## Facts

- Myshawn Bonds was charged with two 2015 bank robberies and convicted by a jury of bank robbery under 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a).
- The district court sentenced him to 60 months’ imprisonment and three years’ supervised release.
- The prosecution relied in part on latent fingerprint evidence from an FBI examiner, who testified that Bonds’s fingerprints appeared on demand notes used in both robberies.
- The examiner used the ACE-V latent-print method (analysis, comparison, evaluation, and verification).
- Bonds sought to impeach the fingerprint evidence by introducing details of the FBI’s erroneous 2004 identification of Brandon Mayfield in a terrorism investigation, arguing it showed ACE-V could produce serious mistakes.
- The district court permitted cross-examination about ACE-V’s reliability, including error rates and criticisms of latent fingerprint analysis, but excluded detailed evidence about the Mayfield episode as more distracting and prejudicial than probative under Federal Rule of Evidence 403.
- Bonds appealed, arguing that excluding the Mayfield evidence violated the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause.

## Issues

1. Whether excluding detailed evidence of the FBI’s Mayfield misidentification, while allowing other attacks on ACE-V, violated the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause.
2. Whether the exclusion was an abuse of discretion under Federal Rule of Evidence 403.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit affirmed the conviction.
- The court held the Confrontation Clause was not violated because Bonds had a meaningful opportunity to cross-examine the fingerprint examiner and challenge ACE-V’s reliability through other evidence.
- The court held the district judge acted within Rule 403 discretion by excluding the Mayfield episode due to risks of unfair prejudice, juror confusion, and time-consuming distraction.
- The court rejected Bonds’s attempt to distinguish precedent based on the examiner’s unit affiliation, reasoning that “guilt by association” did not justify limiting Rule 403 discretion.

## Legal Principles

- The Confrontation Clause guarantees an adequate opportunity to cross-examine adverse witnesses; it does not require admission of a defendant’s preferred impeachment item if other effective avenues of impeachment remain available.
- Under Federal Rule of Evidence 403, a court may exclude impeachment evidence when its probative value is substantially outweighed by unfair prejudice, confusion of issues, or waste of time, including when it would trigger a mini-trial over a collateral, emotionally charged incident.
- A trial court may allow general challenges to a forensic method (e.g., error rates, studies, methodological criticisms) while excluding a high-profile prior error offered chiefly for its emotional impact rather than incremental probative value.

## Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit upheld the district court’s decision to bar detailed evidence about the Mayfield misidentification because Bonds was still permitted substantial cross-examination and other reliability attacks on ACE-V, and the Mayfield episode posed significant Rule 403 risks that the district judge could reasonably deem to outweigh its limited added value.


United States v. Bonds, 922 F.3d 343 (7th Cir. 2019)