Court Opinion

ID: 9478866
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:01:19.815589+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:40.536052
License: Public Domain

BENJAMIN F. GIBSON, District Judge,
dissenting.
The majority today allows the admission of evidence of prior crimes allegedly committed by defendant with Bonnie and Mike Kelly in order to prove “motive.” However, in my judgment, the majority both misconstrues and misapplies Rule 404(b). As a result, this evidence may well have influenced the jury into inferring the defendant’s guilt from his propensity for crime. Because this violates both the terms of Rule 404(b) and its underlying policies, I dissent.
Motive has been defined as “the reason that nudges the will and prods the mind to indulge the criminal intent.” United States v. Benton, 637 F.2d 1052, 1056 (5th Cir.1981) (citing United States v. Beechum, 582 F.2d 898, 912 (5th Cir.1978)). The prior crimes testimony was not evidence of motive to commit the crime for which the defendant was convicted. Under Rule 404(b), motive must indicate a causal relationship between the prior bad act and the charged criminal act. See United States v. Gonzalez, 610 F.Supp. 574, 576 (D.P.R. 1985); E. Imwinkelreid, Uncharged Misconduct Evidence § 3.15, at 36 (1984). The articulated motive in this case tends to eliminate a reason for not committing a crime, rather than “prodding the mind to indulge the criminal intent.”
Moreover, the prior crimes evidence is not even probative.1 The government simply wanted to show that because of past criminal activity, the likelihood of present guilt was strong. Of course, this is pure disposition evidence in its most egregious form, and is inadmissible under Rule 404(b).
The majority, citing Benton, 637 F.2d at 1057, suggests that the prior crimes evidence is probative because of “the prosecution’s need for the evidence in proving its case.” In Benton, there was a specific showing that demonstrated how the prior crimes created the motive for the charged crime. The prosecution’s legitimate need for evidence on an issue might reflect that issue’s materiality, but such need cannot, by itself, warrant the admission of otherwise inadmissible evidence. To hold otherwise would permit the admission of evidence by the government by simply demonstrating a need for such evidence. However, without a rational connection between evidence and the proposition that the government needs to prove, the evidence cannot be admissible under Rule 404(b).
Furthermore, the prior crimes evidence was remote in time. Most of these events occurred in the early seventies and none occurred later than 1981. The district court noted that these events were prejudicial, but found that they were not unfairly prejudicial. However, there is unfair prejudice in my opinion when the jury’s attention is unduly focused on the defendant’s propensity for crime. Fifteen of the witnesses in this case testified about the defendant’s prior criminal acts. Over two hundred pages of trial transcript were used to document these acts. The prosecution even urged the jury to infer guilt from defendant’s association with, criminals.2
Essentially, the defendant was tried for his previous criminal acts. Even under the majority’s liberal construction of “motive,” *579Rule 403 would still dictate inadmissibility, Without a doubt, the probative value of the evidence was “substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.”
For these reasons, I dissent.

. For example, there is no rational connection between defendant’s production of fake LSD in the seventies and defendant’s alleged assistance in Berry's murder.

. The government made its position clear in closing argument:
Henry Vance was just like Mike Kelly. He was his partner in crime_ When you con-
sider what Mike Kelly was, and when you consider that these people were his friends, not only Henry Vance, but you heard about Drew Thornton, you heard about what kind of fellow he was, ... How do you get friends like that? How does that happen? How do you surround yourself with people like that? Not by accident. Not by mistake. It happens by design. It happens by the fact that you surround yourself with people that are like you. We all do. We all associate with people that are like ourselves.
8 Trial Transcript at 31-32.