No. 20-2651 ___________________________

United States of America

Plaintiff - Appellee

v.

Caesar V. Vaca

Defendant - Appellant ____________

Appeal from United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri - Kansas City ____________

Submitted: December 15, 2021 Filed: July 1, 2022 ____________ Before LOKEN, SHEPHERD, and STRAS, Circuit Judges. ____________ STRAS, Circuit Judge.

Caesar Vaca lied to detectives when he told them he had never possessed a gun. It turned out that he had pleaded guilty to a crime more than 20 years earlier that involved the use of one. Was the prior conviction admissible? The district court1 said yes, and we affirm.

I.

After trying to break up a barroom brawl at PR’s Place, Roderick Brown decided to call it a night. As he headed toward his car, a man approached, pointed a gun at him, and fired several times. Eyewitnesses identified Vaca as the shooter. One said she was “a hundred percent certain that [he] was the person who shot at Roderick Brown.” Others saw the shooter drive off in an expensive white sedan just like the one that Vaca owned.

For nearly eighteen months, detectives built a case against Vaca, including matching a shell casing found at the scene to a gun that he could have used. When they arrested him, he had five small baggies of cocaine and $1,874 in cash on him, along with a container of razor blades in the front passenger door of the car he was driving. With the evidence mounting, he waived his Miranda rights and decided to talk.

Upon learning that the arrest was for a weapons offense, Vaca asked, “felon in possession of a firearm?” A detective said yes. From there, he was evasive and denied ever driving a white luxury car or going to PR’s Place. When asked if he had ever possessed a firearm, he lied and said never. The statement was false because, more than 20 years before, he had pleaded guilty to aggravated battery after shooting a pregnant woman.

Vaca faced serious charges this time around, including possession of a firearm as a felon, 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(e)(1); and possession of cocaine with the intent to distribute it, 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(c). Separate trials led to two guilty verdicts, one for the felon-in-possession charge and another for possession of

1 The Honorable David Gregory Kays, United States District Judge for the Western District of Missouri.

-2- cocaine, when the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on the distribution element. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 14(a) (allowing the court to sever the counts). He received a total of 156 months in prison: 120 months for the felon-in-possession count and an additional 36 months for possessing cocaine.

II.

At the trial on the felon-in-possession charge, the district court allowed the jury to hear about Vaca’s aggravated-battery conviction, which by then was over 20 years old. We review evidentiary rulings like this one for an abuse of discretion and will “revers[e] only when an improper evidentiary ruling affected the defendant’s substantial rights or had more than a slight influence on the verdict.” United States v. Anderson, 783 F.3d 727, 745 (8th Cir. 2015) (quotation marks omitted).

Generally speaking, evidence of a “crime, wrong, or act,” Fed. R. Evid. 404(b)(1), falls into one of two categories. The first is “intrinsic evidence,” by which we mean that the bad act its