Court Opinion

ID: 9548531
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:05:02.809559+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:06.003027
License: Public Domain

MANNHEIMER, Judge,
concurring.
I am writing separately to address the concerns raised in Judge Bryner’s dissent.
Judge Coats’s majority opinion asserts (page 388) that “under our past decisions [governing the admissibility of evidence of a defendant’s other crimes], the State must show that the defendant’s past criminal acts bear a relevant factual similarity to the charged offense before these past acts can be admitted to prove knowledge ... or absence of mistake”. Judge Bryner takes issue with this statement. He concludes that the trial court properly allowed the State to present evidence of Calapp’s prior convictions for theft even in the absence of any foundational showing that those prior thefts bore a factual similarity to Calapp’s present offense.
*389Judge Bryner relies on several federal cases which hold that, when the issue is the defendant’s knowledge, evidence of the defendant’s other crimes can be admissible even when those other crimes are not factually similar to the offense presently charged against the defendant. These federal cases declare that the relevant consideration is not the factual similarity of the crimes; rather, it is whether “the prior act was one which would tend to make the existence of the defendant’s knowledge more probable”. United States v. Ramírez-Jimínez, 967 F.2d 1321, 1326 (9th Cir.1992).
To the extent that the majority opinion could be read to require strict factual similarity of offenses when the issue is the defendant’s knowledge, I agree with Judge Bryner that this would be a misstatement of the law. The federal cases in this area correctly point out that even when the defendant’s prior crime is factually dissimilar, the defendant’s participation in that other crime can nevertheless be probative of the defendant’s pertinent knowledge.1
For example, in United States v. Falco, 727 F.2d 659 (7th Cir.1984), the defendant was charged with interstate transportation of stolen goods. The issue was whether the defendant knew that the goods were stolen. On this issue, the trial court allowed the government to introduce evidence of the defendant’s four prior convictions for possession or transportation of stolen goods. 727 F.2d at 661-62. The Seventh Circuit held (by a 2 to 1 vote) that this evidence was properly admitted, even though the government did not attempt to show that the prior crimes were factually similar to the current charge.
The majority reasoned that evidence of the defendant’s prior convictions was relevant because a reasonable trier of fact could conclude (1) that people involved in the possession and disposal of stolen goods would characteristically employ specialized techniques to carry on their work (techniques to conceal or misrepresent the origin of the goods, to hamper detection of the shipment, and the like); (2) that a person who had previously trafficked in stolen goods would be more likely to be familiar with these techniques and to recognize these techniques at work in connection with any particular shipment of goods; so therefore (3) if the defendant had previously trafficked in stolen goods, he would be more likely to understand, from the circumstances surrounding the present shipment of goods, that the goods were stolen. Falco, 727 F.2d at 663-65.
The majority conceded that this chain of reasoning might not ultimately prove convincing to the jury, but the test for relevance under Federal Evidence Rule 401 (and under Aaska Evidence Rule 401 as well) is whether the evidence “[has] any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable”. The majority concluded that the defendant’s involvement in other acts of transporting stolen goods was sufficiently probative of the defendant’s knowledge to satisfy Rule 401, even if the goods or the methods of transportation were dissimilar.
As noted above, the majority’s conclusion did not go unchallenged. Judge Cudahy, in dissent, argued that there was simply too much variation in thefts and in the methods of transporting stolen property to draw any meaningful inference from the bare fact that the defendant had previously been convicted of transporting stolen property. Judge Cu-dahy contended that these prior convictions should have been admitted only if the government demonstrated that the 'facts of the prior offenses bore some pertinent similarity to the present offense. Falco, 727 F.2d at 667-69.
I do not interpret Judge Cudahy’s dissent to mean that he disagreed with the majority in principle. Judge Cudahy seems to agree with the majority that, when the issue is the defendant’s knowledge, the law does not demand strict “similarity” between a defendant’s past offenses and his present offense. *390For instance, it is possible that a defendant’s past participation in the smuggling of illegal aliens across international borders by truck might provide him -with knowledge to facilitate the smuggling of cigarettes across state lines by airplane. As the federal courts recognize, the question is not the factual similarity of the acts, but whether one could reasonably infer, from the defendant’s participation in the prior acts, that the defendant possessed knowledge pertinent to the present ease.
Indeed, the defendant’s past activities could be relevant on the issue of knowledge even when those past activities were completely legal. For instance, a defendant’s past experience working as an auditor for the government or for a .financial institution could provide the defendant with knowledge that would facilitate a later act of embezzlement or fraud. Again, the defendant’s activities need not be “similar” in the sense that they constitute the same type of crime. The question is whether it can reasonably be inferred that those, prior activities provided the defendant with a pertinent type of knowledge.
I do not read Judge Coats’s majority opinion to mean anything different. Judge Coats speaks of the requirement that the defendant’s past acts “bear a relevant factual similarity to the charged offense”. I interpret this phrase to require “similarity” only in the sense that the defendant’s prior acts must have been sufficiently analogous to the present offense so that it can reasonably be inferred that the defendant acquired knowledge that is pertinent to deciding the present case.
As Falco and Ramirez-Jiminez point out, this type of “similarity” can sometimes be inferred from the unelaborated fact of a conviction. But this is true only when the conviction itself, whatever the underlying facts, provides a reasonable basis for inferring the defendant’s knowledge. This is not always the case.
For example, in United States v. Vizcarra-Martínez, 66 F.3d 1006 (9th Cir.1995) (as amended on denial of rehearing), the defendant was charged with conspiracy to possess, and wrongful possession of, a chemical (hy-driodic acid) that he had reason to believe would be used to manufacture methamphetamine. The trial court allowed the government to introduce evidence that the defendant was found to be in possession of a small amount of methamphetamine (an amount sufficient only for personal use) at the time of his arrest. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the defendant “that the fact that he used methamphetamine does not tend to prove that he was aware that the chemicals he was delivering would be used to manufacture methamphetamine or that he intended to participate in a conspiracy [to manufacture this drug].” Id., 66 F.3d at 1014. The court stated:
In order to admit evidence concerning other “bad acts”, the government must prove “a logical connection between the knowledge gained as a result of the commission of the [other] act and the knowledge at issue in the charged act.” [United States v.] Mayans, 17 F.3d [1174,] 1181-82 [ (9th Cir.1994) ]. Here, there exists no' logical connection between the knowledge that' the defendant might have gained by using methamphetamine and the knowledge that the government must prove ... — that is, knowledge of the use to which the hydriodie acid would be put[,] as well as knowledge of the scope and purpose of the conspiracy.
We conclude that ... possession of a small amount of methamphetamine for personal use does not tend to prove that Vizcarra-Martfnez was aware that hy-driodic acid could be transformed into methamphetamine through a complicated manufacturing process. Viewing the case from “common human experience” [citation omitted], it is clear that most people who use drugs — indeed, most people who use legal chemical substances, such as cleaning fluid or paint or medicine — do so without having the faintest idea as to how the substance is produced or what ingredients are required to manufacture it. We simply cannot assume, as the government requests us to, that Vizcarra-Martinez’s use of methamphetamine tended to prove that he knew that the chemical in his posses*391sion would be used in the methamphetamine manufacturing process.
Vizcarra-Martínez, 66F.3d at 1014-15 (emphasis in the original).
Vizcarra-Martínez, like Falco, was a split decision. Judge Fernández dissented, arguing that the defendant’s possession of methamphetamine “was relevant to undercut his total ignorance argument”. 66 F.3d at 1018. Again, as in Falco, the dispute between the majority and the minority did not concern the proper standard of relevance; rather, the dispute was whether a probative inference could reasonably be drawn from the underlying facts.
Judge Bryner asserts that Calapp’s two prior theft convictions raise a reasonable inference that Calapp knew and recognized the hallmark characteristics of stolen goods and the techniques involved in the trafficking in stolen goods. I, however, agree with Judge Coats that Calapp’s theft convictions, standing alone and unexplained, fail to raise this inference. There is simply too much variation in theft. A person can steal repeatedly without ever being involved in the trafficking of stolen goods.
It is possible that, if the underlying facts of Calapp’s prior thefts were examined, those thefts would prove relevant to assessing Cal-app’s guilty knowledge in the present case. However, the State relied solely on the fact that Calapp had been convicted of “theft”. Because of this, the State failed to establish the relevance of Calapp’s other crimes.

. See United States v. Vizcarra-Martínez, 66 F.3d 1006, 1014-16 (9th Cir.1995) (as amended on denial of rehearing); United States v. Santa-Cruz, 48 F.3d 1118, 1119-1120 (9th Cir.1995); United States v. Arambula-Ruiz, 987 F.2d 599, 603 (9th Cir.1993); Ramirez-Jiminez, supra; United States v. Hyman, 741 F.2d 906 (7th Cir.1984); United States v. Falco, 727 F.2d 659, 663 (7th Cir.1984).