Court Opinion

ID: 9639019
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:01:33.39298+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:11.287950
License: Public Domain

MACK, Associate Judge,
concurring:
I join fully in the court’s opinion. I would only add that I also believe that evidence of the armed robbery is not relevant to prove that appellant carried a dangerous weapon beyond its power to generate an inference of propensity and so fails to meet the third requirement for admissibility. See ante at 731.
“It is a principle of long standing in our law that evidence of one crime is inadmissible to prove disposition to commit crime....” Drew v. United States, 118 U.S. App.D.C. 11, 15, 331 F.2d 85, 89 (1964) (emphasis in original). This so-called “propensity rule” is designed to insure that a defendant is convicted only because he is guilty of the crime charged and not because he may have engaged in other crimi*733nal activity, see Thompson v. United States, 546 A.2d 414, 419 (D.C.1988); United States v. Myers, 550 F.2d 1036, 1044 (5th Cir.1977) (“a defendant must be tried for what he did, not for who he is”). The rule is thus thought to be fundamental to the presumption of innocence guaranteed all criminal defendants. Landrum v. United States, 559 A.2d 1323, 1327 (D.C.1989); Thompson, supra, 546 A.2d at 419; Campbell v. United States, 450 A.2d 428, 430 (D.C.1982).
Here, the government contends that evidence of the armed robbery would be relevant in the CDW trial to show intent or motive. We noted in Thompson, supra, however, that in many cases, “it is difficult or impossible to differentiate between the intent to do an act and the predisposition to do it,” 546 A.2d at 420, and explained that “[w]here evidence of prior crimes can become probative with respect to intent only after an inference of predisposition has been drawn, the argument for admission is at its weakest, for the distinction between intent and predisposition then becomes ephemeral.” Id. at 421. In Thompson, the defendant (having been the passenger in a car in which twenty-seven packets of P.C.P.-laced marijuana were found beneath the passenger seat) was charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, and the government asserted that evidence that the defendant had previously sold marijuana and P.C.P. was admissible as probative of the defendant’s intent. In pointing out the problem with this argument, we concluded:
There is no real connection between the offenses other than the allegation that they both spring from the defendant’s predisposition to sell marijuana and P.C.P. Indeed, one cannot logically draw a connection between the two incidents without first assuming that, because Thompson was predisposed to sell in November 1985, he remained so predisposed in April 1986. Here, intent piggy-backs on predisposition.
Id. at 427 (citation omitted).1
In the present case, the government notes that a violation of the CDW statute requires that “the purpose of carrying the instrument was its use as a deadly or dangerous weapon,” see ante note 6, and asserts that appellant’s alleged use of the BB gun to commit a robbery the evening before tends to show that appellant did intend to use the gun as a weapon. For the armed robbery to be relevant to appellant’s purpose in carrying the gun the next day, however, requires precisely the-inference of predisposition that we admonished against in Thompson: that is, that because Roper intended to use the BB gun as a weapon on one occasion that he also intended to use the BB gun as a weapon on a subsequent occasion.2 This can be nothing but a propensity argument.3
*734Because I can see no proper purpose for which evidence of the alleged armed robbery could have been introduced, I would hold that for this reason, as well as for those set forth in the opinion for the court, that, under Drew, the evidence would have been inadmissible in a separate trial for CDW. This being so, I agree that the misjoinder was not harmless.

. There are, of course, cases in which other crimes evidence may be relevant to intent without any inference of predisposition. As an example, Thompson cites United States v. Payne, 256 U.S. App.D.C. 358, 805 F.2d 1062 (1986), in which the defendants had been charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute. There, the court upheld the admission of evidence of guns found in the defendant’s apartment as relevant to defendant’s intent, on the theory that a person dealing in narcotics was more likely to have such weapons than an individual who simply possessed illegal drugs for his or her personal use. See 546 A.2d at 421-22.

. Indeed, the prosecutor argued this theory repeatedly to the jury:
[T]he reason why he has this gun is also gleaned from what he had the gun for the night before. What did he use the gun for nine hours earlier? He used it for an unlawful purpose, to rob somebody, to rob Dynee-sha Johnson.

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Secondly, as to the carrying a dangerous weapon. The next day he’s found with this weapon. Isn’t it strange, lo and behold, this looks like the weapon that was used just hours before in the armed robbery. He’s carrying a dangerous weapon at that point. He admits it. He was going to use it if need be. He already had used it in a dangerous and unlawful manner. He had used it to rob Dyneesha Johnson.
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[HJis intent with this weapon was shown by what he did use the gun for nine hours before, to rob Dyneesha Johnson.

. I note as apt Thompson ⅛ counsel that courts must “be alert to sophisticated as well as simpleminded modes of evasion of the propensity rule," and should "view with a jaundiced eye *734evidence purportedly offered as relevant to some other issue but in reality bearing wholly or primarily on the defendant’s predisposition." 546 A.2d at 420.