Court Opinion

ID: 9852534
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:32:28.212774+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:22:29.210666
License: Public Domain

HARTZ, Judge, dissenting. (18) I respectfully dissent. I agree that Defendant’s conviction was supported by substantial evidence, but I do not agree that the district court abused its discretion in admitting Spense’s testimony about her prior drug purchases from Defendant. In my view, the district court could properly find that the testimony was highly probative evidence and posed little danger of unfair prejudice. (19) Spense’s testimony concerning her transaction with Defendant was as follows: ... I drove by the Chicken Shack on Byers. And as I pulled up to the stop sign [Defendant] ran up to my car. So I rolled my window down. And he asked me if I wanted to buy anything. So I told him I didn’t have any money, that I was going to go get some money, I would be back. So that’s when I went back to the old substation. [After Spense returned to the Chicken Shack] I pulled up in front and [Defendant] came and got in my ear and he asked for the — I gave him the money. I asked him if he had got it. He said he had to go in and get it. So I gave him my money. And he went inside. He was in there for about four minutes and he came back out and got in the ear again, and I asked him if he got it and he said, ‘Yes.” And he put it in my right hand. And I told him I had to go, and he said he wanted to smoke it with me, and I told him I couldn’t because I had to go pick up my kids. I think that’s the excuse I gave. So he got out of the car and I went back to the substation again. (20) In other words, a drug dealer approaches a driver stopped at a stop sign and offers to sell drugs, without making any inquiry as to the “trustworthiness” of the driver and without any mention of what drug or drugs are available. When the buyer returns, the transaction is consummated without any discussion of price or type of drug, and the seller even requests an opportunity to smoke the drugs with the purchaser. I would venture to say that such a transaction is outside the realm of experience of the great majority of jurors in this state, including Lea County. (21) A juror could respond to such an account in several different ways. One response would be simply to credit Spense as a truthful witness and believe what she said, no matter how strange it may appear. A second response ■ would be to speculate about how such a transaction could occur. One might speculate that this is simply how the seamy side of the world carries on its business. Or one could speculate that this transaction must have been only the latest in a series of transactions, so that the parties did not need to be explicit in order to know exactly what they were talking about in terms of the substance to be sold and the price. Another possible response would be to harbor a reasonable doubt that such a peculiar transaction could have occurred; the consequence would be to vote for acquittal. (22) A competent prosecutor will not unnecessarily rely on the credulity or speculation of the members of the jury. Rather, the prosecutor will offer available evidence to explain how the transaction occurred as it did. Such evidence is indisputably relevant to the case. Even if the explanation involves evidence of prior misconduct by the defendant, it is not barred by SCRA 1986, 11-404(B) (Repl.1994), because it is not being offered “to prove the character of a person in order to show action in conformity therewith.” Id. (23) The federal courts, whose pertinent rules of evidence are virtually identical to New Mexico’s, routinely admit evidence of prior crimes by the defendant to explain the relationship between the defendant and another participant in the charged transaction. One case closely in point is United States v. Costa, 691 F.2d 1358, 1360-61 (11th Cir.1982). In that case a witness had been pressed by an undercover agent to find a kilogram of cocaine and had called the defendant to supply it. The witness explained that he knew from his prior relationship with the defendant that the defendant had dealt in cocaine. Over a defense challenge that the testimony violated Fed.R.Evid. 404(b), the court held: The relationship between [the defendant] and [the witness], however, was not extrinsic to the Government’s charge. [The witness] testified as to the circumstances in which he came to know [the defendant] as a dealer in cocaine to show why he could expect [the defendant] to provide him with a kilogram____ Therefore, [the witness’s] testimony about [the defendant’s] previous dealing in cocaine was necessary because it formed an integral and natural part of the witness’s accounts of the circumstances surrounding the offenses for which the defendant was indicted. Id. at 1361; accord United States v. Evans, 697 F.2d 240, 248 (8th Cir.) (testimony of prior drug deal between the witness and the defendant admissible to show why the witness called the defendant to arrange marijuana transaction for which he was prosecuted), cert. denied, 460 U.S. 1086, 103 S.Ct. 1779, 76 L.Ed.2d 350 (1983). Other courts have also permitted evidence of prior drug transactions to explain the relationship of the parties and to put the charged transaction in context. See, e.g., United States v. Dworken, 855 F.2d 12, 27 (1st Cir.1988); United States v. Roldan-Zapata, 916 F.2d 795, 804 (2d Cir.1990), cert. denied, 499 U.S. 940, 111 S.Ct. 1397, 113 L.Ed.2d 453 (1991); United States v. O’Leary, 739 F.2d 135 (3d Cir.1984), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 1107, 105 S.Ct. 782, 83 L.Ed.2d 776 (1985); United States v. Royal, 972 F.2d 643, 648 (5th Cir.1992); United States v. Hoelker, 765 F.2d 1422, 1426 (9th Cir.1985), cert. denied, 475 U.S. 1024, 106 S.Ct. 1219, 89 L.Ed.2d 330 (1986); People v. Miller, 890 P.2d 84, 98 (Colo.1995) (en bane) (trial judge admitted evidence of prior drug transactions “to rebut the ‘almost incredible implication’ ... that [the defendant] would have conducted such a serious drug transaction “with a passing stranger’ ”). The admissibility of other-misconduct evidence to establish the relationship between the defendant and a cohort is not confined to drug prosecutions. See, e.g., United States v. Chaverra-Cardona, 879 F.2d 1551, 1554-55 (7th Cir.1989) (murder); United States v. Mejia-Velez, 855 F.Supp. 607, 610-12 (E.D.N.Y.1994) (murder); State v. Hamilton, 5 Or.App. 266, 483 P.2d 90, 91 (1971) (statutory rape); State v. Shillcutt, 116 Wis.2d 227, 341 N.W.2d 716, 719-20 (Ct.App.1983) (prostitution), aff'd, 119 Wis.2d 788, 350 N.W.2d 686 (1984). (24) New Mexico case law supports the same view. We have repeatedly recognized that other-misconduct evidence may be admissible to establish context. See State v. Jones, 120 N.M. 185, 188, 899 P.2d 1139, 1142 (Ct.App.), cert. granted, 120 N.M. 68, 898 P.2d 120 (1995). For example, in State v. Jordan, 116 N.M. 76, 860 P.2d 206 (Ct.App.), cert. denied, 115 N.M. 795, 858 P.2d 1274 (1993), evidence of uncharged sexual misconduct was admitted to show why the victim’s father asked her whether the defendant had molested her. Id. at 80-81, 860 P.2d at 210-11; see State v. Ruiz, 119 N.M. 515, 518-20, 892 P.2d 962, 965-67 (App.1995); State v. Landers, 115 N.M. 514, 520, 853 P.2d 1270, 1276 (Ct.App.1992) (“We believe the evidence corroborated the victim’s testimony and placed the charged acts in context.”), cert. quashed, 115 N.M. 535, 854 P.2d 362 (1993). (25) The majority suggests that Spense’s testimony about prior purchases from Defendant was not necessary to establish context, because Detective Gartman testified that the police were aware of the “area’s high narcotics trafficking pattern.” There are several flaws in this argument. First, Detective Gartman testified after Spense did. The district court had to decide admissibility based on what was presented to the court at the time of the ruling. Second, it is not clear to me that Detective Gartman’s testimony was admissible. We need not decide that issue on this appeal, because there was no objection to his testimony. But it would indeed be ironic if we were to hold that otherwise admissible testimony was inadmissible because inadmissible evidence was later admitted into evidence without objection. Third, Detective Gartman’s testimony does not really explain Spense’s transaction with Defendant. A “high narcotics trafficking pattern” does not necessarily imply that transactions are conducted without any caution. One would think that anyone committing a felony by selling contraband to a stranger would want some assurance that the stranger could be trusted. Moreover, the existence of active narcotics trafficking in the area does not explain how the transaction between Spense and Defendant was consummated without any discussion of what drug was to be sold or what the price was, even if they already knew each other in some different capacity. (26) In any event, even if Gartman’s testimony would provide a satisfactory explanation, the real reason why the transaction occurred as it did was because Spense and Defendant had engaged in similar transactions in the past, not because the site of the transaction was a drug-saturated neighborhood. The State is entitled to present the real reason why something happened the way it did. It is not required to rely on another possible explanation that was in fact not the real explanation. (27) I also disagree with the majority’s assessment of the potential for unfair prejudice. Spense’s testimony regarding Defendant’s uncharged misconduct consisted solely of her answering “Yes, ma’am” to the question “Had you previously bought rock cocaine from the defendant?” This response was hardly inflammatory. See Roldan-Zapata, 916 F.2d at 804. (28) In addition, the risk was slight that the jury would decide to convict based on improper use of the other-misconduct evidence. The sole testimony regarding prior transactions was by Spense herself. Consequently, the district court could reason as follows: It is inconceivable that the jury could believe Spense’s testimony about Defendant’s prior offenses if it did not believe her account of the charged offense. Thus, by the time the jury could conclude that Defendant had a propensity to sell drugs, it must have already decided that Defendant was guilty of the charged offense. In other words, improper use of evidence of propensity could not infect the verdict. To be sure, the testimony of prior offenses and the testimony describing the charged offense are to some degree mutually reinforcing. But the primary reason for this mutual reinforcement is that together they create a coherent picture — the testimony as a whole provides a plausible account of why the transaction occurred as it did, thereby making credible the testimony by Spense about the charged offense. Such use of the evidence of prior offenses is perfectly proper. (29) Based on this reasoning the district court could conclude that the risk of unfair prejudice was minimal. In particular, the district court could properly determine that the risk of unfair prejudice did not substantially outweigh the probative value of Spense’s testimony in explaining how the transaction between Defendant and Spense could have occurred in the manner that it did. (30) A federal district court adopted similar reasoning in a prosecution for murder for hire. The defendant’s accomplices were permitted to testify that the defendant had told them that he had previously committed murder. The court explained: The evidence of prior acts here came from the same witnesses who testified that they hired the defendant to carry out the murder. If the jury found these witnesses to be credible, the defendant would be convicted even if the accomplices were not permitted to testify about defendant’s admission of prior homicides. On the other hand, if the jury did not find their testimony to be credible with respect to the crime in issue, there is no reason why it would have credited the testimony of these witnesses with respect to the prior acts. ... The testimony that the defendant admitted to other homicides enhanced the credibility of the accomplices only because it provided a plausible answer to the question of why they recruited the defendant to be the triggerman. Mejia-Velez, 855 F.Supp. at 611-12. (81) Because I believe that the district court acted well within the bounds of a sound diseretion in admitting the challenged testimony,1 I respectfully dissent.  . The majority notes that earlier in the proceedings the district court had granted a motion in limine to exclude Defendant’s statement that he had sold Spense cocaine in the past.' I fad to see the relevance of that earlier ruling. To the extent that the majority suggests that the prosecutor acted improperly in tendering Spense’s testimony about her prior transactions with Defendant, the district court obviously did not believe that the prosecutor had violated a prior order. To the extent that the majority is contending that the district court made inconsistent rulings, that is legady irrelevant. Our concern is only the chadenged ruling. In any event, the prosecutor did not make the same argument in response to the motion in limine that she made in response to the objection to Spense’s testimony. In particular, on the first occasion she did not contend that the testimony was necessary to explain how the transaction came about as it did.