United States v. Torrez, No. 17-3743 (8th Cir. 2019)
Annotate this CaseThe Eighth Circuit affirmed defendant's conviction for murder in furtherance of a drug trafficking conspiracy and other related charges. The court held that the district court did not err by admitting evidence of defendant's prior conviction and supervised release status; the district court did not plainly err by admitting a lab report without the analyst's testimony because defendant's substantial rights were not affected in light of the other evidence; the district court's finding that Lorie Ortiz was a coconspirator was neither an abuse of discretion nor clear error; there was no error in admitting a witness's testimony about being motivated to cooperate by someone else's cooperation; and defendant's counsel agreed to swap the juror at issue with the alternate juror and thus the juror substitution claim failed.
Court Description: Grasz, Author, with Gruender and Benton, Circuit Judges] Criminal case - Criminal law. No error in admitting evidence of a prior conviction and defendant's supervised release status as the evidence was admissible under Fed. R. Evid. 404(b)(2); admission of a lab report without the analyst's testimony was not plain error as defendant's substantial rights were not affected given the other evidence; no error in admitting a co-conspirator's out-of-court statements given the evidence of the speaker's involvement in the charged drug conspiracy; the record did not support defendant's argument that a question about another person's possible cooperation someone implicated his cooperation and amounted to evidence regarding his guilty plea negotiations.
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