Court Opinion

ID: 9467467
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:49:32.119826+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:21.711473
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
The most troublesome aspect of this case involves the liberal admission of testimony about other “bad acts”, ostensibly to show that the defendant had the “opportunity to gain access to the mailboxes and obtain the checks”. Panel opinion, ante at 5. Although the evidence was relevant only to establish this simple objective fact, it also revealed the extraneous spectacles of the defendant’s “arrest” by a security guard (who testified that he “held [the defendant] for the police and called the City police”) and of a subsequent (and unrelated) search of the defendant by a police officer at police headquarters.
Perhaps if these events were probative of something as relatively complex and elusive as “consciousness of guilt”, see United States v. Peltier, 585 F.2d 314, 324-25 (8th Cir. 1978), these embellishments, as conveyed by live testimony, would have been appropriate. But simply to show the plain fact of opportunity to gain access to the checks, a straightforward stipulation would seem to have been equally probative and considerably less prejudicial. Having noted these reservations, however, I am persuaded by Judge Wood’s opinion that, on the record before us, the desirability of a stipulation was not pressed to resolution by the defendant, and I concur.