## Facts

- A law-enforcement officer approached Ralph Emeron Taken Alive II to arrest him for public intoxication in Indian country.
- The officer claimed Taken Alive resisted arrest by grabbing the officer’s throat and pushing him against a patrol car before fleeing and being subdued.
- Taken Alive claimed the officer used excessive force (twisting his arm, slamming his head into the patrol-car door, and striking him), and that Taken Alive responded defensively before fleeing and later being handcuffed.
- Taken Alive was charged in federal court with unlawfully resisting or assaulting a law-enforcement officer.
- Taken Alive asserted self-defense at trial, contending the officer was the initial aggressor and that any force Taken Alive used was a justified response to excessive force.
- Taken Alive sought to introduce reputation evidence that the officer was aggressive and violent.
- The district court excluded the officer-reputation evidence under Federal Rule of Evidence 403, reasoning it would be unfair to admit it while excluding evidence of Taken Alive’s prior assaults on officers (inadmissible propensity evidence under Rule 404(b)).
- The jury convicted Taken Alive.

## Issues

1. Whether the district court abused its discretion by excluding, under Rule 403, defense reputation evidence of the officer’s violence that was otherwise admissible under Rule 404(a)(2)(B) to support a self-defense theory.
2. Whether the exclusion, if erroneous, was harmless given the credibility dispute central to the self-defense claim.

## Decision

- The Eighth Circuit reversed the conviction and remanded for further proceedings.
- The court held the officer’s reputation for violence was admissible under Rule 404(a)(2)(B) because it was pertinent to Taken Alive’s self-defense claim.
- The court held the district court misapplied Rule 403 by excluding the evidence to avoid perceived unfairness arising from the government’s inability to introduce Taken Alive’s prior violent acts as propensity evidence.
- The court found the error was not harmless because the case turned on conflicting accounts of the encounter and the excluded evidence bore directly on who was the aggressor and whether force was excessive.

## Legal Principles

- Under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(a)(2)(B), a criminal defendant claiming self-defense may introduce evidence of a pertinent character trait of the alleged victim, including reputation evidence for violence, to support the claim that the victim was the aggressor or used excessive force.
- Rule 403 permits exclusion of relevant evidence only when its probative value is substantially outweighed by dangers such as unfair prejudice, confusion, or waste of time.
- A court may not use Rule 403 to “equalize” the Rules’ asymmetric treatment of character evidence by excluding defense-favored victim-character evidence merely because the defendant’s prior violent acts are inadmissible propensity evidence.
- When a self-defense case depends heavily on credibility between the defendant and the alleged victim, erroneous exclusion of admissible victim-character evidence may require reversal because it can affect the verdict.

## Conclusion

The Eighth Circuit ruled that excluding the officer’s violent-reputation evidence to avoid asymmetry between admissible victim-character evidence and inadmissible defendant-propensity evidence was an improper use of Rule 403, and it reversed because the exclusion likely affected the jury’s evaluation of the self-defense claim.


United States v. Taken Alive, 262 F.3d 711 (8th Cir. 2001)