Opinion ID: 50003
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Marie Jean-Baptiste’s Claim of Mistrial

Text: At trial, Dr. Rey, a government witness on voodoo, stated that Marie’s voodoo defense was “very stretched.” On Marie’s objection, the district court instructed the jury to disregard all of Dr. Rey’s testimony, and later narrowed the exclusion to encompass only the offending statement. On appeal, Marie argues that Dr. Rey’s non-expert assessment of her argument effectively tarred her defense as “bogus” and that the district court therefore should have granted her motion for a mistrial. 6 Reviewing for an abuse of discretion, United States v. Garcia, 405 F.3d 1260, 1272 (11th Cir. 2005), we conclude that the court properly refused Marie’s request for a mistrial. In United States v. Warren, 772 F.2d 827, 839 (11th Cir.1985) (internal quotation and citation omitted), we held that improper evidence may be cured by a corrective instruction unless “the evidence is so highly prejudicial as to be incurable by the trial court's admonition.” Id. The district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that Dr. Rey’s statement did not rise to this exceptional level. Moreover, the fact that the court modified the scope of its evidentiary exclusion, striking only a portion of Dr. Rey’s testimony rather than all of it, hardly minimizes the ultimate curative effect of its instruction. If any “confusion” actually arose from the court’s revision, we do not see why the government, rather than Marie herself, would have benefitted from it. AFFIRMED. 7