United States v. Lomas, No. 15-3194 (8th Cir. 2016)
Annotate this CaseDefendant was found guilty of bank robbery and sentenced to 240 months in prison. The court concluded that the district court did not err in admitting testimony that he had discarded a firearm several weeks before the credit union robbery where evidence of this prior bad act is relevant and any potentially prejudicial effect of the challenged testimony did not substantially outweigh its probative value. The court also concluded that the district court did not abuse its discretion by denying defendant's motion for a mistrial where the district court properly instructed the jury to disregard the "shots fired" testimony; the district court did not err in admitting alleged hearsay testimony of several witnesses describing statements made by codefendant, who did not testify at trial; the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting the testimony of codefendant's teenage daughter who stated that she was present when defendant and codefendant discussed robbing a bank and that she was present in the motel room after the robbery; the court rejected defendant's remaining evidentiary arguments; and, in light of the district court's unequivocal statement that it would impose a 240-month sentence notwithstanding its application of the career offender provision, any error in applying the career offender provision is harmless. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.
Court Description: Wollman, Author, with Riley, Chief Judge, and Murphy, Circuit Judge] Criminal case - Criminal law and sentencing. No error in admitting evidence that defendant had discarded a gun several weeks before the bank robbery involved here as it went to explain why he was seeking a gun shortly before the robbery, and the district court gave a proper limiting instructions concerning the testimony; the court properly instructed the jury to disregard a police officer's comments about a "shots fired" report and no mistrial was required; hearsay challenges rejected; any error in admitting a police officer's testimony regarding the likely meaning of certain terms in defendant's text messages was harmless in light of other evidence regarding the language and the overwhelming evidence that defendant committed the robbery while displaying an imitation firearm; any error in sentencing defendant under the career-offender provision was harmless in light of the court's alternative findings with respect to the appropriate sentence.
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