Evidence — other acts

Listen to this article

United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Evidence — other acts

In a prosecution for conspiring to distribute cocaine base, the district court erred in admitting proof that he had previously been convicted of possessing cocaine base.

“Certainly a reasonable jury could have convicted Lee on this evidence. But the evidence of his prior conviction, and the way in which the jury was invited to consider that conviction, gave the government substantial ammunition to defeat the defense suggestions that the drugs in the car had been planted there and that the government’s case otherwise rested on a witness (Hurt) whose credibility was less than sterling. As we have discussed, the jury was urged to consider Lee’s prior conviction as proof that he was not an innocent bystander discovered in the wrong place at the wrong time–in other words, the jury was being asked to evaluate the case based not on what the evidence showed Lee was doing at the time of the charged offense, but rather based on what his conviction five years earlier showed about his propensity to commit crack cocaine offenses. As we put it in Miller, ‘By piling [Lee’s] prior drug conviction on top of what was otherwise a strong case, the government distracted the inquiry from what happened in [2009] and invited the jury to decide guilt for the wrong reasons.’ 673 F.3d at 701. We cannot say that the admission of the prior conviction was harmless.”

Reversed and Remanded.

12-1718 U.S. v. Lee

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, Mills, J., Rovner, J.