Court Opinion

ID: 9486945
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:04:30.565908+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:01.540497
License: Public Domain

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur in the judgment and in most of the opinion Judge Ryan has written for the court. I am not particularly troubled by anything the trial court did here, however, and I write separately to explain why.
*1195By way of background, it may be helpful to note that although defense counsel did, prior to opening statements, present an objection to the introduction of Rule 404(b) evidence, the sole point of her objection was that the prosecutor had not previously told her the purpose for which he intended to offer such evidence. The court then inquired what the purpose was, and the prosecutor responded that the evidence would be offered to show “[ijntent, motive, lack of mistake, preparation, plan, all those things.” Defendant Johnson’s lawyer offered no rejoinder to this, and the court ultimately ruled “that based on what I have at this ’point, the evidence would be admissible ... under 404(b)_” (Emphasis supplied.) The defense was clearly not precluded from raising further objections when the prosecutor attempted to develop the evidence during the trial itself — at which time the court could be expected to have a fuller understanding of the factual setting— but no such objection was made at any time during the presentation of the prosecution’s case-in-chief.1
In her opening statement to the jury, defense counsel emphasized that the government had the burden of proving both the element of possession and the element of intent to distribute:
“Is there credible, believable proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he knowingly and willfully ever possessed it, number one. Number two, did he possess it with the intent to distribute it to someone else, and ... once they proved that he possessed it, was that substance crack cocaine?”
Defense counsel went on to tell the jury that “we don’t dispute that the substance the officers found ... is crack cocaine.” She explained, however, that both the element of possession and the element of intent remained very much in issue: “Mr. Johnson does dispute that he ever possessed it, that he ever possessed cocaine with the intent to distribute.” (Emphasis supplied.)
When defendant Johnson took the stand, he denied having possessed the crack cocaine at all. In response to questions posed by his lawyer, however, he also testified that his intent in meeting with the confidential informant on the day in question was to take the informant’s money without turning over any drugs. Johnson claimed to have been leading the confidential informant to believe that Johnson would give him dope in exchange for dollars, but the testimony was that this was not what he actually intended to do. “What were you going to do?” the defendant’s lawyer asked.
“A. I was going to make the block and leave •with the money.
Q. Were you going to give him anything for his money?
A. No, I wasn’t.
Q. Did you think he was going to call the police on you?
A. I know he couldn’t call the police.
Q. Why?
A. What could he tell them? What would he tell them, fixing to buy some dope?”
If the jury had believed this testimony, it would have been obligated to acquit the defendant of the possession-with-intent-to-distribute charge even if it also believed that the trap Johnson claimed to have been setting for the confidential informant was actually baited with drugs.
Against this background I turn to the first of the limiting instructions in question, an instruction given at the request of defense counsel after the confidential informant had testified (without objection) about the prior drug sales. In telling the jury that the evidence did not constitute proof of the allegations in the indictment but “may be admissible for some other purpose, perhaps to show motive or some other relevant activity,” the court was making a statement that strikes me as accurate as far as it went. It seemed accurate to defense counsel as well, presumably, because she made no request for clarification or expansion of the instruction.
*1196The second limiting instruction — also given at the request of defense counsel and also accepted by her without request for clarification or expansion — told the jury that although the evidence of prior acts did not constitute proof as to what happened on the date referred to in the indictment, “it may be proof as to method of operations....” I am not sure that this was error. If the defendant’s modus operandi in the past had been to make delivery of drugs he had agreed to sell, rather than taking the customer’s money and keeping the drugs himself, perhaps the jury was entitled to take this into consideration. We need not decide the point, in my view, because if the instruction was erroneous at all, it was not plainly erroneous. At most, in other words, it constituted the kind of error that would have had to be brought to the court’s attention through a timely objection if anything were to be made of it on appeal.
The final prior-bad-aets instruction was included in a general charge worked out with the attorneys at the end of the case. Stating that “I don’t want the whole laundry list in there,” the judge proposed telling the jury that “you can only consider [the prior-bad-aets evidence] in deciding whether the defendant had the necessary intent to commit the crime charged.” (Emphasis supplied.) The prosecutor wanted the list expanded to include “preparation, plan and knowledge,” and the judge decided that this would be appropriate. Defense counsel affirmatively stated, at the end of the charge conference, that she had “[n]o objection” to what had been worked out.
The general charge — which instructed the jury, among other things, that “each of the essential elements of the offense” (both the element of possession and the element of intent to distribute) was in issue — conformed exactly to what had been agreed upon at the charge conference. “[Y]ou can only consider [the prior-bad-acts evidence] for deciding whether the defendant had the necessary intent to commit the crime charged,” the jury was told, “or as evidence of preparation, plan and knowledge in the commission of the crime charged.” When the court finished the delivery of its instructions to the jury, the defendant’s lawyer and the prosecutor both stated that they had no objection to what the jury had been told.
Given all this, I feel quite confident in saying that the verdict was not contaminated in any way.

. After the prosecution had rested its case, Defendant Johnson elected to testify on his own behalf. His lawyer objected to the prosecution's cross-examining him on his prior drag sales, but the objection was based on the ground that the cross-examination went beyond the scope of direct, and not on the ground that the evidence was inadmissible under Rule 404(b).