Court Opinion

ID: 9464062
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:24:29.040355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:26.763208
License: Public Domain

TONE, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
If it were not for the Supreme Court’s recent decision in United States v. Lovasco, 431 U.S. 783, 97 S.Ct. 2044, 52 L.Ed.2d 752 (1977), I would have thought it appropriate to remand to the District Court for a determination of the reasons for the delay in charging. I agree that this is at least as strong a case for the government on the delay issue as that one was, and therefore concur in this court’s resolution of that issue.
On the admissibility of the prior crime, I agree that it was not error, in the circumstances of this case, to admit the evidence of the earlier transaction for the purpose of proving intent, and to do so during the government’s case in chief. There may be narcotics cases, however, in which it is unlikely under the circumstances that intent will be in issue, and therefore I am unwilling to subscribe to language in the court’s opinion that may be interpreted as indicating that the door is open wider for the admission of such evidence in narcotics cases than it is in other eases. Also, when the evidence is offered to prove intent, I think that its admissibility in the government’s case in chief should depend on whether intent is likely to be a contested issue in the case. If the court’s opinion is intended to intimate otherwise, I cannot agree.
Finally, I agree with the court that in this case the evidence is also admissible for purposes other than to prove intent, and that the defendant was the beneficiary of the instruction limiting consideration of the evidence to its bearing on intent. It would of course have been a different matter if the evidence had been admissible to prove other matters but not to prove intent.
I concur in the judgment and, except as indicated by the foregoing reservations, in the court’s opinion.