Court Opinion

ID: 9487469
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:17:13.159157+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:17.092034
License: Public Domain

WILKINS, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I agree that the district court erred in permitting the Government to introduce evidence of Madden’s drug use in violation of Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b). However, I cannot agree that the error requires reversal.
The majority correctly states that “[i]n the realm of nonconstitutional error, the appropriate test of harmlessness ... is whether we can say “with fair assurance, after pondering all that happened without stripping the erroneous action from the whole, that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the error.’ ” United States v. Nyman, 649 F.2d 208, 211-12 (4th Cir.1980) (quoting Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 765, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 1248, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946)). In applying this test, we must consider the other evidence presented demonstrating the defendant’s guilt. United States v. Davis, 657 F.2d 637, 640 (4th Cir.1981). Indeed, the most important factor in the inquiry is the closeness of the ease. United States v. Urbanik, 801 F.2d 692, 699 (4th Cir.1986). The examination into “closeness” involves assessing whether the other evidence is sufficiently powerful in relation to the tainted evidence to give “fair assurance” that .the tainted evidence did not “substantially sway” the jury to its verdict. Id.; United States v. Ince, 21 F.3d 576, 584 (4th Cir.1994).
The majority discusses the evidence of Madden’s drug use in detail, but fails to evaluate this tainted evidence against the overpowering evidence of Madden’s guilt. Instead, the majority allows the prosecutor’s references to drug use during closing argument to overshadow a review of the record as a whole. While there is a strong tendency to. reverse when the error is clear and the Government’s position is clearly wrong, we must review the record in light of “all that happened.” See United States v. Coades, 549 F.2d 1303, 1306 (9th Cir.1977) (per curiam) (concluding that despite prosecutor’s misuse of evidence of defendant’s prior conviction, which amounted to “a deplorable example of prosecutorial overzealousness,” the error by the trial court in admitting the evidence was harmless because the evidence of defendant’s “guilt was so overwhelming that the error could not have affected the outcome”).
This is not a close case. As detailed by the majority opinion, the evidence showing that Madden robbed the bank is overwhelming. The record provides more than “fair assurance” that the evidence of Madden’s drug use did not “substantially sway” the *755jury to its verdict. Therefore, the error of the district court in admitting this evidence was harmless. See United States v. Grooms, 2 F.3d 85, 89 (4th Cir.1993), cert. denied, — U.S.—, 114 S.Ct. 1550, 128 L.Ed.2d 199 (1994) (“Given the one-sided nature of the evidence presented [when the only issue involved identity], we can say with fair assurance that the judgment was not substantially swayed by the trial court’s error.”); Davis, 657 F.2d at 640 (“[T]he evidence supporting [the defendant’s] conviction was so conclusive that it is altogether unlikely that the error affected the verdict.”). Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.