the court's permission you can start this clock madam clerk go ahead wetherspoon complains of three variants of prosecutorial misconduct during closing argument on appeal precedent is clear this case regarding the actual argument made by the prosecutor on valjean is to simply combs deals with this this contention in the law enforcement officers will not risk their career by committing perjury by lying on the stand combs clearly indicates that that is improper is improper valjean it is process while misconduct combs also is an important case for me because it talks about other aspects that are important to my case  plain and clear this is not search this is that is the prosecutor so stating from his personal opinion that the police officers got on the stand and they told the truth to the prosecutor stating from his personal opinion objection to peter's earlier on i will note he says he told the truth in a handwritten statement that he gave on the morning on that morning he told the truth when he came to the grand jury under oath and he was in front of them when he was in front of you today he told the truth to you  that the prosecutor is not has no business informing the jury what his impression of the evidence well that's just the local way that people talk about this being the evidence in other words what i'm trying to underscore here is he didn't say it's my personal opinion whole area across from this topic during closing is a difficult area for prosecutors because they are held such high standards there's a valid basis for that and that is the prosecutor when he stands up there and from the jury is painted with this in premature of being a government representative the juries do look to the prosecutor for guidance and case law carefully to nice the contours of permissible argument they can make and many of the arguments that they make to a lay person do not seem to be improper technical letter of the law says this is improper was the jury told as jurors are that this is not evidence that this is just a discussion of the evidence in the case there was a general instruction that effect the boilerplate instruction given it was r that the civilian witnesses lied defense attorney did not argue directly with the officers like he strikes directly it's using strike directly you see they did not he did not argue directly did not argue directly that these the officers came up here and lied about mr weatherby makes no incriminating statements you know officers never saw him with a gun we have three individuals one gun in the car that mr weissman isn't even the owner of the car so the officers are not that important to us because all the officers do is essentially say we searched the car we found the it please the court my name is jeremy lin but i work the united states attorney's office for the district in nevada i want to make two points the beginning here first of all when looking at the entire record of evidence in this case and what was said by defense counsel throughout this trial want to address the three points that defense counsel raised first of all on the issue of whether we value the witnesses there's a number of different things that the defense did not talk about in his closing statement the came in here and told you the truth and that was a direct result of the cross examination of mr harris by defense counsel he went after his integrity he said that he went after that he was not someone who's is not being  defense counsel and i might add that was never objected to your honor when that statement was put forth by myself at the time of closing argument but but he was going after his credibility his own truthfulness at that time happens all the time go piece of evidence of course and you don't stand up and say ladies and gentlemen the jury i'm telling you there is no coercion and these guys didn't lie they were telling the truth if they weren't telling the truth they would lose their job i mean it seems to me you might twice i mean there's there's ten different instances of going after these officers credibility that's not the point point is how you respond of course they go after the office credibility this happens all the time but there are special rules for prosecutors that state say that you have to make make it clear that your personal opinion is not involved that you on behalf of the government are not crouching for the witnesses and there's not extra record material the shows are telling the truth you've got to be careful according to the rules to confine your observations to the record and to the evidence and to the reasonable inferences drawn therefrom and there's nothing in this record about people getting losing their pensions risking their livelihood stuff like that and that's the kind of common thing that you might talk about but there's nothing in the record about that i mean the vouching rules put a special obligation on prosecutors to be careful not to throw all the way to the government personally behind a witness but to come final remarks to the evidence that's the dangerous thing i believe in getting into all of this thing it sounds like you are personally standing up and vouching for the veracity of the witnesses you are i would agree with that that there was mild vows in there on behalf of the government it was in direct response on it but i would also argue that scenario you just game was never objected to so we look at the player standard here your hon or and we'll be happy to look at the plan or standard mr hood yes sir your honor the defense counsel talks about that somehow we inflame the jury by talking about punishment here and i want to talk about the two different occasions in defense closing argument they said your decision directly affects the life of a human being are you comfortable with that are you comfortable with affecting the life of a human being or you can call today tomorrow this wasn't just a casual comment this was yelled at the jury again that wasn't the only one it continued on taking away a man's liberty are you comfortable with that or you come to me that goes directly to punishment he went on to say be comfortable having these guys walk around with guns you didn't object to his argument he didn't get to your argument is there any foundation in the law that permits you to make that kind of argument  that well your honor when think comfortable is not really standard not being comfortable and everything but but it wasn't just being comfortable it was beyond it was talking about punishment you're going to let eight hundred years of democracy die because because you're directly affecting the liberty and the life of a human being you know don't fool yourselves you're taking away a man's liberty meanies it wasn't just one or two or three it was a whole slew of comments that were cast like mutually assured destruction between the soviet union and the united states you think the defense attorney is is is off the reservation so you respond with a nuclear attack i mean in the case law is pretty clear again that prosecutors have a tough a tough responsibility here they're governed by different rules and defense attorneys defense attorneys are expected to range far and wide an attack everything that moves the starting with justice sutherland's admonitions which i'm sure you've read  berger versus the united states is the government has a different obligation and so you can't respond to it for attack low blow for a low blow and the cases are pretty clear that it's not appropriate to tell the jury to convict somebody just to protect society you've got to tell the wasn't a nuclear response on our behalf it was simply a it was a normal response to what they said in making the jury still comfortable with taking a man's life and putting him in prison and there is that there is a there is a standard or normal people off the streets but your honor i don't i don't believe and i don't know all the facts of the case but i don't believe the type of statements made by defense counsel were similar in that case i mean these were these were statements made that needed to be responded to by the and that was your natural response was to put this stuff out there but that doesn't make it right because that was what you know up in your head or popped out of your mouth what you did basically was make parse you're saying he fought dirty but the government doesn't get the fight dirty back in your own i think it was i don't think we thought dirty i think we didn't cross that line i think when you look at what's said in all of these instances he was invited replying and it was it was it went up to the line but i don't think it crossed the line your honor i mean it was each instance that was put forth by the defense needed to be responded to an accurate way the last point i want to make the evidence was overwhelming in probably consistent about what happened on that night and she recanted the only thing she said she said her whole statement was absolutely true word for word except for the point in that statement said about the gun so i mean in looking at that evidence this is absolutely the evidence was absolutely overwhelming i think that's clear from the record all the way through this is another example of how important it is to how you do things as important as what you're doing and that thank you very much