United States v. Fraser, 448 F. 3d 833 (6th Cir. 2006) is a prosecution for a check fraud scheme. The federal government prosecutor introduced excerpts from a book the defendant had written that detailed a virtually identical scheme. The 6th Circuit affirmed the conviction. The Court held that there was no abuse of discretion in admitting the evidence as proof of the defendant's intent. However, it was plain error to give a limiting instruction that the evidence could be used to prove, "motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity or absence of mistake or accident," because there was no issue concerning motive, opportunity or identity. The error was harmless, however, because the other listed purposes overlapped with intent, there was no showing that consideration of the book permitted any unfair inferences concerning identity, motive, or opportunity, and the instruction carefully addressed avoiding the propensity inference.
GREGORY CHANDLER, Attorney at Law
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