Court Opinion

ID: 9499754
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:56:53.09172+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:42.521837
License: Public Domain

KLEINFELD, Circuit Judge,
with whom PREGERSON, KOZINSKI, THOMAS, and BERZON, Circuit Judges, join,
concurring:
I concur in the reversal of Curtin’s conviction. I agree with the majority that a trial judge must examine evidence in order to weigh its probative value against the potential for unfair prejudice, but disagree about whether the stories in question were relevant and admissible to show intent.
We ought to be wary when the government wants to use what people read against them. Our freedom to read and think requires a high wall restricting official scrutiny. The government (or others) can smear people by revealing what books they buy and borrow from the library, what magazines they purchase at the newsstand, what movies they rent at the video store,1 and what they look at on the internet. And not just for smut. Can the government introduce a defendant’s copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang,2 Lolita,3 or Junky,4 to prove intent? DVDs of The Thomas Crown Affair to prove intent to rob a bank,5 or Dirty Harry to prove intent to deprive someone of civil rights? 6 Huckleberry Finn (with quotes out of context) to prove hate crime motivation? In the 1950s, people with leftist books sometimes shelved them spine to the wall, out of fear that visitors would see and report them. Perhaps these days they would shelve Huckleberry Finn or The Monkey Wrench Gang spine to the wall. Readers should not have to hide what they read to be safe from the government.
There is no avoiding the First Amendment implications of using what people *960read as evidence of what they did. The Constitution has long protected our private papers and thoughts, even those entirely lacking in social value. “If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.”7 So, in Stanley v. Georgia, the Supreme Court held the First Amendment prohibits the government from policing the private possession of obscenity.8 Stanley was decided on the basis that the material was obscene, not merely pornographic, so as a matter of law the First Amendment protects private reading material even if the material itself is not protected speech because it is obscene.
Fantasy is constitutionally protected. “Whatever the power of the state to control public dissemination of ideas inimical to the public morality, it cannot constitutionally premise legislation on the desirability of controlling a person’s private thoughts.”9 Likewise, in Jacobson v. United States “the Supreme Court held a person’s inclinations and ‘fantasies ... are his own and beyond the reach of government.’ ”10
Based on Stanley and Jacobson, Curtin had a First Amendment right to possess and read the disgusting stories he downloaded from the internet and to fantasize about the criminal sexual conduct they describe. He emphatically did not have a right to attempt to persuade a person under 18 to have sex with him11 or to travel from California to Nevada “for the purpose” of having sex with a person under 18.12 The trial court should have managed the admission of evidence so as to allow the government to prove Curtin’s intent and purpose, but protect him from being convicted for his execrable taste in reading material and repulsive fantasies.
The social evil Congress hoped to prevent, child molestation, never happened. It couldn’t have, because there was no child. “Christyl3” was an adult FBI agent. Curtin was charged with attempting to persuade a person under 18 to engage in sexual activity,13 and traveling in interstate commerce for the purpose of engaging in sexual activity with a person under 18.14
Curtin was a would-be child molester if he really thought christyl3 was 13 or 14 years old and really intended to have sex with her. The only disputed issues in the case were whether he really believed christyl3 was a 13 or 14 year old girl, and really had an intention to have sexual rela*961tions with her. He readily admitted fantasizing about sex with young girls, but strenuously denied that he intended to do so. According to Curtin, he hoped christyl3 was a woman in her thirties who entertained the complementary fantasy of imagining herself a young girl having sex with an older man.
The stories should have been excluded (and reading matter generally ought to be excluded) for lack of relevance. That is what we held in Guam v. Shymanovitz,15 and there is no good reason to overrule our own precedent.
This is not to say that all reading material is irrelevant in all circumstances. Shymanovitz does not create a rigid barrier against the introduction of reading material. Sometimes literature may be relevant and the probative value of evidence a defendant possessed certain reading material may exceed the prejudicial effect of admission. If a person is accused of planting a sophisticated bomb on a train, his possession of an instruction manual and the train schedule might tend to prove his guilt. Likewise, evidence that an accused contract killer owns a copy of Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors has been held to be sufficiently probative to outweigh any unfair prejudice.16
But Curtin’s stories are not a how-to manual. They are fantasy. Fantasy is not reality. It is generally the case that, as Shymanovitz holds, “[t]he mere possession of reading material that describes a particular type of activity makes it neither more nor less likely that a defendant would intentionally engage in the conduct described and thus fails to meet the test of relevancy under Rule 401.”17 Barring exceptional circumstances, such as instructions for committing a crime otherwise hard to accomplish, used against one who accomplished it,18 what people read or fan-* tasize should not be used to prove what they intend to do. Shymanovitz explained that the possession of male homosexual pornography tended to prove that the defendant “had an interest in looking at gay male pornography, reading gay male erotica, or perhaps even, reading erotic stories about men engaging in sex with underage boys.”19 It did not prove “that he actually engaged in, or even had a propensity to engage in, any sexual conduct of any kind.”20
The majority errs by confusing fantasy with intent. Mental states that would be criminal if carried out include “fantasying, wishing, desiring, wanting, intending — a continuum.”21 The statutes at issue in this case, like most criminal statutes, require intent, not mere fantasy. The link between fantasy and intent is too tenuous for fantasy to be probative. People commonly fantasize about doing things they have no intention of actually doing, or even firmly intend not to do. One may fantasize about riding a motorcycle across the country, but firmly intend never to do it because of the time, physical exertion and *962discomfort, and risk of injury. People go to psychiatrists for treatment of troubling fantasies that they want to avoid acting on, such as suicide. Johnny Cash probably could not have written Folsom Prison Blues without imagining himself a murderer imprisoned for life — “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die”22 — but there is no reason to suppose that he ever intended murder in real life.
No doubt some people commit sex crimes because they want to turn their fantasies into reality, but most people with criminal fantasies probably refrain from acting on them, because they know it would be wrong, or because they do not want to risk the penalties. And some people probably commit sex crimes without fantasizing about them at all, because their minds are addled by drugs or alcohol. “Evidence of predisposition to do what once was lawful is not, by itself, sufficient to show predisposition to do what is now illegal, for there is a common understanding that most people obey the law even when they disapprove of it.”23
In this case, there are two additional reasons why Rule 401 was not satisfied. First, there was no evidence that Curtin had read the stories used against him. According to his testimony, he downloaded 147 stories, combined in a single.zip file. The prosecutor never asked Curtin whether he actually read the five stories admitted. And we cannot assume he did, because of the volume of material. The five stories admitted vary from 12 to 36 pages single-spaced, an average of 20.4 pages. If they are representative, Curtin had to plow through 2,998 single-spaced pages of this garbage to have read them all, three times the length of War and Peace. The content of the stories cannot be relevant to show what was in Curtin’s mind without foundation to support an inference that he read them.
Second, the stories describe a different fantasy from what Curtin was charged with intending to do. All five stories admitted into evidence were about incest. They describe sexual relations between fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, mothers and daughters, and uncles and nieces. Curtin was not charged with incest. He was charged with traveling in interstate commerce with the intent of sexually abusing a person under 18. If christyl3 were real, sex with her would be a crime, but it would not be incest. Even if proving a person’s sexual fantasy were relevant to show an intention to carry it out, a doubtful proposition, it would not be relevant to show conduct quite different from the fantasy.
Wisconsin v. Mitchell,24 the majority’s primary authority for overruling Shyma-novitz, does not stand for the proposition that a person’s reading material, by itself, can be used to prove a criminal purpose. Mitchell’s viewing of Mississippi Burning did not prove he was racially motivated; it was his discussion with friends, where he clearly rejected the movie’s message, that did so.25 The free press cases the majority cites, Herbert v. Lando,26 Branzburg v. Hayes,27 and Zurcher v. Stanford Daily,28 *963amount to a collection of quotations out of context. Using a reporter’s materials to prove that he had actual knowledge of the falsity of what was published, the Lando issue, has nothing to do with using what someone reads to prove intent. Even in a wartime treason case, Haupt v. United States, the Supreme Court held the government could introduce what a defendant said to prove his treasonous intentions, not what he merely read.29
Even if we assume, arguendo, that the stories were relevant to support an inference of intent, they would still have to be excluded under Federal Rules of Evidence 403 and 404.
Rule 404(a) prohibits admitting evidence to prove “action in conformity” with a “trait of character.”30 Perverse sexual desire is a trait of character. Using a person’s perverse sexual fantasies to prove action in conformity therewith is exactly what subsection (a) of Rule 404 prohibits. The exceptions in subsection (b), “motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident,”31 are not a meaningless litany that deletes subsection (a). The stories admitted against Curtin were not a guide, fictional or otherwise, to arranging a tryst for sex with a minor. They shed no light on his motives, intentions, or plans. Good prosecution proves that the defendant committed the crime. Bad prosecution proves that the defendant is so repulsive he ought to be convicted whether he committed it or not. Rule 404(a) prevents this sort of bad prosecution. We held in Shy-manovitz that “possession of lawful reading material is simply not the type of conduct contemplated by Rule 404(b),”32 and we should follow our precedent. A jury is entitled to decide the truth, without having the window it looks through covered with slime.
I agree with the majority that Federal Rule of Evidence 403 requires reversal, regardless of whether Rules 401 and 404 do. The district court erred in purporting to exercise its discretion to decide whether the stories were unfairly prejudicial without reading them.
The stories would have to be excluded in this case even if the judge had read them. Rule 403 “prohibits evidence whose ‘probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.’ ”33 “The term ‘unfair prejudice,’ as to a criminal defendant, speaks to the capacity of some concededly relevant evidence to lure the factfinder into declaring guilt on a ground different from proof specific to the offense charged.”34 Evidence is unduly prejudicial if it creates “a genuine risk that the emotions of the jury will be excited to irrational behavior” and “this risk is disproportionate to the probative value of the offered evidence.”35 “Where the evidence is of very slight (if any) probative value, it’s an abuse of discretion to admit it if *964there’s even a modest likelihood of unfair prejudice or a small risk of misleading the jury.”36 Accordingly, trial courts should exclude marginally relevant but extremely prejudicial evidence.37
Prejudice is “unfair” if it has an “an undue tendency to suggest decision on an improper basis, commonly, though not necessarily, an emotional one.”38 Even normal biological functions induce disgust when exposed to public view. Perverse sexual fantasies generate even more intense disgust. “We accept without need of extensive argument that implications of child molestation, homosexuality, and abuse of women unfairly prejudice a defendant.”39 In United States v. Harvey, the Second Circuit held the admission of testimony concerning videotapes depicting “people performing gross acts involving-human waste, and people engaging in bestiality and sadomasochism” created “disgust and antagonism” toward the defendant, “and resulted in overwhelming prejudice against him.”40 And in United States v. Grimes, the Fifth Circuit excluded stories as unfairly prejudicial because they were “vile in their graphic and violent nature: young girls .in chains, a young girl in handcuffs, and references to blood, for example.”41
Curtin’s stories were used to make him disgusting to the jury. They portray every variety of incest. “[Ijncest has had a rare power to disgust.”42 Their strong tendency to produce disgust outweighs any probative value they might have to prove an intention to have (non-incestuous) sex with a person under 18. I disagree with the majority’s suggestion that the district court can cure this unfair prejudice by redacting parts of the stories, including the bestiality in one of the stories. Excluding this material might make the stories marginally less nauseating, and thus marginally less prejudicial. But it would also make the stories appear more relevant than they actually are, and thus amplify the prejudice of admitting them at all.
I agree with the majority that the district court’s error was so prejudicial we cannot deem it harmless. When we discover a non-constitutional error, “[w]e must reverse unless there is a ‘fair assurance’ of harmlessness or, stated otherwise, unless it is more probable than not that the error did not materially affect the verdict.” 43 The jury could certainly have convicted Curtin, based on the emails and his arrival at the bowling alley. Alternatively, the jury could have believed Curtin’s account and acquitted. He testified that he never believed christyl3 was really 13 or 14, because most people in internet chat rooms are role-playing. Also, christyl3 said she had never kissed a boy or talked about sex with her friends, which he thought unlikely. His account may strike us as unlikely, but we are not the jury. *965He is entitled to have a jury decide in a fair trial whether he committed the crime charged.
The law of evidence affects what kind of a country we live in. Fantasies and dreams are not intentions, or close to them. The reading material people get from libraries, bookstores, newsstands, and the internet should generally not be used to prove that they intended to do what it portrays, because such evidentiary use “would compel all persons to choose the contents of their libraries with considerable care; for it is the innocent, and not just the guilty, who are sometimes the subject of good-faith prosecutions.”44 However repulsive a person’s dreams or fantasies may be, they offer little support for an inference of an intention to act on them. According to Blackstone, “the tyrant Dionysius is recorded to have executed a subject, barely for dreaming that he had killed him; which was held for a sufficient proof, that he had thought thereof in his waking hours. But such is not the temper of English law.”45 Nor should it be the temper of ours.

.Congress has made actionable "wrongful disclosure of video tape rental or sale records.” 18 U.S.C. § 2710. "The impetus for enacting the measure arose as a result of Judge Robert Bork's 1987 Supreme Court nomination battle, during which a Washington, D.C. newspaper obtained a list of 146 video tapes the Bork family had previously rented from their neighborhood store. Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were outraged by the invasion into the Bork fami- . ly’s privacy. Both houses of Congress acted quickly to outlaw certain disclosures of such clearly private information, resulting in the Videotape Privacy Protection Act.” Dirkes v. Borough of Runnemede, 936 F.Supp. 235, 238 (D.N.J.1996) (citing S.Rep. No. 100-599, 100th Cong., 2d Sess. at 16 (1988), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1988 at pp. 4342-1, 4342-13 to 4342-14).

. Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975).

. Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita (1955).

. William S. Burroughs, Junky: Originally Published as Junkie Under the Pen Name of William Lee (1977).

. The Thomas Crown Affair (United Artists 1968) and The Thomas Crown Affair (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer 1999).

. Dirty Harry (Warner Bros. 1971).

. Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 565, 89 S.Ct. 1243, 22 L.Ed.2d 542 (1969).

. "We hold that the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit making mere private possession of obscene material a crime." Id. at 568, 89 S.Ct. 1243.

. Id. at 566, 89 S.Ct. 1243.

. Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540, 551-52, 112 S.Ct. 1535, 118 L.Ed.2d 174 (1992) (omission in original) (quoting Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49, 67, 93 S.Ct. 2628, 37 L.Ed.2d 446 (1973)).

. 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b).

. 18 U.S.C. § 2423(b).

. 18 U.S.C. § 2422(b).

. 18 U.S.C. § 2423(b). The statute is broad, and it is not apparent why it would not apply to a college freshman arranging a date and driving across state lines intending to have sex with a 17 year old high school senior boyfriend or girlfriend. Could Playboy or Cosmopolitan be introduced to prove sexual intent?

. Guam v. Shymanovitz, 157 F.3d 1154, 1158 (9th Cir.1998).

. See Rice v. Paladin Enters., 128 F.3d 233, 252 (4th Cir.1997).

. Guam v. Shymanovitz, 157 F.3d 1154, 1158 (9th Cir.1998).

. See Eugene Volokh, Crime-Facilitating Speech, 57 Stan. L.Rev. 1095, 1129 (2005).

. Guam v. Shymanovitz, 157 F.3d 1154, 1159 (9th Cir.1998).

. Id. (emphasis removed).

. Gerald Dworkin & David Blumenfeld, Punishment for Intentions, 75 Mind 396, 401 (1966).

. Johnny Cash, Folsom Prison Blues (1956).

. Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540, 551, 112 S.Ct. 1535, 118 L.Ed.2d 174 (1992).

. Wisconsin v. Mitchell, 508 U.S. 476, 113 S.Ct. 2194, 124 L.Ed.2d 436 (1993).

. Id. at 480, 113 S.Ct. 2194.

. Herbert v. Lando, 441 U.S. 153, 99 S.Ct. 1635, 60 L.Ed.2d 115 (1979).

. Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 92 S.Ct. 2646, 33 L.Ed.2d 626 (1972).

. Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547, 98 S.Ct. 1970, 56 L.Ed.2d 525 (1978).

. Haupt v. United States, 330 U.S. 631, 642, 67 S.Ct. 874, 91 L.Ed. 1145 (1947).

. "Evidence of a person’s character or a trait of character is not admissible for the purpose of proving action in conformity therewith on a particular occasion.” Fed. R.Evid. 404(a).

. Fed.R.Evid. 404(b).

. Guam v. Shymanovitz, 157 F.3d 1154, 1159 (9th Cir.1998).

. United States v. Gonzalez-Flores, 418 F.3d 1093, 1098 (9th Cir.2005)(quoting Rule 403).

. Old Chief v. United States, 519 U.S. 172, 180, 117 S.Ct 644, 136 L.Ed.2d 574 (1997).

. United States v. Ham, 998 F.2d 1247, 1252 (4th Cir.1993) (quoting United States v. Masters, 622 F.2d 83, 87 (4th Cir.1980)).

. United States v. Gonzalez-Flores, 418 F.3d 1093, 1098 (9th Cir.2005) (quoting United States v. Hitt, 981 F.2d 422, 424 (9th Cir.1992)).

. See, e.g., United States v. Gillespie, 852 F.2d 475, 479 (9th Cir.1988) ("Evidence of homosexuality is extremely prejudicial.”).

. Fed.R.Evid. 403 advisory committee’s note.

. United States v. Ham, 998 F.2d 1247, 1252 (4th Cir.1993) (footnote omitted).

. United States v. Harvey, 991 F.2d 981, 996 (2d Cir.1993).

. United States v. Grimes, 244 F.3d 375, 385 (5th Cir.2001).

. Richard A. Posner, Sex and Reason 201 (1994).

. United States v. Morales, 108 F.3d 1031, 1040 (9th Cir.1997) (en banc) (citation omitted).

. Guam v. Shymanovitz, 157 F.3d 1154, 1159 (9th Cir.1998) (emphasis in original).

. William Blackstone, 4 Commentaries *79.