United States v. Constance F. Cunningham

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• explaining that propensity evidence and motive evidence overlap when the crime is motivated by a taste for engaging in the crime or a compulsion to engage in the crime, like an addiction, rather than for some other advantage to which the crime is instrumental
• explaining that propensity evidence and motive evidence overlap when the crime is motivated by a taste for engaging in the crime or a compulsion to engage in the crime, like an addiction, rather than for some other advantage to which the crime is instrumental
• explaining that propensity evidence and motive evidence need not overlap when, for example, past drug convictions are used to show that a defendant in a robbery No. 06-1007 5 case is an addict and his addiction is offered as the motive for his robbery
• finding that propensity and motive evidence do not overlap when the other-act evidence shows a “desire for pecuniary gain or for some other advantage to which the crime is instrumental in the sense that it would not be committed if the advantage could be obtained as easily by a lawful route”
• discussing generally how propensity and motive evidence often overlap
• describing the potential “overlap between propensity and motive”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).