3rd Circuit Finds That the Prosecution’s Use of a Defendant’s Alias in an Indictment or at Trial is Generally Permissible

Federal Rule of Evidence 403 states that 

The court may exclude relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of one or more of the following: unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay, wasting time, or needlessly presenting cumulative evidence.

So, is evidence that a defendant used an alias admissible or inadmissible under Rule 403? That was the question of first impression addressed by the Third Circuit in its recent opinion in United States v. Williams, 974 F.3d 320 (3rd Cir. 2020).

In Williams, “a federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania returned an indictment of twenty-one men from the South Side neighborhood of York, Pennsylvania.” Specifically,

The second superseding indictment included an alias, or street name, for each defendant. The one for  [Douglas] Kelly was “Killer.”…Early in the trial, his attorney filed a motion in limine objecting to the Government’s use of the alias as unfairly prejudicial because it suggested extrinsic evidence that Kelly had committed murder. The Government countered that certain witnesses knew Kelly only through his alias, and that it would use the nickname only to identify Kelly, thus preventing jury confusion. The District Court agreed with the Government. It also, at the conclusion of the trial, included a limiting instruction to the jury on this issue. 

After he was convicted, Kelly sought a new trial, arguing that the “probative value” of the nickname evidence was “substantially outweighed by a danger of…unfair prejudice” under Rule 403. The Third Circuit disagreed, finding that

Several of our sister circuits have long maintained that the prosecution’s use of a defendant’s alias in an indictment or at trial is permissible where the evidence is relevant-including for purposes of identifying the defendant-and does not result in unfair prejudice. See, e.g., United States v. Doe, 741 F.3d 217, 227 (1st Cir. 2013); United States v. Farmer, 583 F.3d 131, 144-47 (2d Cir. 2009); United States v. Emuegbunam, 268 F.3d 377, 394 (6th Cir. 2001); United States v. Delpit, 94 F.3d 1134, 1146 (8th Cir. 1996); United States v. Hines, 955 F.2d 1449, 1454 (11th Cir. 1992); United States v. Williams, 739 F.2d 297, 299-300 (7th Cir. 1984). We agree, and adopt this standard here.

The District Court’s judgment easily passes muster. Allen knew Kelly only by his nickname, and the District Court engaged in a reasonable balancing of the testimony’s relevance with the nickname’s potential to generate unfair prejudice. Kelly points to no instance where either Allen or a later witness in the same position was able to identify him by anything else, nor does he indicate any moment where the Government used the alias to do anything other than identify him in a witness’s testimony. Further, the District Court fortified its Rule 403 balancing by including the limiting instruction. We perceive no abuse of discretion in this course of events.

-CM