Court Opinion

ID: 9439099
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 06:21:12.329968+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:26:09.124975
License: Public Domain

TATEL, Circuit Judge,
with whom EDWARDS, Chief Judge, WALD, and SILBERMAN, Circuit Judges, join,
dissenting:
Although Rule 404(b)’s first sentence— “[ejvidenee of other crimes, wrongs, or acts is not admissible to prove the character of a person in order to show action in conformity *1212therewith”—restrains prosecutors and sometimes deprives juries of relevant evidence, Congress determined that the Rule’s valuable protection against the prejudice of bad acts evidence outweighs its costs. Substituting its own policy judgment for Congress’, this court now converts Rule 404(b) from a requirement that courts inquire into the purposes of character evidence—“[t]he threshold inquiry a court must make before admitting similar acts evidence under Rule 404(b) is whether that evidence is probative of a material issue other than character,” Huddleston v. United States, 485 U.S. 681, 686, 108 S.Ct. 1496, 1499, 99 L.Ed.2d 771 (1988)—into a question of relevance. Since bad acts evidence is almost always relevant, the court has effectively erased Rule 404(b)’s first sentence, making all character evidence admissible under Rule 404(b)’s second sentence, subject to Rule 403 balancing. Nothing in Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172, 117 S.Ct. 644, 136 L.Ed.2d 574 (1997), requires this result, nor does Old Chief call for abandoning our former en bane decision in these cases. I respectfully dissent.
Over a century ago, the Supreme Court recognized that evidence of defendants’ prior bad acts “only tend[s] to prejudice the defendants with the jurors, to draw their minds away from the real issue, and to produce the impression that [the defendants] were wretches whose lives were of no value to the community, and who were not entitled to the full benefit of the rules prescribed by law for the trial of human beings.” Boyd v. United States, 142 U.S. 450, 458, 12 S.Ct. 292, 295, 35 L.Ed. 1077 (1892). Eighty years later, the drafters of the Federal Rules of Evidence likewise recognized the powerful and invidious tendency of character evidence to shift jurors’ focus from defendants’ actions to their character, noting that it “ ‘subtly permits the trier of fact to reward the good man and to punish the bad man because of their respective characters despite what the evidence in the case shows actually happened.’ ” Fed. R. Evid. 404(a) advisory committee’s notes (1972 Proposed Rules) (quoting California Law Revision Commission, Report, Record and Studies 615 (1964)).
Rule 404(b)’s first sentence excludes bad acts evidence not for lack of relevance—to the contrary, bad acts evidence is highly relevant—but because using the evidence causes undue prejudice. “The overriding policy of excluding such evidence, despite its admitted probative 'value,” the Supreme Court has explained, “is the practical experience that its disallowance tends to prevent confusion of issues, unfair surprise and undue prejudice.” Michelson v. United States, 335 U.S. 469, 476, 69 S.Ct. 213, 218-19, 93 L.Ed. 168 (1948). Elaborating further in Old Chief, the Court said that “ ‘[although ... “propensity evidence” is relevant, the risk that a jury will convict for crimes other than those charged—or that, uncertain of guilt, it will convict anyway because a bad person deserves punishment—creates a prejudicial effect that outweighs ordinary relevance.’” Old Chief, 519 U.S. at-, 117 S.Ct. at 650 (quoting United States v. Moccia, 681 F.2d 61, 63 (1st Cir.1982) (Breyer, J.)). Far from irrelevant, propensity evidence tends to “overpersuade” the jury, Michelson, 335 U.S. at 476, 69 S.Ct. at 218-19, powerfully aiding the prosecution with its inexorable implication that a person who once committed a bad act probably also did the bad act for which he is on trial. Rule 404(b)’s first sentence thus unambiguously prohibits the government from using character evidence to show propensity, excluding it to ensure that “ ‘a defendant [is] tried for what he did, not for who he is.’” United States v. Daniels, 770 F.2d 1111, 1116 (D.C.Cir.1985) (quoting United States v. Myers, 550 F.2d 1036, 1044 (5th Cir.1977)). Because “ ‘it reflects and gives meaning to the central precept of our system of criminal justice, the presumption of innocence,’ ” United States v. Dockery, 955 F.2d 50, 53 (D.C.Cir.1992) (quoting Daniels, 770 F.2d at 1118), prohibiting the use of bad acts evidence to show propensity promotes fairer trials.
Prejudicial though it is, bad acts evidence can be highly probative of many things the government may legitimately need to prove, such as knowledge, intent, or motive. Rule 404(b) strikes the balance between the prejudicial effect of bad acts evidence and its probative value through a two-step process. The court first determines whether the evi*1213dence’s only purpose is to prove propensity. Is the putative issue for which it is offered uncontested? See United States v. Foskey, 636 F.2d 517, 524 n. 5 (D.C.Cir.1980) (prosecution could not offer character evidence to prove identity where identity was not an issue) (citing United States v. James, 555 F.2d 992, 1000 & n. 46 (D.C.Cir.1977)). Has the defendant, as in these eases, conceded the non-propensity element for which the government offered the evidence? See United States v. Mohel, 604 F.2d 748, 753 (2d Cir.1979). Or has the government failed to convince the court of the authenticity of its proffered nonpropensity reasons? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, the court must exclude the evidence under Rule 404(b)’s first sentence. But if the government articulates a material and legitimate non-propensity purpose for the evidence, it becomes admissible under Rule 404(b)’s second sentence, subject to Rule 403 balancing. By its decision today, this court essentially eliminates the first step of this analysis.
Abandoning our original en banc decision in Crowder I, the court reaches this result by relying on Old Chief and the unremarkable proposition that propensity evidence remains relevant under Rules 401 and 402 even after a defendant completely removes its non-propensity purposes from the case through concession and agreement to a “must convict” jury instruction. But Crowder I never held that a defendant’s concession renders bad acts evidence irrelevant under Rule 402. Instead, it held that the concession makes the evidence inadmissible under Rule 404(b)’s first sentence. United States v. Crowder (Crowder I), 87 F.3d 1405, 1407 (D.C.Cir. 1996), vacated, — U.S.-, 117 S.Ct. 760, 136 L.Ed.2d 708 (1997). An unambiguous stipulation and jury instruction, Crowder I explained, so thoroughly drains the evidence’s non-propensity value for -the prosecution’s ease that to admit the evidence would unduly prejudice the jury. Id. at 1410 (defendant’s concession “gives the Government everything the evidence could show ... without risk that the jury will use the evidence for impermissible propensity purposes”). As Crowder I put it, “the defendant’s concession of intent and knowledge deprives the evidence of any value other than what Rule 404(b)’s-first sentence unambiguously prohibits: ‘to prove the character of a person in order to show action in conformity therewith.’ ” Id. at 1407. The evidence remains relevant, just as the excluded evidence in Old Chief remained relevant. But after a defendant has conceded the purpose for which the government seeks to introduce the evidence, that evidence no longer serves any function except to put character evidence before the jury. Rule 404(b)’s first sentence therefore requires its exclusion.
Far from invalidating Crowder I, Old Chief supports its result. In Old Chief, the Supreme Court confronted a scenario similar to the one we face here—a defendant trying to stipulate away an element of his crime in order to preclude the admission of prejudicial evidence—but the case arose under a different rule, Rule 403. Unlike Rule 404(b)’s first sentence’s flat prohibition against using bad acts evidence to demonstrate character, Rule 403 simply requires courts to balance the prejudicial effect of bad acts evidence against its probativeness. Notwithstanding the fact-sensitive nature of Rule 403 balancing at which district court discretion “is at its height,” Joy v. Bell Helicopter Textron, Inc., 999 F.2d 549, 555 (D.C.Cir.1993), the Court ruled that when Old Chief offered to remove his' felon-status from the case by stipulation, “the only reasonable conclusion was that” evidence of his status that revealed the name or nature of his prior felony would be so prejudicial that a district court’s admission of such evidence would always constitute an abuse of discretion, Old Chief, 519 U.S. at ---, 117 S.Ct. at 655-56. Explaining that the name and nature of the defendant’s felony remained relevant, id. at -, 117 S.Ct. at 649, and reiterating the usual rule that a defendant’s stipulation “generally cannot prevail over the Government’s choice to offer evidence showing guilt and all the circumstances surrounding the offense,” id. at -, 117 S.Ct. at 651, the Court nevertheless found the risk of undue prejudice so great as to require a per se exclusionary rule. If relevance was insufficient under Rule 403’s relatively flexible standard, see id. at-, 117 S.Ct. at 652 (distinguishing “probativeness” under Rule 403 from “relevance” under *1214Rule 401), it is certainly insufficient under Rule 404(b)’s absolute bar.
As the court now interprets Rule 404(b), the Rule’s first sentence never comes into play unless the government is careless enough to confess that its only motive for introducing the evidence is to prove the defendant’s bad character. The clear implication of today’s decision is that Rule 404(b) is satisfied if propensity evidence is remotely relevant to any issue, even a conceded issue that the government need never prove. See Maj. Op. at 1206. Rule 404(b) requires more. It imposes an affirmative burden on prosecutors to articulate—and on courts to approve—material, non-propensity purposes for admitting bad acts evidence. As the Supreme Court put it in Huddleston, “[t]he threshold inquiry a court must make before admitting similar acts evidence under Rule 404(b) is whether that evidence is probative of a material issue other than character.” 485 U.S. at 686, 108 S.Ct. at 1499. This burden constitutes the defendant’s first and most important protection against the harmful effects of character evidence. Once that threshold is passed, the evidence’s relevance will often tip Rule 403’s scales in the government’s favor, and once the evidence is admitted the curative effects of limiting jury instructions are an “ ‘unmitigated fiction.’ ” Daniels, 770 F.2d at 1118 (quoting Krulewitch v. United States, 336 U.S. 440, 453, 69 S.Ct. 716, 723, 93 L.Ed. 790 (1949) (Jackson, J., concurring)).
To be sure, a single piece of evidence can serve many purposes, see Maj. Op. at 1208-09, but that does not automatically satisfy Rule 404(b). The government must actually articulate one of these multiple purposes as a basis for introducing the evidence. If it does, the evidence can come in under the second sentence of Rule 404(b), subject to Rule 403 balancing. This balancing is precisely what Crowder I held should happen in Crowder’s case on remand, see Crowder I, 87 F.3d at 1413-14. It also could have happened in Davis’s case if the government had articulated an unconceded material purpose for the evidence such as motive. By holding that the mere relevance of character evidence satisfies Rule 404(b), this court relieves the government from even this relatively light burden of articulation and persuasion.
The court quotes lengthy passages of Old Chief dicta regarding prosecutorial narrative and the jury’s expectations about proper proof, see Maj. Op. at 1207-08, reiterating Old Chief’s point that intrinsic evidence may be essential to “creat[e] a coherent narrative of [a defendant’s] thoughts and actions in perpetrating the offense for which he is being tried.” Old Chief, 519 U.S. at-, 117 S.Ct. at 656. By their very nature, however, “other bad acts” are separate from, not integral to, “the offense ... being tried.” Id. In Davis’s ease, the other bad acts evidence concerned events that took place before the offense with which he was charged. The bad acts in Crowder’s case occurred after his first trial. In neither case, therefore, did the evidence have any place in the government’s narrative about what actually happened on the dates of the alleged crimes for which the defendants were on trial, unless, of course, the government were permitted to argue based on propensity. But Rule 404(b) requires the prosecution to produce some reason other than propensity to connect a defendant’s prior or subsequent acts with the “narrative” of the charged offense. Absent such a connection, excluding the bad acts evidence does not detract from the prosecution’s story in any way, except by forbidding tales of defendants’ bad character. Indeed, Old Chief recognized that the government’s authority to construct its narrative of the charged crime is cabined by Rule 404(b). Id. at-, 117 S.Ct. at 651.
The court says that Crowder I would have permitted defendants to control the prosecution’s presentation of its evidence, but most evidence never implicates Rule 404(b) at all. Generally speaking, defendants’ concessions cannot prevent the admission of non-bad acts evidence intrinsic to their crimes, such as Crowder’s beeper. Presumptively admissible, such evidence is subject only to Rule 403, under which a concession functions merely as one factor in the balance. Only because Rule 404(b), a specialized rule of evidence, disfavors character evidence and imposes special *1215burdens on the prosecution can an unambiguous concession block admission of such evidence. ■
According to the court, the similarity in the bags involved in Crowder’s two drug transactions made it more likely that he knew the substances were cocaine. See Maj. Op. at 1208-09. Because Crowder conceded knowledge, however, this evidence would have to show something more, such as modus operandi. Although the prosecution offered the evidence for that purpose, the district court excluded it, finding that the government failed to establish any unique similarities between the past and present acts. See Crowder I, 87 F.3d at 1413.
The court worries that a confused jury may decline to convict, but Crowder’s and Davis’s willingness to accept a “must convict” jury instruction removes this danger. The instruction also answers the court’s concern that the stipulations were unclear because they failed to refer to defendants by name, see Maj. Op. at 1207-08. The offered instruction makes abundantly clear that possession, not knowledge or intent, remains the only issue in dispute. See Appellants’ Supp. Br. at 9; Crowder I, 87 F.3d at 1412. As Crowder I explained, both defense counsel made clear at trial that possession was the only issue:
Davis’s attorney ... told the district court that “[o]nce the government has proved possession in this case, it’s our position they’ve proved knowledge and intent as well.” In both opening statement and closing argument, Davis’s attorney reiterated that knowledge and intent were not at issue____ [Crowder’s] attorney [likewise] stated that “[t]he issue in this case is: Did he or did he not possess those drugs? That’s the threshold thing that the Government has to be able to prove in this case. The rest of it in terms of what the facts— what the evidence will show, we concede.”
Id. at 1411-12.
As Crowder I also explained, the instruction itself promotes clarity. See id. at 1415. Unlike limiting jury instructions that are used when character evidence is admitted and that require juries to ignore the obvious implication of bad acts evidence, a “must convict” instruction would not require the jury to perform ‘“mental gymnastic[s].’” Daniels, 770 F.2d at 1118 (quoting Nash v. United States, 54 F.2d 1006, 1007 (2d Cir. 1932)). Rather, the trial court simply instructs the jury that to convict it need find only possession beyond a reasonable doubt. Hardly confusing, this approach protects defendants from the prejudice of bad acts evidence while preserving the government’s ability to prove its case.
Aside from depriving the government of the ability to introduce character evidence, Crowder’s and Davis’s concessions and proposed jury instructions would have made the government’s task easier—in effect transforming these distribution cases into simple possession cases. Why, then, does the government decline the offer? The answer is this: Bad acts evidence is so prejudicial that by using it, the government is more likely to convict, even with the burden of proving all three elements of the crime, than if it need prove only possession but cannot use the evidence. “Let’s not kid ourselves,” said then-Chief Judge Penn, the trial judge in Crowder’s case, “the reason the government seeks to introduce [404(b) evidence] is because it’s prejudicial.” United States v. Crowder, Crim. No. 91-351, Trial Tr. at 603 (D.D.C. March 3,1992).