United States v. Rojas, No. 15-1546 (8th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseDefendant was found guilty of several charges related to his use of counterfeit credit cards. The court concluded that, even assuming arguendo that the district court erred by permitting a special agent's testimony regarding whether certain conduct constituted the crime of identity theft, defendant failed to show that the error affected his substantial rights. The court also concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion by allowing the Government to impeach his testimony with the credit and debit cards found in his wallet and with the rebuttal testimony of the special agent where the Government introduced the cards only to impeach defendant's claims that he did not have criminal intent and that he did not understand the difference between gift cards and credit cards. The court rejected defendant's remaining arguments and affirmed the judgment.
Court Description: Gruender, Author, with Murphy and Beam, Circuit Judges] Criminal case - Criminal law. Assuming for the sake of argument that the district court erred by permitting a law enforcement officer to testify that use of a credit card without the owner's permission was identity theft, the error was did not affect defendant's substantial rights and was not plain error; the district court did not err in permitting the government to impeach defendant's testimony by admitting credit cards found in his wallet and by permitting rebuttal evidence from the agent in the case regarding the cards, as the court specifically instructed the jury it could only consider this evidence for the limited purpose of impeaching defendant's testimony that he did not understand credit cards and that he lacked criminal intent.
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