Opinion ID: 183018
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Cumulative error holding

Text: Cumulative error justifies reversal only when errors so fatally infect the trial that they violated the trial's fundamental fairness. Fields, 483 F.3d at 362 (quotation omitted). A reviewing tribunal must consider each such claim against the background of the case as a whole, paying particular weight to factors such as the nature and number of the errors committed; their interrelationship, if any, and combined effect; how the district court dealt with the errors as they arose (including the efficacyor lack of efficacyof any remedial efforts); and the strength of the government's case. United States v. Sepulveda, 15 F.3d 1161, 1196 (1st Cir.1993). To support its holding, the majority relies primarily on the three purported errors discussed above. At best, it has identified two unobjected-to instances in which the jury instructions could have been improved, neither of which comes close to reversible error and one of which is irrelevant to the remaining charge. None of the three purported errors was more than weakly prejudicial, if at all. There are no serious errors to cumulate, and so the doctrine has no place. It is not meant to bootstrap a series of close calls or non-prejudicial errors into reversible constitutional error. [22] Even assuming that errors occurred and that they were prejudicial, they do not clear the high bar this court has imposed on the use of a remedy of last resort. We have repeatedly emphasized that the cumulative error doctrine necessitates reversal only in rare instances. [23] Its application is especially uncommon when the government presents substantial evidence of guilt. [24] The doctrine justifies reversal only in the unusual case in which synergistic or repetitive error violates the defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial. That did not happen here. The purported errors were not interrelated, and the majority has not come up with a convincing argument that they were in any way synergistic or self-multiplying. Perhaps most tellingly, the majority has not cited a single instance in which this courtor any otherhas reversed for cumulative error on such scattered and insubstantial putative errors. This court has been careful to limit reversals for cumulative error because the doctrine is necessarily amorphous and context-specific. It serves as a judicial safety valve for trials so infected by unobjected-to or harmless error that the reviewing court lacks faith in the jury's verdict. It was never intended to correct mere imperfection. The Federal Reporter is replete with cases in which we have declined to reverse for cumulative error, although some error did occur. [25] The cases in which we have reversed for cumulative error present strikingly different circumstancesthe errors were either overwhelming or genuinely synergistic. [26] This case is not just near the line. It is far from it, and the reversal here will be taken as a significant expansion of the doctrine.