Court Opinion

ID: 9548532
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:05:02.815396+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:19:06.007000
License: Public Domain

BRYNER, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
The majority concludes that Calapp’s prior theft convictions, standing alone, “proved little of relevance except Calapp’s general proclivity to he and steal” and that specific proof of factual similarity was required before these prior convictions could be admitted to prove that Calapp knew of or recklessly disregarded the stolen nature of the jewelry he possessed. I disagree.1
Federal courts, under essentially the same rules that prevail in Alaska, recognize that a defendant’s prior convictions for crimes similar to a newly charged .crime may properly be admitted to prove that the defendant acted knowingly in committing the new crime, even if the prior cases are not shown to be factually similar to the new case: “When offered to prove knowledge, ... the prior act need not be similar to the charged act as long as the prior act was one which would tend to make the existence of the defendant’s knowledge more probable than it would be without the evidence.” United States v. Ramirez-Jiminez, 967 F.2d 1321, 1326 (9th Cir.1992), quoted in United States v. Arambula-Ruiz, 987 F.2d 599, 603 (9th Cir.1993). Accord United States v. Falco, 727 F.2d 659, 663 (7th Cir.1984).
Here, the state was required to show that, when Calapp possessed the stolen jewelry, he knew it to be stolen or consciously disregarded the risk. No matter what the underlying circumstances of Calapp’s prior theft convictions might have been, those prior convictions, by definition, entailed Calapp’s possession of property that he knew or suspected to be stolen. Calapp’s prior cases thus necessarily involved the same element of knowledge as his present case.
This unity of culpable mental state provides the common thread of relevance joining Calapp’s past misconduct to his current case. That Calapp knowingly or recklessly-possessed stolen property on past occasions made it palpably less likely, in the current case, that he could have remained naively oblivious of the fact that he was dealing with stolen jewelry.
Since Calapp’s prior theft convictions tended “to make the existence of the defendant’s knowledge more probable than it would be without the evidence,” the prior convictions were relevant to prove Calapp’s knowledge. Ramirez-Jiminez, 967 F.2d at 1326. See also A.R.E. 401 (defining relevant evidence to include all “evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of *392consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence”); Denison v. Anchorage, 630 P.2d 1001 (Alaska App.1981) (emphasizing the minimal nature of Rule 401’s definition of relevance).
Thus, notwithstanding the majority’s assertions to the contrary, the relevance of Calapp’s prior theft convictions had nothing to do with the prohibited inference of propensity — the inference that Calapp had stolen before and thus probably stole again. Instead, the relevance of the prior convictions flowed from their logical tendency to show that Calapp, with a solid history of knowingly possessing stolen property, was in a far better position than the average person to recognize stolen property when it came his way.
Nothing in the Alaska cases cited by the majority precludes the use of prior convictions to prove knowledge or reckless disregard under these circumstances. And other courts have not hesitated to admit evidence of prior convictions under virtually identical circumstances.
A case on point is United States v. Falco, 727 F.2d 659 (7th Cir.1984).2 The defendant, Falco, was charged with violating 18 U.S.C. § 659, by possessing goods shipped in interstate commerce that he knew had been stolen. See 727 F.2d at 661. The trial court allowed the government, as part of its case in chief, to introduce evidence of Falco’s four prior interstate theft convictions. See id. at 661-62. The court required, and the government made, no showing that the prior convictions involved facts similar to those of Falco’s new ease.
On appeal, Falco argued that, without specific evidence of factual similarity, the prior convictions were inadmissible to prove his knowledge in the current case. See id. at 662. In affirming Falco’s conviction, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit expressly rejected this argument:
The question of relevancy here does not turn on the “similarity” of prior events in the way it might if testimony of prior or subsequent acts, rather than certifications of convictions for the same or related statutory offenses, were involved. Similarity of the underlying facts of the crimes is not the only basis on which the prior convictions could be considered relevant. Rather, extrinsic evidence in the form of convictions may be relevant on the issue of knowledge if, apart from facts demonstrating the similarity of the physical elements of the acts that gave rise to the inference of knowledge in the prior or subsequent convictions, the extrinsic offenses represented by the convictions are “of such a nature that [their] commission involved the same knowledge required for the offense charged.”
Id. at 663 (citation omitted).
The court in Falco went on to “recognize that the probative value of the previous convictions would be enhanced and their relevance thus more readily established if the facts underlying those convictions that go to the issue of knowledge were similar to the facts in this case.” Id. The court nevertheless found that the prior convictions were in and of themselves sufficiently probative to pass Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b)’s threshold test of relevance. See id. at 664. In so finding, the court also observed:
Defendant was free to attempt to undercut the probative value of the prior convictions, and hence their relevance, by distinguishing the facts underlying the previous convictions in response to the government’s motion to admit. By failing to proffer such evidence, however, defendant allowed the determination of the relevance of the prior convictions to turn solely on whether the fact that defendant had previously been convicted of the same or similar statutory offense requiring knowledge of stolen goods was minimally probative on the issue of defendant’s knowledge in this ease.
*393Id. at 663 (footnotes omitted). Finally, after carefully weighing the circumstances of Fal-co’s case, the court concluded that the trial court had not abused its discretion in finding that the prejudicial potential of the prior crimes evidence did not outweigh its probative value. See id. at 666-67.
Falco is distinguishable from Calapp’s case in only one significant respect: in Falco, the prosecution was allowed to introduce the disputed evidence of prior convictions as part of its case in chief, before Falco advanced any claim of lack of knowledge; here, by contrast, the disputed evidence came in only on rebuttal, after Calapp seized the initiative by testifying that he was ignorant of the stolen nature of the jewelry. This distinction provides a far stronger justification for admission of the prior crimes evidence here than was present in Falco, for Calapp’s affirmative claim of ignorance begged for a response.
Nor can a compelling argument be.made that the disputed evidence of Calapp’s prior convictions was more prejudicial than probative. In context, proof of Calapp’s prior theft convictions did little more than lift the deceptive veil of ignorance that Calapp himself wove around his actions; the evidence thereby enabled the jury to assess the likely scope of Calapp’s knowledge from a realistic perspective: it allowed the jury to ask whether an experienced thief like Calapp could plausibly claim ignorance in the factual setting of this case. This is not an impermissible use of the prior convictions as propensity evidence.3
In the specific evidential setting of this case, Falco’s reasoning is sound and should be followed. In my view, the majority needlessly reverses an essentially errorless conviction.
Accordingly, I dissent.

. I do agree that Calapp's prior forgery conviction was not particularly relevant to establish his culpable mental state or discredit his claim of ignorance as to the stolen nature of the property involved in this case. Given my conclusion that Calapp’s theft convictions were properly admitted, however, any error in admitting the prior forgery was clearly harmless.

. For another analogous case, see United States v. Arambula-Ruiz, 987 F.2d 599, 603 (9th Cir. 1993) (prior conviction for possessing heroin with intent to distribute ruled admissible against defendant charged with conspiring to possess heroin with intent to distribute, since the prior conviction tended to establish defendant’s knowledge of conspiracy’s purpose, thus undermining defendant’s claim "that he was an innocent bystander 'at the wrong place at the wrong time' ’’).

. The prohibited inference of propensity deals with proof of conduct, not mental state: it posits that conduct conforms to character and, thus, that a defendant’s conduct on prior occasions will dictate the defendant’s conduct on the current occasion. Here, the likelihood that Calapp’s juty would have viewed the evidence of his prior theft convictions as propensity evidence — in other words, as evidence indicating that, because Calapp had acted like a thief on prior occasions, he probably acted like a thief'on this occasion— seems slim. This is because Calapp openly admitted possessing and disposing of stolen jewelry, thereby effectively acknowledging that his actions were those of a thief. Calapp’s defense was that his conduct was not what it seemed to be, since he did not suspect the jewelry to be stolen. To the extent that the prior crimes evidence eroded this defense, it did not rely on the prohibited inference of propensity to do so.