Court Opinion

ID: 9493508
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:10:17.693996+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:52.876654
License: Public Domain

DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the result.
While I concur in the result of this opinion, I cannot agree with the reasoning of the majority. The record in this case indicates to me that Rhodes did enough at trial to preserve his objection under Fed. R.Evid. 404(b). On the merits, I do not believe the government satisfied its burden to establish the admissibility of the gun evidence under that rule. I further believe that under the circumstances presented here, the district court’s decision to admit it was an abuse of discretion. Nonetheless, based on the other evidence produced at trial and the minor role played by the gun evidence in the government’s case, I find that the error committed by the district court in admitting the evidence was harmless. I explain these points briefly below.
First, I do not read the trial record as showing that Rhodes failed to preserve the Rule 404(b) objection. He clearly disputed the government’s “tools of the trade” justification for the admission of the pellet gun and pistol evidence. This objection was enough to call to the district court’s atten*662tion rulings like the one in United States v. Johnson, 137 F.3d 970, 975 (7th Cir.1998), and the fact that the basis for the objection was Rule 404(b).
Second, and more importantly, I do not agree with the logic of the opinion to the extent it suggests this evidence was relevant under Rule 402 (and thus usable by the government) because its absence would have been equally relevant and usable for the defendant. Just because the contemporaneous presence of guns might make it more likely that the person was engaged in drug dealing (as opposed to simple possession for personal use, for example), I disagree that the absence of guns would help to exonerate the person. In fact, if a drug defendant wanted to introduce evidence that the police did not find any guns when they searched his residence as a way of showing that he was not a participant or a dealer, I think the government would probably have a very good Rule 402 objection. Guns are not like the wrenches the majority mentions for the plumber. Nor are they like scales and other paraphernalia specialized to the drug trade. In my view, a better analogy might be to a knitted ski mask. If, while investigating a convenience store robbery (assuming no videotapes or evidence showing what the robber used), the police found a ski mask, the government could introduce it to show that this was something the robber used to conceal his identity. But it would mean absolutely nothing if the police searched someone’s residence and did not find any ski masks. Lots of people never own a ski mask, and hence the absence of one tells us nothing. (To use the language of Rule 401, the absence of a gun or of a ski mask does not “make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.”)
Since I do not agree that the defendant could use the absence of guns, I do not see this as the symmetrical situation the majority describes it to be. This takes me back to the original point, which is whether this was proper evidence under Rule 404(b). I believe we can review that point directly, rather than under the plain error doctrine, because Rhodes adequately preserved his objection under Rule 404(b) (even if he did not preserve the Rule 403 point). On the merits, the government has shown nothing that persuades me that it was using the gun evidence to prove anything other than propensity.
Even if the admission of the gun evidence was an abuse of discretion, however, an evidentiary error like this can be harmless. See, e.g., United States v. Jarrett, 133 F.3d 519, 529 (7th Cir.1998). Here, I think it was. The prosecution did not paint Rhodes to be the “gun toting gangster” that appellate counsel is worried about. To the contrary, the government took a fairly low-key approach to this evidence. It backed off this line of questioning right away when Rhodes denied carrying a gun during the conspiracy, and it never returned to the issue during the presentation of the evidence. Apart from the gun evidence, the government’s case was quite strong. On the record as a whole, I am confident that the error was a harmless one under the standards of Fed. R.Crim.P. 52(a).
I therefore concur in the result reached by the majority.