USCA11 Case: 22-13904 Document: 35-1 Date Filed: 11/01/2023 Page: 1 of 9
[DO NOT PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 22-13904
Non-Argument Calendar
____________________
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
versus
DENNIS LEE LINE,
Defendant-Appellant.
____________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Middle District of Florida
D.C. Docket No. 6:22-cr-00050-WWB-DCI-1
____________________
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2 Opinion of the Court 23-13904
Before NEWSOM, GRANT, and LAGOA, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Dennis Line, a convicted sex offender, appeals his conviction
for attempted enticement of a minor to engage in sexual activity.
On appeal, Line argues that the district court abused its discretion
when it admitted evidence of his former teaching career. After
careful review, we affirm.
I.
A grand jury returned an indictment charging Line with one
count of attempting to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity,
in violation of
18 U.S.C. § 2422(b). Before trial, Line moved in
limine to exclude “the fact that Mr. Line was formerly employed as
a schoolteacher.” His argument was twofold. First, he contended,
“the fact that [he] was a previously a teacher is not relevant to
prove any material fact at issue in this case.” And second, Line pos-
ited, even if his teaching career were relevant, “it must be excluded
because its probative value is substantially outweighed by the dan-
ger of unfair prejudice.” The district court granted the motion in
part and denied it in part, allowing the government to introduce
Line’s statement to law enforcement where he mentions the fact
that he was a teacher and never had any issues, but requiring the
government to redact certain portions of a written statement that
were cumulative. At trial, the government elicited the following
facts.
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23-13904 Opinion of the Court 3
Line, a fifty-three-year-old man, created a profile on a dating
application called Badoo. On the Badoo profile, he said that his
name was Stephen and described himself as fifty years old. From
“Stephen’s” account, Line struck up a conversation with “Amber,”
whose profile said she was a forty-one-year-old woman. After they
started chatting, Amber asked Line, “[Y]o[u] ok if I am younger[?],”
to which he replied, “Absolutely okay.” Amber then told Line that
she was only fifteen years old and a freshman in high school. Line
replied, “Yikes. That’s young,” but he kept chatting with Amber
anyway, at one point urging her, “You can at least tell me that
you’re 18.” In reality, Amber was an Orange County Sheriff’s Of-
fice detective, conducting a child-predator sting operation.
Line pressed Amber about her sexual experience, asking
“What have you done? You’re pretty young,” and “How many po-
sitions did you try?” He then told her that he could “teach [her]
stuff. . . . anything [she] want[s],” and described specific sex acts
that he enjoyed. Line acknowledged that asking Amber for oral sex
would be “illegal, girl, as much as I would love it,” but then assured
her that if they got together to “experiment and have a little fun,”
he would “be patient. And gentle. And careful. And amazing. . . .
I would use plenty of protection. Don’t worry about that.” Line
encouraged Amber to send him pictures of herself, and finally prop-
ositioned her “let’s definitely meet tonight.” After Amber agreed
to meet up, Line reassured her, saying, “I don’t think we should,
like, do it do it yet. I want to go easy and slow with you. . . . Maybe
some kissing, touching, oral?” The two then made a plan to meet
that night near a local Boston Market restaurant and continued to
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4 Opinion of the Court 23-13904
discuss the various sex acts Line wanted to perform with Amber.
They also had a three-minute phone call during which Line con-
fessed that his “biggest worry” was that Amber was “setting [him]
up . . . because I’m old and you’re young and I could get in serious
trouble for coming over and seeing you. . . . If the cops are there,
I’m screwed for the rest of my life.”
Around 11 p.m. on February 9, 2022, Line pulled up to Bos-
ton Market as planned, where Orange County Sheriff’s Office dep-
uties were waiting to arrest him. During a post-Miranda interview,
Line admitted that he was “pretty sure” he knew why he was being
questioned and that he had been “texting somebody that I
shouldn’t have been texting with; a minor, stupid, like, I have some
issues.” One of the detectives asked what he meant by “minor,”
and Line specified that “the girl said she was 15.” Although Line
claimed he “would never have done anything” if he had actually
met “Amber,” he acknowledged that he had discussed meeting up
with her to kiss and have oral sex and admitted that his conduct
was illegal. He also conceded that it “looks really bad” that, while
he had participated in sexually flirtatious conversations with sev-
eral adults he met on dating apps, he had only ever tried to meet
the one person he believed to be a child.
Despite all these concessions, Line still insisted (to the detec-
tives who interviewed him and again at trial) that “it’s all fictional
to me, it’s all, like, not real.” “It’s a game of attention,” he said,
“the game of being at a different place, making your life different.”
Similarly, during his interrogation, Line wrote a letter to his wife,
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23-13904 Opinion of the Court 5
apologizing for his actions and explaining that he was using dating
apps to make friends and to get attention and that talking to
strangers he met online was “almost like a video game.” When the
interrogating detective asked Line if this was “a pattern or some-
thing that you’re going to do continuously, preying on, on chil-
dren,” Line invoked his twenty-eight-year teaching career, swore
he “never had an issue” in all those years, and implored the detec-
tive to “look at my record.”
A few days after his arrest, Line posted a public message on
his Facebook account, directed at his former colleagues. In that
post, Line confessed that he “made an unthinkable choice a few
days ago, that “[i]t was the most embarrassing and humiliating
thing I have ever done,” that he was “responsible for what [he] did
and must now pay the consequences,” and that he was “truly
sorry.” Also in that post, Line identified by name a list of schools
where he had worked, addressing directly the “students, parents,
and teachers” of those schools, and stating, “I know that I have
tainted your opinions of me. I deserve your hatred.”
After two days of evidence and just over an hour of deliber-
ations, the jury returned a guilty verdict. Line was later sentenced
to 120 months’ imprisonment and ten years of supervised release.
This appeal follows.
II.
“We review evidentiary rulings only for an abuse of discre-
tion.” Sowers v. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.,
975 F.3d 1112, 1122 (11th
Cir. 2020). “An abuse of discretion arises when the district court’s
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6 Opinion of the Court 23-13904
decision rests upon a clearly erroneous finding of fact, an errant
conclusion of law, or an improper application of law to fact.”
United States v. Smith,
459 F.3d 1276, 1295 (11th Cir. 2006) (quoting
United States v. Baker,
432 F.3d 1189, 1202 (11th Cir. 2005)). “Be-
cause ‘we recognize a significant range of choice for the district
court on evidentiary issues,’ our review of such rulings is very lim-
ited and ‘we defer to the district court’s decisions to a considerable
extent.’” United States v. Akwuba,
7 F.4th 1299, 1313 (11th Cir. 2021)
(alterations adopted) (quoting United States v. Brown,
415 F.3d 1257,
1264–65 (11th Cir. 2005)). We need not reverse a conviction if the
evidentiary error “had no substantial influence on the outcome and
sufficient evidence uninfected by error supports the verdict.”
United States v. Fortenberry,
971 F.2d 717, 722 (11th Cir. 1992); accord
Goulah v. Ford Motor Co.,
118 F.3d 1478, 1483 (11th Cir. 1997) (“We
will not overturn an evidentiary ruling unless the moving party
proves a substantial prejudicial effect.”). We determine whether
an error had substantial influence on the outcome by weighing the
record as a whole. See United States v. Montalvo-Murillo,
495 U.S.
711, 722 (1990).
III.
Evidence is relevant if “it has any tendency to make a fact
more or less probable than it would be without the evidence” and
“the fact is of consequence in determining the action.” Fed. R.
Evid. 401(a)-(b). Generally, all relevant evidence is admissible at
trial unless provided otherwise by federal statute, the United States
Constitution, the Federal Rules of Evidence, or the Supreme
Court. Fed. R. Evid. 402.
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23-13904 Opinion of the Court 7
Relevant evidence “may” be excluded “if its probative value
is substantially outweighed by a danger of one or more of the fol-
lowing: unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury,
undue delay, wasting time, or needlessly presenting cumulative ev-
idence.” Fed. R. Evid. 403. Exclusion under Rule 403 is an extraor-
dinary remedy that courts should employ “only sparingly since it
permits the trial court to exclude concededly probative evidence.”
Smith, 459 F.3d at 1295 (quoting United States v. Norton,
867 F.2d
1354, 1361 (11th Cir. 1999)). Accordingly, we view the disputed
evidence “in a light most favorable to its admission, maximizing its
probative value and minimizing its undue prejudicial impact.”
Id.
(quoting United States v. Elkins,
885 F.2d 775, 784 (11th Cir. 1989)).
Unfair prejudice is defined as “relevant evidence to lure the fact-
finder into declaring guilt on a ground different from proof specific
to the offense charged.” Old Chief v. United States,
519 U.S. 172, 180
(1997).
Line falls far short of meeting his heavy burden on appeal.
First, we conclude that the district court did not err in allowing the
government to elicit evidence of Line’s teaching career because
that evidence was, in fact, relevant and not unduly prejudicial.
Among other elements, the government was required to prove
that Line knowingly attempted to entice fifteen-year-old “Amber”
to engage in sexual activity. See
18 U.S.C. § 2422(b). “We have
long held that the term ‘knowingly’ means that the act was per-
formed voluntarily and intentionally, and not because of a mistake
or accident.” United States v. Woodruff,
296 F.3d 1041, 1047 (11th
Cir. 2002). Line’s decades-long career as a teacher—during which
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8 Opinion of the Court 23-13904
he worked with minor students—is probative of his knowledge of
appropriate boundaries with children and, therefore, to his
knowledge of the wrongfulness of his conduct with Amber. In par-
ticular, Line’s invocation of his reputation as a teacher, including
that he “never had an issue” in all those years and his request that
the detectives “look at [his] record,” all suggest that he knew how
to interact properly with minors because he had, in fact, acted ap-
propriately around them all his life. In other words, Line’s teaching
career is relevant to show that he did not attempt to entice a minor
by accident or mistake. We are thus not persuaded by Line’s con-
clusory argument that this evidence was unduly prejudicial be-
cause, upon hearing he was a former teacher, the jury would be left
to wonder if he had previously harmed other minors. To put it
plainly, the government elicited no evidence, and made no argu-
ment suggesting, that Line had committed other crimes against
children. We thus conclude that the district court did not abuse its
discretion in admitting evidence of Line’s teaching career because
that evidence was probative of his mens rea and was not unduly
prejudicial.
Second, even if the district court had erred in admitting evi-
dence of Line’s career, “[a] district court’s erroneous admission of
evidence does not warrant reversal if the purported error had no
substantial influence on the outcome and sufficient evidence unin-
fected by error supports the verdict.” Fortenberry,
971 F.2d at
722. Here, the “evidence uninfected by error” is overwhelming:
Amber repeatedly told Line that she was a minor and a freshman
in high school; Amber’s profile featured two pictures that appeared
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23-13904 Opinion of the Court 9
to be of a minor (one of which was a prom-style portrait of a girl
with braces); Line asked Amber to “at least tell me that you’re 18.
LOL,” revealing both that he knew she was under eighteen years
old and that it was, therefore, wrong to engage with her; Line told
both Amber and the police that he was in a sexless marriage and
was bored; Line told the detective, during his interrogation, “That
should have been done. When she said she was 15, I knew”; and
Line clearly expressed remorse for, in his own words, “the most
embarrassing and humiliating thing [he] ha[d] ever done” and “the
lowest point in [his] life,” and he publicly stated that he was “re-
sponsible for what [he] did and must now pay the consequences.”
This evidence amply supported his conviction. We also note that
Line used the evidence of his teaching career in his own favor in
closing, telling the jury, “[i]t’s helpful to Mr. Line that he was a
teacher because, had this been what he was doing, what he was
planning on doing, was he a danger in going after 15-year-old girls,
there would be footprints in the sand. There simply would.
There’s no way he could have survived 28 years in school if his ex-
citement was going after 15-year-old girls.” All of this is to say,
even if the evidence of Line’s job were admitted in error, Line has
failed to show substantial influence on the outcome of his trial.
* * * *
Accordingly, for the reasons stated, we affirm Line’s convic-
tion.
AFFIRMED.
