Court Opinion

ID: 9499339
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:45:10.285083+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:26.021343
License: Public Domain

MELLOY, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I believe that United States v. Strong, 415 F.3d 902 (8th Cir.2005), with a sixteen-year interval and a tenuous factual connection between the defendant’s prior crime and the charged offense, represents the outer limits of Rule 404(b) admissibility. I would not extend those limits to cover the eighteen-year time frame between Walker’s prior criminal conduct and the charged offense. Therefore, I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion.
To be admissible for the purpose of proving knowledge or intent under Rule 404(b), this court has long required that the prior crime, wrong, or act be “similar in kind and reasonably close in time to the crime charged,” United States v. Turner, 104 F.3d 217, 222 (8th Cir.1997), or at least “not overly remote in time to the crime charged.” United States v. Green, 151 F.3d 1111, 1113 (8th Cir.1998). In United States v. Engleman, 648 F.2d 473, 478-80 (8th Cir.1981), we reviewed a district court’s admission of evidence of a prior, uncharged crime that occurred thirteen years before the charged offense. Engle-man’s crimes were identical with regard to motive: in both the prior and the charged offense, he and the chosen victims’ wives arranged the murders, and they shared the proceeds from the victims’ life-insurance policies. Id. at 477. Indeed, in the second murder, Engleman convinced his collaborator to join him by saying that “he knew the scheme would work because he had done it before.” Id. Given these facts, we ruled that the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting evidence of the prior murder because of “the similarities of the events and the length of time each crime required in planning and execution.” Id. at 479.
In the twenty-four years between the Engleman and Strong decisions, we were “reluctant to go beyond Engleman’s thirteen-year time frame,” United States v. McCarthy, 97 F.3d 1562, 1573 (8th Cir.1996), and, with few exceptions, “decline[d] to extend our holding regarding the remoteness of the thirteen-year-old crime in Engleman beyond the facts of that case.” United States v. Mejia-Uribe, 75 F.3d 395, 398 (8th Cir.1996).
The facts of this case present a far less compelling justification for admission of the prior evidence than the facts in Engleman. Here, the only similarities between the past and charged offense were that both crimes involved gun possession. This hardly makes them distinctive. The past crime has little practical bearing on Walker’s intent and knowledge in the present case, especially when compared to the facts in Engleman. I recognize that Strong may represent a deviation from our post-Engleman precedent on facts substantially similar to the case at hand. It retained the principles of that line of cases, however, and did not purport to change our test for 404(b) admissibility; it merely held that evidence of a sixteen-year-old crime was not too remote to pass that test. *1277I would hold that Strong represents the outmost edge of admissibility of past crimes of this age, absent a connection between the past and charged offenses that is at least as close as Engleman. If we are to say that our requirement that the past crime be “reasonably close in time to the crime charged” means anything at all, then it must bar the admission of Walker’s eighteen-year-old past crime in this case.
I also do not believe Walker’s past incarceration has any impact on the remoteness of his prior crime in this case. The majority opinion, relying upon United States v. Adams, 401 F.3d 886, 894 (8th Cir.2005), argues that the probative value of the evidence was preserved in part because Walker spent ten of those eighteen years in prison. I believe this argument fails to take account of the interrelationship between the time spent in prison and the degree of similarity regarding the past and charged offenses. In Adams, the district court admitted evidence of a 1986 drug-trafficking conviction involving the same type of drug, same means, and similar physical evidence as the charged offense for conspiracy to distribute drugs. Id. Furthermore, the charged conduct occurred only four years after the defendant was released from prison for the prior offense, id., which suggests that the defendant simply reinitiated the drug-trafficking conspiracy after incarceration using the knowledge gained through his past drug-trafficking experience. Thus, given the similarity in conduct and the relatively brief period between the defendant’s release and his subsequent engagement in the same type of conspiracy, we ruled that the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting evidence of the prior crime. Id.
This is a much different case, with the fact of the defendant’s gun possession standing as the only similarity between the prior and charged offenses. In addition, the defendant here was out of prison for eight years before committing the charged offense, and there is no suggestion of any logical connection between the crimes. This is not a case where Walker continued the same criminal pattern with the same modus operandi after release from prison. As such, it is unclear how Walker’s ten years in incarceration make the prior offense less remote (as it relates to Walker’s intent to possess the gun) than if Walker had spent those ten years walking freely. Therefore, under these facts, I believe Walker’s incarceration ought to have no bearing upon the analysis of whether his past crime was too remote for admissibility-
For the foregoing reasons, I would reverse the judgment of the district court.