## Facts

- A resident in the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe’s East Housing community requested increased patrols after reporting Harold Drapeau, Jr. and others might return and cause a disturbance.
- Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Officer Marlin Robert Mousseau, Jr. responded; his patrol vehicle’s video camera and a remote microphone recorded portions of the encounter.
- BIA Officer Marty Foote stopped three individuals matching the description; Drapeau ran to a white vehicle and drove toward East Housing, and Foote relayed this to Mousseau.
- Mousseau drove to Drapeau’s residence, saw people and a vehicle matching the description, and activated recording equipment.
- Two individuals entered the residence and a woman ran behind the house; Mousseau pursued, threatened to use a taser, and arrested her for eluding under tribal law.
- The arrested woman was Mitzi Medicine Crow, Drapeau’s wife; she appeared intoxicated.
- As Mousseau moved Medicine Crow toward his patrol vehicle, she pulled away and moved toward the house; Drapeau approached and a physical struggle followed.
- Drapeau was charged and convicted by a jury of assaulting, resisting, or impeding a federal officer resulting in bodily injury, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1) and (b).
- Drapeau argued he acted in self-defense and sought to introduce tribal resolutions describing alleged prior violence or excessive force by Mousseau; testimony indicated Drapeau learned of the resolutions only after the incident, and the district court excluded them.
- The district court sentenced Drapeau to 27 months’ imprisonment and three years of supervised release; the written judgment included supervised-release conditions that Drapeau claimed were added after oral pronouncement.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence was sufficient to sustain a conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1) and (b) and to permit the jury to reject Drapeau’s self-defense claim.
2. Whether excluding tribal resolutions and related evidence about Officer Mousseau’s alleged prior misconduct was an abuse of discretion.
3. Whether the district court unlawfully imposed additional supervised-release conditions after orally pronouncing sentence.

## Decision

- The Eighth Circuit affirmed the conviction and sentence.
- The court held the evidence, viewed in the government’s favor, allowed a reasonable jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Drapeau assaulted a federal officer, caused bodily injury, and did not act in lawful self-defense.
- The court held exclusion of the tribal resolutions was within the district court’s discretion because Drapeau did not know of them at the time, they functioned largely as impermissible propensity material and raised evidentiary concerns, and any probative value was substantially outweighed by risks of confusion and prejudice.
- The court held the written judgment permissibly clarified or implemented supervised-release conditions consistent with the oral sentence and did not impermissibly increase the sentence.

## Legal Principles

- In reviewing denial of a Rule 29 motion, an appellate court views the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict and affirms if a reasonable jury could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
- A federal self-defense theory depends on the defendant’s reasonable perception of necessity at the time and requires proportional force; the jury may reject self-defense based on recordings and witness testimony.
- Evidence offered to support self-defense by showing a victim’s violent character has limited relevance when the defendant lacked knowledge of the alleged prior acts at the time of the encounter.
- Courts may exclude victim-character or prior-acts material that functions as propensity evidence, is not presented in a permissible form under the Federal Rules of Evidence, or whose probative value is substantially outweighed by risks of unfair prejudice, confusion, or collateral mini-trials (Rule 403).
- A written judgment may clarify or detail supervised-release conditions that are consistent with the oral pronouncement; impermissible changes occur when written terms conflict with or materially expand the orally imposed sentence.

## Conclusion

The Eighth Circuit upheld Drapeau’s § 111 conviction and sentence, concluding that the recorded and testimonial evidence permitted the jury to reject self-defense, that the district court properly excluded post-incident tribal resolutions as minimally relevant and unduly distracting, and that the written judgment’s supervised-release conditions were permissible clarifications consistent with the sentence announced in court.


United States v. Drapeau, 644 F.3d 646 (8th Cir. 2011)