Court Affirms Conviction of Man Who Robbed Clayton Bank

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday affirmed the convictions of a man who once robbed a Clayton bank despite his argument that a lower court erred by admitting evidence from another case in which he is a suspect, an opinion from the court states. At the same time, the appeals court chastised the U.S. District Court of Eastern Missouri for what it deemed an "abuse of discretion."

The document identifies Michael Wesley, a resident of East St. Louis, IL, as a career criminal. In 2010, he was convicted on two counts of bank robbery and two counts of brandishing a weapon in furtherance of a crime of violence in connection with two March 2009 bank robberies.

In one, more than $95,000 was taken from a Bank of America branch in Clayton. In the other, more than $10,000 was taken from a Commerce Bank branch in University City.

As a result, the district court sentenced him to 512 months in prison and five years of supervised release.

But Wesley appealed that sentence, along with his conviction and revocations of supervised release for two earlier criminal cases. He argued the district court erred by letting the government admit into evidence an automatic pistol found in his car and $14,000 found in his basement after his arrest. The government sought to use those items to link Wesley to the May 2009 robbery of a Regions Bank branch in Fairview Heights, IL.

The district court "decided to admit evidence of the Illinois robbery conditionally, subject to the court's ability to strike the evidence and instruct the jury to disregard it, if the government failed to 'connect up' the evidence to the Missouri robberies," the document states.

At a second pretrial hearing, the district court decided to exclude the evidence tied to the Illinois robbery.

After the trial began May 12, 2010, the court agreed to admit the money into evidence "because the money had not been conclusively linked to the Illinois robbery," the document states. It also allowed the gun because "although the robber appearing on the Missouri bank surveillance camera recordings, whom the government maintains is Wesley, carried a revolver, not an automatic like the one found in Wesley's car, the district court found the automatic conditionally relevant because it might have been used by one of the other Missouri robbers."

The appeals court found that the district court did not err in admitting the pistol because it left "the question of the automatic's relevance to the jury." But the appeals court found the district court committed an "abuse of discretion" by admitting the money into evidence as "unexplained evidence of wealth" but not an accompanying wrapper that had been initialed by a teller at the Illinois bank.

Finally, the appeals court stated, that error did not affect Wesley's substantial rights nor did it have more than a slight influence on the verdict.

"Because the other evidence of Wesley's guilt was overwhelming, we conclude Wesley was not prejudiced by the district court's evidentiary ruling," the opinion states.

An Oct. 3 trial is planned in the Illinois bank robbery case in which Wesley is a defendant.