Court Opinion

ID: 9894320
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-11-01 15:01:04.231943+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:09:37.810070
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 22-13904    Document: 35-1     Date Filed: 11/01/2023   Page: 1 of 9

                                                  [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                   In the
                United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                          ____________________

                                No. 22-13904
                          Non-Argument Calendar
                          ____________________

       UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
                                                      Plaintiﬀ-Appellee,
       versus
       DENNIS LEE LINE,

                                                  Defendant-Appellant.

                          ____________________

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Middle District of Florida
                 D.C. Docket No. 6:22-cr-00050-WWB-DCI-1
                          ____________________
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       2                      Opinion of the Court                23-13904

       Before NEWSOM, GRANT, and LAGOA, Circuit Judges.
       PER CURIAM:
              Dennis Line, a convicted sex offender, appeals his conviction
       for attempted enticement of a minor to engage in sexual activity.
       On appeal, Line argues that the district court abused its discretion
       when it admitted evidence of his former teaching career. After
       careful review, we affirm.
                                        I.
              A grand jury returned an indictment charging Line with one
       count of attempting to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity,
       in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b). Before trial, Line moved in
       limine to exclude “the fact that Mr. Line was formerly employed as
       a schoolteacher.” His argument was twofold. First, he contended,
       “the fact that [he] was a previously a teacher is not relevant to
       prove any material fact at issue in this case.” And second, Line pos-
       ited, even if his teaching career were relevant, “it must be excluded
       because its probative value is substantially outweighed by the dan-
       ger of unfair prejudice.” The district court granted the motion in
       part and denied it in part, allowing the government to introduce
       Line’s statement to law enforcement where he mentions the fact
       that he was a teacher and never had any issues, but requiring the
       government to redact certain portions of a written statement that
       were cumulative. At trial, the government elicited the following
       facts.
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       23-13904               Opinion of the Court                          3

              Line, a fifty-three-year-old man, created a profile on a dating
       application called Badoo. On the Badoo profile, he said that his
       name was Stephen and described himself as fifty years old. From
       “Stephen’s” account, Line struck up a conversation with “Amber,”
       whose profile said she was a forty-one-year-old woman. After they
       started chatting, Amber asked Line, “[Y]o[u] ok if I am younger[?],”
       to which he replied, “Absolutely okay.” Amber then told Line that
       she was only fifteen years old and a freshman in high school. Line
       replied, “Yikes. That’s young,” but he kept chatting with Amber
       anyway, at one point urging her, “You can at least tell me that
       you’re 18.” In reality, Amber was an Orange County Sheriff’s Of-
       fice detective, conducting a child-predator sting operation.
               Line pressed Amber about her sexual experience, asking
       “What have you done? You’re pretty young,” and “How many po-
       sitions did you try?” He then told her that he could “teach [her]
       stuff. . . . anything [she] want[s],” and described specific sex acts
       that he enjoyed. Line acknowledged that asking Amber for oral sex
       would be “illegal, girl, as much as I would love it,” but then assured
       her that if they got together to “experiment and have a little fun,”
       he would “be patient. And gentle. And careful. And amazing. . . .
       I would use plenty of protection. Don’t worry about that.” Line
       encouraged Amber to send him pictures of herself, and finally prop-
       ositioned her “let’s definitely meet tonight.” After Amber agreed
       to meet up, Line reassured her, saying, “I don’t think we should,
       like, do it do it yet. I want to go easy and slow with you. . . . Maybe
       some kissing, touching, oral?” The two then made a plan to meet
       that night near a local Boston Market restaurant and continued to
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       4                       Opinion of the Court                  23-13904

       discuss the various sex acts Line wanted to perform with Amber.
       They also had a three-minute phone call during which Line con-
       fessed that his “biggest worry” was that Amber was “setting [him]
       up . . . because I’m old and you’re young and I could get in serious
       trouble for coming over and seeing you. . . . If the cops are there,
       I’m screwed for the rest of my life.”
              Around 11 p.m. on February 9, 2022, Line pulled up to Bos-
       ton Market as planned, where Orange County Sheriff’s Office dep-
       uties were waiting to arrest him. During a post-Miranda interview,
       Line admitted that he was “pretty sure” he knew why he was being
       questioned and that he had been “texting somebody that I
       shouldn’t have been texting with; a minor, stupid, like, I have some
       issues.” One of the detectives asked what he meant by “minor,”
       and Line specified that “the girl said she was 15.” Although Line
       claimed he “would never have done anything” if he had actually
       met “Amber,” he acknowledged that he had discussed meeting up
       with her to kiss and have oral sex and admitted that his conduct
       was illegal. He also conceded that it “looks really bad” that, while
       he had participated in sexually flirtatious conversations with sev-
       eral adults he met on dating apps, he had only ever tried to meet
       the one person he believed to be a child.
              Despite all these concessions, Line still insisted (to the detec-
       tives who interviewed him and again at trial) that “it’s all fictional
       to me, it’s all, like, not real.” “It’s a game of attention,” he said,
       “the game of being at a different place, making your life different.”
       Similarly, during his interrogation, Line wrote a letter to his wife,
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       23-13904               Opinion of the Court                        5

       apologizing for his actions and explaining that he was using dating
       apps to make friends and to get attention and that talking to
       strangers he met online was “almost like a video game.” When the
       interrogating detective asked Line if this was “a pattern or some-
       thing that you’re going to do continuously, preying on, on chil-
       dren,” Line invoked his twenty-eight-year teaching career, swore
       he “never had an issue” in all those years, and implored the detec-
       tive to “look at my record.”
              A few days after his arrest, Line posted a public message on
       his Facebook account, directed at his former colleagues. In that
       post, Line confessed that he “made an unthinkable choice a few
       days ago, that “[i]t was the most embarrassing and humiliating
       thing I have ever done,” that he was “responsible for what [he] did
       and must now pay the consequences,” and that he was “truly
       sorry.” Also in that post, Line identified by name a list of schools
       where he had worked, addressing directly the “students, parents,
       and teachers” of those schools, and stating, “I know that I have
       tainted your opinions of me. I deserve your hatred.”
              After two days of evidence and just over an hour of deliber-
       ations, the jury returned a guilty verdict. Line was later sentenced
       to 120 months’ imprisonment and ten years of supervised release.
       This appeal follows.
                                        II.
              “We review evidentiary rulings only for an abuse of discre-
       tion.” Sowers v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., 975 F.3d 1112, 1122 (11th
       Cir. 2020). “An abuse of discretion arises when the district court’s
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       6                       Opinion of the Court                  23-13904

       decision rests upon a clearly erroneous finding of fact, an errant
       conclusion of law, or an improper application of law to fact.”
       United States v. Smith, 459 F.3d 1276, 1295 (11th Cir. 2006) (quoting
       United States v. Baker, 432 F.3d 1189, 1202 (11th Cir. 2005)). “Be-
       cause ‘we recognize a significant range of choice for the district
       court on evidentiary issues,’ our review of such rulings is very lim-
       ited and ‘we defer to the district court’s decisions to a considerable
       extent.’” United States v. Akwuba, 7 F.4th 1299, 1313 (11th Cir. 2021)
       (alterations adopted) (quoting United States v. Brown, 415 F.3d 1257,
       1264–65 (11th Cir. 2005)). We need not reverse a conviction if the
       evidentiary error “had no substantial influence on the outcome and
       sufficient evidence uninfected by error supports the verdict.”
       United States v. Fortenberry, 971 F.2d 717, 722 (11th Cir. 1992); accord
       Goulah v. Ford Motor Co., 118 F.3d 1478, 1483 (11th Cir. 1997) (“We
       will not overturn an evidentiary ruling unless the moving party
       proves a substantial prejudicial effect.”). We determine whether
       an error had substantial influence on the outcome by weighing the
       record as a whole. See United States v. Montalvo-Murillo, 495 U.S.
       711, 722 (1990).
                                         III.
               Evidence is relevant if “it has any tendency to make a fact
       more or less probable than it would be without the evidence” and
       “the fact is of consequence in determining the action.” Fed. R.
       Evid. 401(a)-(b). Generally, all relevant evidence is admissible at
       trial unless provided otherwise by federal statute, the United States
       Constitution, the Federal Rules of Evidence, or the Supreme
       Court. Fed. R. Evid. 402.
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       23-13904               Opinion of the Court                         7

              Relevant evidence “may” be excluded “if its probative value
       is substantially outweighed by a danger of one or more of the fol-
       lowing: unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury,
       undue delay, wasting time, or needlessly presenting cumulative ev-
       idence.” Fed. R. Evid. 403. Exclusion under Rule 403 is an extraor-
       dinary remedy that courts should employ “only sparingly since it
       permits the trial court to exclude concededly probative evidence.”
       Smith, 459 F.3d at 1295 (quoting United States v. Norton, 867 F.2d
       1354, 1361 (11th Cir. 1999)). Accordingly, we view the disputed
       evidence “in a light most favorable to its admission, maximizing its
       probative value and minimizing its undue prejudicial impact.” Id.
       (quoting United States v. Elkins, 885 F.2d 775, 784 (11th Cir. 1989)).
       Unfair prejudice is defined as “relevant evidence to lure the fact-
       finder into declaring guilt on a ground different from proof specific
       to the offense charged.” Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172, 180
       (1997).
               Line falls far short of meeting his heavy burden on appeal.
       First, we conclude that the district court did not err in allowing the
       government to elicit evidence of Line’s teaching career because
       that evidence was, in fact, relevant and not unduly prejudicial.
       Among other elements, the government was required to prove
       that Line knowingly attempted to entice fifteen-year-old “Amber”
       to engage in sexual activity. See 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b). “We have
       long held that the term ‘knowingly’ means that the act was per-
       formed voluntarily and intentionally, and not because of a mistake
       or accident.” United States v. Woodruff, 296 F.3d 1041, 1047 (11th
       Cir. 2002). Line’s decades-long career as a teacher—during which
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       8                      Opinion of the Court                23-13904

       he worked with minor students—is probative of his knowledge of
       appropriate boundaries with children and, therefore, to his
       knowledge of the wrongfulness of his conduct with Amber. In par-
       ticular, Line’s invocation of his reputation as a teacher, including
       that he “never had an issue” in all those years and his request that
       the detectives “look at [his] record,” all suggest that he knew how
       to interact properly with minors because he had, in fact, acted ap-
       propriately around them all his life. In other words, Line’s teaching
       career is relevant to show that he did not attempt to entice a minor
       by accident or mistake. We are thus not persuaded by Line’s con-
       clusory argument that this evidence was unduly prejudicial be-
       cause, upon hearing he was a former teacher, the jury would be left
       to wonder if he had previously harmed other minors. To put it
       plainly, the government elicited no evidence, and made no argu-
       ment suggesting, that Line had committed other crimes against
       children. We thus conclude that the district court did not abuse its
       discretion in admitting evidence of Line’s teaching career because
       that evidence was probative of his mens rea and was not unduly
       prejudicial.
              Second, even if the district court had erred in admitting evi-
       dence of Line’s career, “[a] district court’s erroneous admission of
       evidence does not warrant reversal if the purported error had no
       substantial influence on the outcome and sufficient evidence unin-
       fected by error supports the verdict.” Fortenberry, 971 F.2d at
       722. Here, the “evidence uninfected by error” is overwhelming:
       Amber repeatedly told Line that she was a minor and a freshman
       in high school; Amber’s profile featured two pictures that appeared
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       23-13904               Opinion of the Court                       9

       to be of a minor (one of which was a prom-style portrait of a girl
       with braces); Line asked Amber to “at least tell me that you’re 18.
       LOL,” revealing both that he knew she was under eighteen years
       old and that it was, therefore, wrong to engage with her; Line told
       both Amber and the police that he was in a sexless marriage and
       was bored; Line told the detective, during his interrogation, “That
       should have been done. When she said she was 15, I knew”; and
       Line clearly expressed remorse for, in his own words, “the most
       embarrassing and humiliating thing [he] ha[d] ever done” and “the
       lowest point in [his] life,” and he publicly stated that he was “re-
       sponsible for what [he] did and must now pay the consequences.”
       This evidence amply supported his conviction. We also note that
       Line used the evidence of his teaching career in his own favor in
       closing, telling the jury, “[i]t’s helpful to Mr. Line that he was a
       teacher because, had this been what he was doing, what he was
       planning on doing, was he a danger in going after 15-year-old girls,
       there would be footprints in the sand. There simply would.
       There’s no way he could have survived 28 years in school if his ex-
       citement was going after 15-year-old girls.” All of this is to say,
       even if the evidence of Line’s job were admitted in error, Line has
       failed to show substantial influence on the outcome of his trial.
                                     * * * *
               Accordingly, for the reasons stated, we aﬃrm Line’s convic-
       tion.
               AFFIRMED.