UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee v. Rahmad Lashad GEDDES, Defendant-Appellant
No. 15-3731, No. 16-3898
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Submitted: October 21, 2016 Filed: January 3, 2017
844 F.3d 983
Anyway, as the government points out, even if the Court‘s discounting of the saving clause in Yankton Sioux could be understood to cast a shadow on New Town‘s reasoning, we reached the same conclusion in Duncan Energy Co. v. Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation without ever mentioning the saving clause. See Duncan Energy Co. v. Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation, 27 F.3d 1294, 1296-97 (8th Cir. 1994) (addressing challenges on the merits and concluding New Town was rightly decided). So regardless of whether New Town is still good law after Yankton Sioux, Duncan Energy unquestionably is.4
In short, our law is clear: New Town was just as much part of the Fort Berthold Reservation when Bear committed his crimes as it was in 1891. Bear was therefore properly subject to federal prosecution and the district court5 was right to keep Bear‘s case. See
is well established that while some such surplus land acts ” ‘freed ... land of its reservation status and thereby diminished the reservation boundaries,‘” others “‘simply offered non-Indians the opportunity to purchase land within established reservation boundaries.‘” Yankton Sioux, 522 U.S. at 343, 118 S.Ct. 789 (quoting Solem, 465 U.S. at 467, 470, 104 S.Ct. 1161).
Counsel who represented the appellant was Thomas C. Plunkett of Saint Paul, MN.
Counsel who represented the appellee was David Genrich, AUSA, of Minneapolis, MN.
Before MURPHY, GRUENDER, and SHEPHERD, Circuit Judges.
A jury convicted Rahmad Lashad Geddes of one count of aiding and abetting sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion; one count of aiding and abetting transportation with intent to engage in prostitution; and one count of being an armed career criminal in possession of a firearm. Geddes appeals a number of pre-trial, trial, and post-trial motions on which the district court1 ruled in favor of the prosecution. We affirm.
I.
On January 6, 2014, Geddes traveled from Eau Claire, Wisconsin to Duluth, Minnesota with a woman named Grace Schreiner. Schreiner was under the impression that they were traveling to St. Paul, rather than Duluth, to sell drugs as they had done in the past. After a brief sojourn in St. Paul, they drove to Superior, Wisconsin where they checked into a motel and had sex. Thereafter, the pair drove to Duluth, and Geddes picked up cocaine from a supplier. Throughout the remainder of this trip, Geddes was actively involved in selling cocaine, and Schreiner witnessed Geddes meet another woman to exchange cocaine for two handguns.
On January 7, they drove to Rochester, Minnesota to pick up Geddes‘s friend, Shannon Funk. On the return trip, Funk and Geddes proposed that Schreiner engage in prostitution upon arriving in Duluth. According to Schreiner‘s trial testimony, she felt she had to comply because she would not be able to return home if she refused. They checked into another Duluth hotel, and Geddes began cutting the quantity of cocaine he purchased into distribution amounts. Geddes and Funk created an advertisement on a website called Backpage.com with pictures of Schreiner and a telephone number to call, and Funk gave Schreiner a cellular phone on which to receive calls. This process culminated in Schreiner completing two transactions as a prostitute. In the first, she was paid to perform oral sex on one man at the hotel. Although the recipient was told this act would cost $120, he only left $20 on the table in the room. As a result of this discrepancy, Geddes slapped Schreiner four times in the face. The second act consisted of an encounter where a man came to the hotel and paid $20 but then left shortly thereafter without any sexual activity occurring.
Throughout the trip, Geddes refused Schreiner‘s requests to return home. The two finally returned to Eau Claire on January 14, 2014. Once Geddes left, Schreiner told her pastor what had occurred, and he called the police. Geddes was indicted on three counts: (1) sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion in violation of
Before trial, Geddes filed three motions relevant to this appeal. First, he moved to sever the sex trafficking counts from the firearm count, arguing that the two instances arose from different facts and would depend on different witnesses. The district court denied this motion. Second, Geddes moved to exclude testimony from the victim of his earlier conviction for terroristic threats. The government sought to introduce this evidence as being relevant
After a three-day trial, the jury found Geddes guilty of all three counts, and the district court sentenced him to 282 months imprisonment. He brought this appeal challenging all three of the above rulings and the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a conviction on Counts 1 and 2.
II.
A.
The first issue on appeal is whether the district court erred in denying the motion to sever the sex trafficking counts from the firearm count. This Court reviews the denial of a motion to sever properly joined counts for an abuse of discretion. United States v. Erickson, 610 F.3d 1049, 1055 (8th Cir. 2010). Two or more offenses may be joined for trial “if the offenses charged—whether felonies or misdemeanors or both—are of the same or similar character, or are based on the same act or transaction, or are connected with or constitute parts of a common scheme or plan.”
Given the district court‘s discretion under Rule 14, “we will not reverse unless the defendant shows an abuse of discretion resulting in severe prejudice.” United States v. Steele, 550 F.3d 693, 702 (8th Cir. 2008). “Severe prejudice occurs when a defendant is deprived of an appreciable chance for an acquittal, a chance that [the defendant] would have had in a severed trial.” United States v. Scott, 732 F.3d 910, 916 (8th Cir. 2013) (alteration in original) (quoting United States v. Taken Alive, 513 F.3d 899, 902 (8th Cir. 2008)) (internal quotation marks omitted). “[A] defendant cannot show prejudice when evidence of the joined offense would be properly admissible in a separate trial for the other crime.” Erickson, 610 F.3d at 1055. The evidence may be admissible because it “completes the story of the crime, or as evidence of a prior bad act of a similar nature admissible under Rule 404(b) of the Federal Rules of Evidence.” United States v. Brown, 653 F.3d 656, 662 (8th Cir. 2011) (citation omitted); see also United States v. Orozco-Rodriguez, 220 F.3d 940, 942 (8th Cir. 2000) (allowing testimony “because it related to the background and circumstances of the charged crimes [and] complete[d] the story of the crime or explain[ed] the relationship of parties or the circumstances surrounding a particular event” (internal quotation marks omitted)).
We find no abuse of discretion in the denial of severance of the firearm possession charge from the sex trafficking charges. All three counts involved a series of events that occurred between January 6 and January 14, 2014. The sex trafficking charges asserted, in short, that Geddes forced Schreiner to engage in prostitution during a trip to Duluth taken during the above dates. The firearm charge focused on a transaction witnessed by Schreiner during that trip in which Geddes exchanged cocaine for two handguns. Therefore, because Schreiner‘s testimony provided evidence on the entirety of the trip, “it is virtually certain” that her testimony
Geddes‘s primary argument on this point is that the jury was unable to compartmentalize the evidence related to the different counts. Severe prejudice can also occur where defendants “demonstrat[e] that their defense is irreconcilable with a codefendant‘s defense, or the jury will be unable to properly compartmentalize the evidence as it relates to the separate defendants.” United States v. Young, 753 F.3d 757, 777 (8th Cir. 2014), cert. denied sub nom. Mock v. United States, — U.S. —, 135 S.Ct. 1005, 190 L.Ed.2d 878 (2015). On the other hand, where “there [is] little possibility the jury was confused over which evidence related to which count,” no prejudice occurs to a defendant‘s right to a fair trial. United States v. Wilkens, 742 F.3d 354, 359 (8th Cir. 2014). The facts in this case are relatively straightforward, and this was not a case presenting a multitude of different defendants and charges. Geddes has failed to meet his burden of showing severe prejudice.
B.
Geddes next argues the district court erred in allowing the testimony of Nicole Meyer, his former girlfriend. During the trial, the prosecution presented Meyer‘s testimony concerning an incident in 2010 where Meyer confronted Geddes about a text message on his cellular phone. According to her testimony, the argument escalated and Geddes physically assaulted and threatened to kill her. Prior to Meyer taking the stand, the district court instructed the jurors that they should consider the evidence only if they determine the testimony to be more likely true than not. Further, the jury was instructed that if it found that the evidence met that standard, the jury could consider the testimony only on the issue of whether Geddes intended to force or coerce Schreiner to engage in prostitution. Finally, the court explicitly told the jury that it may not use the testimony as evidence Geddes committed the crime charged in the present case.
“We review the district court‘s admission of evidence of past crimes under
Our circuit “employ[s] a four-part test to determine whether a district court abused its discretion in admitting 404(b) evidence.” Williams, 796 F.3d at 958. Such evidence is admissible if “(1) it is relevant to a material issue; (2) it is similar in kind and not overly remote in time to the crime charged; (3) it is supported by sufficient
Geddes contends that the testimony fails to meet the first, second, and fourth prongs from the test set out above. We disagree and address each factor in turn. To convict Geddes on Count 1, the prosecution was required to prove that Geddes acted “knowing[ly] or in reckless disregard of the fact that means of force, threats of force, fraud, coercion, or any combination of such means would be used to cause [Schreiner] to engage in a commercial sex act.” See United States v. Campbell, 764 F.3d 880, 889 (8th Cir. 2014) (internal quotation marks omitted), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 135 S.Ct. 1514, 191 L.Ed.2d 448 (2015);
Next, the testimony was similar in kind and not overly remote in time to the crime charged. Meyer‘s trial testimony concerned an event in 2010 where Geddes physically abused and threatened her. “On the issue of similarity, our test merely requires that the prior acts are ‘sufficiently similar to support an inference of criminal intent.‘” Williams, 796 F.3d at 959 (quoting United States v. Walker, 470 F.3d 1271, 1275 (8th Cir. 2006)). Here, the events described by Meyer were sufficiently similar in substance to Schreiner‘s testimony about Geddes‘s threatening and physically abusive actions to satisfy this test. As for the time between the prior bad act and the charged offenses, we conclude that the passage of four years was insufficient to diminish the probative value of the evidence. See id. at 959-60 (allowing evidence of prior bad acts that occurred more than ten years before the charged offense).
Finally, the probative value of Meyer‘s testimony was not substantially outweighed by any prejudicial effect. “Though all
The district court did not abuse its discretion in allowing Meyer‘s testimony at trial.
C.
Geddes contends that the district court erred in allowing the prosecution to present expert testimony from Ann Quinn, a special agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Agent Quinn is a member of a human trafficking task force, and has done work in this area for roughly fourteen years. At trial, Agent Quinn testified from her training and experience on the operation of sex trafficking rings and the terms used therein. “We review the district court‘s decision to admit expert testimony for abuse of discretion, according it substantial deference.” United States v. Bailey, 571 F.3d 791, 803 (8th Cir. 2009). ”
Geddes assigns two points of error to this issue, and we disagree with both. First, he argues that the district court‘s decision not to hold a Daubert hearing was an abuse of discretion as a matter of law; however, as we have stated, “[t]here is no requirement that the [d]istrict [c]ourt always hold a Daubert hearing prior to qualifying an expert witness under
D.
Finally, Geddes attacks the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain his conviction on Counts 1 and 2. Our standard of review for challenging the sufficiency of the evidence has been well repeated:
We review de novo the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a conviction, viewing the evidence in a light most favorable to the verdict and accepting all reasonable inferences supporting the verdict. Furthermore, [w]e will overturn [Geddes‘s] conviction only if no reasonable jury could have found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The standard of review for sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenges is strict. [W]e consider the same quantum of evidence that was presented at trial, even if some of the evidence was improperly admitted. Finally, a victim‘s testimony alone can be sufficient to prove the sex crime in question.
United States v. Bell, 761 F.3d 900, 906-07 (8th Cir. 2014) (first and third alterations in original) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
To convict Geddes on Count 1, “the jury had to find he acted knowing[ly] or in reckless disregard of the fact that means of force, threats of force, fraud,
To convict Geddes on Count 2, the jury had to find that he “knowingly transport[ed] [Schreiner] in interstate or foreign commerce ... with intent that [she] engage in prostitution.”
The evidence was sufficient to support Geddes‘s conviction on both counts.
III.
For the reasons stated herein, we affirm Geddes‘s conviction.
SHEPHERD
Circuit Judge