United States v. George Griffin

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
• Decided: February 24, 2025
• Docket: 24-2416
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

NOT PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT _______________

No. 24-2416 _______________

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

v.

GEORGE GRIFFIN, Appellant _______________

On Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware (D.C. No. 1:23-cr-00033-001) District Judge: Honorable Richard G. Andrews _______________ Submitted Under Third Circuit L.A.R. 34.1(a) on February 19, 2025

Before: CHAGARES, Chief Judge, and BIBAS and RENDELL, Circuit Judges

(Filed: February 24, 2025) _______________

OPINION* _______________

BIBAS, Circuit Judge.

A jury convicted George Griffin of drug and gun crimes. Griffin says some of the trial

evidence against him should not have been admitted. We disagree.

* This disposition is not an opinion of the full Court and, under I.O.P. 5.7, is not binding precedent. Police started investigating Griffin for drug dealing in June 2022. On August 3 and

September 6, as police watched, an informant made two controlled buys of methampheta-

mine from him. Police also had a court order to trace Griffin’s phones’ location. Griffin

was traveling often from his home in Maryland to Frank White’s apartment in Delaware,

making a trip two days before the second buy. Three days after the second buy, police

watched Griffin go into White’s apartment, come out, drive away, drive back to White’s

apartment, and then start fiddling under the hood of his car. As he then started to drive away

again, police arrested Griffin. In the engine compartment of his car, they found a sock filled

with 125 grams of cocaine; a later search of the car also turned up a cell phone that had

text messages mentioning street terms for meth. They also arrested White, who consented

to an apartment search and directed police to a chest and cardboard box in his bedroom.

The chest held three guns; half a pound of meth; a vacuum sealer with matching bags; and

Griffin’s paystub, court papers, and father’s wallet. The box contained a rifle.

Griffin was charged with possessing with intent to distribute cocaine and meth and

being a felon in possession of a gun. At trial, White testified that he was storing the chest

and box for Griffin. DNA found on three of the four guns matched Griffin; none of the guns

had DNA matching White. Griffin’s main defense was that White alone had possessed the

guns and meth in the bedroom. Over Griffin’s objection, the court admitted evidence of the

two controlled buys, while offering a standard limiting instruction to mitigate the risk of

unfair prejudice. The jury convicted Griffin on all counts. He now appeals, challenging the

admission of the controlled buys and other evidence.

2 To the extent that Griffin properly objected to the District Court’s evidentiary rulings,

we review for abuse of discretion. United States v. Titus, 78 F.4th 595, 601 (3d Cir. 2023).

Griffin argues that the probative value of the controlled-buy evidence was substantially

outweighed by the danger of unfairly prejudicing the jury. Fed. R. Evid. 403. But the pro-

bative value, as Griffin himself concedes, is that it helps show that he knew of and con-

trolled the meth in White’s bedroom. And the record shows that the District Court balanced

that value against the danger of unfairly prejudicing the jury. The court explained why the

controlled-buy evidence risked little additional prejudice beyond that already posed by the

other, unobjected-to evidence: the DNA, White’s testimony, and Griffin’s text messages

about dealing meth right around times when he visited White’s apartment. The court also

gave the jury a standard limiting instruction, warning it against inferring that Griffin had a

propensity to commit crime. And Griffin rightly concedes that, apart from the balancing of

probative value and prejudice, the controlled-buy evidence satisfied the other requirements

for admission under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b). United States v. Caldwell, 760 F.3d

267, 277–78 (3d Cir. 2014). So we cannot say that admitting this evidence was an abuse of

discretion.

Griffin also claims that the District Court should have excluded other evidence as too

prejudicial: that Griffin owned six phones, that the government had gotten a court order to

access each phone’s location, that none of the phones listed Griffin as a subscriber, that

police targets often have phones subscribed to other people, and that the government was

tracking the location of Griffin’s car. Fed. R. Evid. 403. Griffin insists that he objected to

this evidence at trial, but his objection did not cover much of this evidence. He also filed a

3 motion in limine that arguably covered this evidence. Even if Griffin’s objections were

adequate, admitting this evidence was not an abuse of discretion. The evidence was proba-

tive because it explained how police knew Griffin’s location, which showed that Griffin

often visited White’s apartment while he was selling drugs, which in turn made it more

likely that the drugs and guns found in White’s apartment belonged to Griffin. And its pro-

bative value was not substantially outweighed by unfair prejudice. Any prejudice would

have come from suggesting that Griffin was a drug dealer. But the jury was also directly

told that Griffin had sold meth to two informants, evidence that was separately and properly

admitted. The phone and tracking evidence at worst insinuated what the jury was told

directly. So any prejudice was minimal.

Because the District Court properly admitted all this evidence, we will affirm.