; Congress has said that any felony will suffice. Thus the nature of the felony has no “tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” F.R.E. 401. That jurors might be more inclined to convict defendants who have committed violent or gun-related crimes — and more inclined to acquit those whose prior crimes may be regarded by the jury as less serious — is precisely why the jury should not be informed of the underlying facts of the prior conviction.
Because the nature of the defendant’s pri- or conviction is irrelevant to a prosecution under § 922(g), the admission of a full conviction judgment into evidence necessarily constitutes trial error. The government must either introduce a redacted version of the conviction judgment that omits all references to the nature of the defendant’s prior crimes or accept a defendant’s proffered stipulation. There is no need to engage in a balancing test under Rule 403, as the majority does, because there is no probative evidence to be weighed against its prejudicial effect. I continue my analysis in the next section for the sole purpose of taking issue with several broad, unsupported statements that also appear in the majority’s analysis.
II
The majority proposes what amounts to a per se rule that the prosecution need never accept a defendant’s proffered stipulation. It reaches this conclusion from the premise that a stipulation “is not proof’ and “thus has no place in the Rule 403 balancing process,” Majority at 692, as well as from the notion that the prosecution has a “right to refuse a stipulation.” Id.
The relevant question, however, is not whether a proffered stipulation constitutes proof, but rather under what circumstances the prosecution must accept one in lieu of putting on evidence of its own choosing. The majority’s answer to this question — a blanket assertion that the prosecution has a unqualified “right” to refuse a stipulation — is hardly compelling.1
It is true that defense stipulations need not always be accepted. A jury understandably expects to be presented with direct evidence that the crime in question actually occurred. The majority errs, however, when it fails to differentiate between stipulations as to the defendant’s status and those relating to his actions or state of mind in committing the crime.
We have held, and rightly so, that a prosecutor should have latitude to “tell the story” of the charged offense, and that a defendant may not block the admission of unfavorable evidence by “pleading out” an element of the crime. See, e.g., United States v. Hadley, 918 F.2d 848, 851-52 (9th Cir.1990) (defendant charged with aggravated sexual assault and abusive sexual conduct cannot prevent the admission of evidence of his criminal intent by offering not to contest the issue); *695United States v. Campbell, 774 F.2d 354, 356-57 (9th Cir.1985) (defendant charged with knowing receipt of stolen mail may not use a stipulation to block the admission of evidence that he knew the mail was stolen); United States v. Gilman, 684 F.2d 616, 622 (9th Cir.1982) (defendant charged with conspiracy to mail obscene materials cannot block proof of certain overt acts by offering to stipulate to their truth).
Each of these cases involved a defendant’s attempt to exclude evidence regarding his actions or state of mind at the time the crime ivas committed — what the defendant intended, what he knew, or what he did.2 In each of these cases, direct evidence was necessary to give the jury the “full flavor” of defendant’s crime and to enable jurors to draw permissible inferences about what actually happened.
But when the question is simply the defendant’s status as a convicted felon at the time the new crime was committed, these same concerns do not apply.3 The facts of a defendant’s prior crime do not help the jury determine whether the defendant was in fact a felon. As we said in Barker, those facts are “completely irrelevant.” 1 F.3d at 959 n. 3. All they add is potential for unfair prejudice.

. We have allowed prosecutors latitude, in certain circumstances, to refuse defense offers to stipulate. But we have never held that a prosecutor has a "right” to do so. The majority's notion that the government has a "right” to introduce evidence, see Majority at 692, is, as far as I know, original with the majority.

. The majority cites no authority for the proposition that a prosecutor may refuse stipulations limited solely to the question of status. Although United States v. Kalama, 549 F.2d 594 (9th Cir.1976), suggested that “the fact of a prior felony is an integral part of the offense of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon,” Id. at 596, our court did not hold that the government may refuse a stipulation on the prior felony. Rather, we held that "even if the failure of the trial court to compel the prosecution to accept the pertinent stipulation was error in the instant case, such error was harmless in light of the abundant evidence of appellant's guilt.” Id. (emphasis added).

. The majority's overbroad statement that "in every case where the defendant offers to stipulate to a prior felony- — or to anything else in the prosecution's case for that matter — the Rule 403 balance would tip against the prosecution’s evidence because it inevitably would have little if any probative value beyond that of the stipulation,” Majority at 692, illustrates the pitfalls of lumping together without distinction all cases involving offers to stipulate. In cases that do not turn on the defendant's status, evidence tending to prove that the defendant satisfies an essential element of a crime' necessarily has substantial probative value, with little risk of unfair prejudice. As the Barker court stated, "Evidence is prejudicial only when it has an additional adverse effect on a defendant beyond tending to prove the fact or issue that justifies its admission.” 1 F.3d at 959 n. 3. That the defense proffers a stipulation does not affect this balance. In a § 922(g) prosecution, however, the government is entitled to prove nothing more than the defendant's status as a convicted felon. Regardless of whether the defendant offers to stipulate, the nature of his prior felony is not probative of whether he is a convicted felon and is likely to have an additional adverse impact on him before the jury. The government is therefore required to come up with more circumscribed evidence of the defendant's status or, if it is unwilling to do so, accept a stipulation if one is offered.