U.S. v. Hands, 97-6718

Citation184 F.3d 1322
Decision Date18 August 1999
Docket NumberNo. 97-6718,97-6718
Parties(11th Cir. 1999) UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Eddie Roosevelt HANDS, Defendant-Appellant.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (11th Circuit)

[Copyrighted Material Omitted] Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama. (No. 97-00024-001), Alex T. Howard, Jr., Judge.

Before BARKETT, Circuit Judge, and KRAVITCH and MAGILL*, Senior Circuit Judges.

KRAVITCH, Senior Circuit Judge:

After a four-day trial, a jury convicted Eddie Roosevelt Hands ("Hands") of one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute narcotics, in violation of 21 U.S.C. 846, and one count of distributing and possessing with intent to distribute cocaine, in violation of 21 U.S.C. 841(a). The jury also determined that Hands should forfeit $725,000 pursuant to 21 U.S.C. 853. The district court sentenced Hands to concurrent prison sentences of life on the conspiracy count and twenty years on the distribution and possession count. Hands appeals his conviction and the forfeiture award, contending that the trial court's erroneous admission of graphic evidence of his abuse of his wife and the prosecutor's improper statements during closing arguments deprived him of a fair trial.1 We reverse and remand for a new trial.

I. BACKGROUND

State law enforcement agents, investigating drug activities in and around Monroe County, Alabama, brought drug-related charges against a number of people. Many of these people eventually pleaded guilty to drug charges; some of them, in the course of their cooperation with the government, identified Hands as a participant in the local drug trade. As a result of the investigation, a grand jury indicted Hands on one count of conspiracy to distribute large amounts of powder cocaine, crack cocaine, and marijuana, and one count of distributing and possessing with intent to distribute approximately two ounces of powder cocaine. The indictment also contained a forfeiture count, which alleged that Hands was subject to forfeit five parcels of real property2 and "$725,000 in proceeds."3 At trial, the government primarily relied upon the testimony of several confessed drug dealers who testified that they had bought or sold cocaine, cocaine base, or marijuana from Hands, had transported or sold drugs for Hands, or had witnessed Hands engaging in drug dealing or production at various times over a 23-year period. Each of these witnesses testified in exchange for, or in hope of receiving, a reduced sentence or a decreased number of charges.

Hands's wife, Doris Hands, testified for the defense. Hands then took the stand on his own behalf. While cross-examining him, the prosecutor elicited testimony that he had been charged with beating his wife. The government then introduced into evidence six color photographs taken of Doris Hands shortly after the abuse, which showed her injuries. During the government's closing argument, the prosecutor repeatedly used inflammatory language to describe Hands. The jury returned guilty verdicts on both substantive charges and returned a verdict of forfeiture of $725,000.

II. DISCUSSION
A. Facts Surrounding the Admission of the Spousal Abuse Evidence

Doris Hands testified as part of Hands's case in chief that she had been at home full time, caring for her and Hands's children during much of the time covered by the indictment and that she had never witnessed any drug dealing on the property. She acknowledged that because she and Hands were often occupied during the day--he with his job and she with child care--she did not spend all of her time with him. Neither the defense nor the prosecution questioned Doris Hands about her relationship with her husband.

Subsequently, Hands took the stand in his own defense. On cross-examination, the prosecutor asked Hands about his use of a number of guns, specifically questioning him about how often he had carried a particular handgun.4 Hands volunteered that he had not carried that gun since the sheriff took away his handgun permit. The prosecutor asked why the sheriff had revoked the permit, and Hands responded that the sheriff was "pissed off"5 that Hands had dropped charges against a young man who had shot Hands in a random drive-by incident. The prosecutor then asked whether Hands had lost his permit because he had beaten Doris Hands. Hands answered, "No," and the prosecutor asked, "Didn't your wife file charges against you for beating her?" and "Didn't you beat your wife in recent months?"6 The district court overruled defense counsel's repeated objections to the line of questioning, and Hands admitted that someone had filed charges against him in 1994 because, as he put it, he and Doris Hands had had "a fight" in which he sustained two broken fingers.7 The prosecutor asked, "And you got broken fingers because you beat her really bad; isn't that right?"8

The prosecutor then moved to admit into evidence six Polaroid photographs of Doris Hands taken after the beating. At sidebar, defense counsel objected to the line of questioning and the admission of the photographs, arguing that the evidence was irrelevant and overly prejudicial. The judge replied,

[The evidence] has probative value ... in that his wife came in and presented herself as a dutiful wife who stayed at home all the time and had nothing to do but look after her dear husband. And this is just diametrically opposed to that and is in direct impeachment of everything his wife said when she was on the witness stand.9

The judge also stated that the prosecution could use the wife-beating evidence to show that the pistol permit "was revoked when he beat up his wife."10 The court admitted the photographs11 and a document dated February 18, 1994, revoking Hands's handgun permit.12 On further questioning, Hands continued to insist that the revocation was not connected to the domestic violence charges. The prosecutor abandoned the line of questioning and did not introduce any further evidence connecting the two incidents. The district court denied the defense's subsequent motion for a mistrial.13

B. Admissibility of the Spousal Abuse Evidence

We review the district court's evidentiary rulings for abuse of discretion. See United States v. Johnson, 139 F.3d 1359, 1365 (11th Cir.1998), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 119 S.Ct. 2365, --- L.Ed.2d---- (1999). We conclude that the spousal abuse evidence was inadmissible because it was irrelevant. See Fed R.Evid. 401, 402. Even if the evidence had been relevant, the district court would have abused its discretion in admitting it because its prejudicial nature greatly outweighed its probative value, see Fed.R.Evid. 403.

" 'Relevant evidence' means evidence having any tendency to 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." Fed.R.Evid. 401. The government argues that the domestic violence evidence was relevant in three ways. First, it suggests, the entire line of questioning that began with Hands's statement that he had not carried a handgun since the sheriff took away his permit demonstrated the reasons underlying the sheriff's revocation of Hands's handgun permit, which in turn helped to show that Hands continued to carry a handgun after the revocation.14 This argument simply does not make sense: the record reveals no potential connection between the reasons underlying the revocation and Hands's subsequent gun-carrying habits.15

Second, the government argues that the spousal abuse evidence was relevant because it contradicted the testimony of Doris Hands. This evidence could serve no such impeachment purpose, however, because it did not contradict Doris Hands's testimony: nothing she said on the stand conflicted with evidence that her husband had abused her. The judge stated at sidebar that the evidence of domestic abuse impeached her testimony because she had "presented herself as a dutiful wife who stayed at home all the time and had nothing to do but look after her dear husband."16 Our review of the transcript, however, shows that Doris Hands gave no testimony about her relationship with her husband and did not say or imply that she was "dutiful." During oral argument and in its brief to this court, the government contended that the evidence impeached Doris Hands's testimony in a second way, because she had stated or implied that she "never saw her husband commit any illegal behavior."17 This account distorted her testimony; although she stated that she had never witnessed her husband engaging in any drug use or drug dealing, no one asked her, and she said nothing, about whether she knew if her husband had engaged in any other illegal behavior. The evidence therefore could not have served to impeach Doris Hands.

Finally, the government asserts that the evidence was relevant because it suggested that Hands might have been lying when he stated the reasons for the permit revocation. Otherwise irrelevant evidence sometimes may be admissible when used to impeach a witness's testimony. "Although it is not one of the ... permissible purposes [listed in Fed.R.Evid. 404(b) for introducing evidence of a criminal defendant's other bad acts], an attempt to impeach through contradiction a defendant acting as a witness is indisputably a legitimate reason to introduce evidence of other crimes or wrongs." United States v. Copelin, 996 F.2d 379, 382 (D.C.Cir.1993), overruled on other grounds by United States v. Rhodes, 62 F.3d 1449, 1454 (D.C.Cir.1995), vacated, 517 U.S. 1164, 116 S.Ct. 1562, 134 L.Ed.2d 662 (1996). In this case, however, the entire line of questioning, beginning with the government's query as to the permit revocation, was irrelevant; the government could not bootstrap irrelevant evidence into the trial by using it to impeach the answers to irrelevant questions. See United States v. Reed, 700 F.2d 638,...

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