Court Opinion

ID: 9483076
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:10:05.736093+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:24.251071
License: Public Domain

LEVIN H. CAMPBELL, Senior Circuit Judge
(Concurring in the result).
I am not convinced that Fed.R.Evid. 404(b) barred the use of defendant’s prior drug conviction to help establish knowledge just because propensity may have been a factor in inferring knowledge from the conviction.
Rule 404(b) disallows other-crimes evidence “to prove the character of a person in order to show action in conformity therewith.” It allows such evidence, however, where probative inter alia of intent and knowledge. The present evidence was not offered to prove “action” of some type “in conformity therewith” but rather to prove intent and knowledge. If material to the latter, Rule 404(b) does not expressly prohibit the evidence merely because propensity is intertwined in the inference. It is a reasonable inference that one who was previously involved in drug dealing is more likely to know of the presence of drugs in the trunk of a car he is driving than one who was never so involved. Propensity is not the sole ingredient in this inference: familiarity and experience also play some part. A driver familiar with drugs is more likely to have recognized them should they have become visible at some point, such as when being loaded or when the trunk was opened. Most people would intuitively and logically reason that the possibility of innocent, unwitting possession was less in the case of a prior drug dealer. I do not believe that Rule 404(b) requires more in order to admit such evidence for the jury’s consideration on the issue of intent and knowledge.
Hence, I would sustain the district court’s admission of the prior drug conviction in these circumstances. It was not presented simply to show that commission of the charged offense was more likely, but rather to establish a particular element, intent and knowledge, as the Rule allows.
I see no meaningful factual difference between the circumstances of this case and *715the ones in a case like United States v. Moccia, 681 F.2d 61 (1st Cir.1982). If there is any distinction, it lies in the greater sophistication of the post hoe rationalization in Moceia. Requiring the identification of at least one non-propensity based factor seems to me to do little more than create an incentive for a prosecutor or district judge to wax creative. I would rule here that the court did not err in allowing the prior offense to come in, knowledge being the key contested issue and the prior offense being reasonably probative of knowledge.