drug-traffickingThe Defendant Samuel Richardson was charged with possession with intent to distribute cocaine base in the Federal Court in Bay City Michigan. At trial the government sought to use Richardson’s 1998 state conviction for Delivering less than 50 grams of cocaine under Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b) which allows other bad acts evidence to show that the Defendant had the same intent to distribute cocaine. The court noted that they have in the past allowed prior distribution evidence in to demonstrate an intent to distribute. But in this case, all the prosecution sought to introduce was the conviction which was over 12 years old (the trial was in 2011). Richardson will get a new trial because on February 6, 2015 the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that this admission of evidence was not proper. The prosecution failed to establish that the 1998 offense and the instant offense were sufficiently similar. there was no evidence that it had any similarity, only the conviction offense was similar and that is not enough. Therefore the court ruled that just because a person was once a convicted drug dealer does not mean they are always a drug dealer.