Opinion ID: 2264028
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The impropriety of the government's opening statement.

Text: The essence of Najafi's complaint is that, in his opening statement, the prosecutor asserted facts as to which he had no evidence, and that the prosecutor's misstatements potentially prejudiced the jury against Najafi. It is improper for counsel to misstate the evidence, McGrier v. United States, 597 A.2d 36, 48 (D.C.1991), or to refer in an opening statement to evidence without a good faith basis for believing that such evidence will be introduced. Frederick v. United States, 741 A.2d 427, 440 n. 25 (D.C.1999) (citing ABA STANDARDS FOR CRIMINAL JUSTICE 7.4 (The Defense Function) (1993)). Although the trial judge ruled otherwise, we are satisfied that the prosecutor's repeated assertions at the beginning of his presentation that Najafi was conducting a drug-selling business went well beyond any evidence that the government expected to introduce or could introduce. Especially in light of the manner in which the government's claim was presented, we conclude that the quoted portions of the opening statement were palpably improper. In the first few paragraphs of the passage at issue, see p. 106, supra, the prosecutor asserted that Najafi was running or conducting a business, or selling drugs for a profit, no fewer than six times. The prosecutor also made it clear that the business which he asserted that Najafi was running consisted of more than a single sale of two ecstasy pills. He stated, on the contrary, that  while running his business, [Najafi] sold ecstasy tablets to an undercover police officer. The constant repetition of this theme at the very outset of the case could mean only one thing  the prosecutor, an officer of the court, was telling the jurors that Najafi was an entrepreneur in the drug business, and that he was caught while selling but one sample of his wares. First impressions are not easy to dispel. [8] Whatever the prosecutor's subjective motivation may have been, the inevitable consequence of his opening salvo was to give the jury the impression that the case involved someone in the drug business  a person who had committed other crimes, in addition to the single sale at issue in the case  and that Najafi was not merely, for example, an individual who had opportunistically sought to turn Officer McDonald's request to buy ecstasy pills to his own advantage by making a single isolated sale. For aught that the record shows, however, Najafi may have been just such an opportunist, and no more. We cannot agree with the government's theory, accepted by the trial judge, that Najafi was running a business because he allegedly made one sale of two pills. This interpretation cannot logically be reconciled with the allegation that Najafi made the sale while running his business. Moreover, one does not run a business by engaging in a single transaction. Finally, the prosecutor's speedy and incessant repetition of the theme  boom boom boom boom boom boom  in the very first sentences with which he began his initial address to the jury demonstrates beyond peradventure that this particular phrasing was important, even critical, to his presentation, and that he expected the jury so to regard it. [9] Under these circumstances, and weighing the potential prejudice against the comparatively minor burden that selection of a new jury would have placed on the court, parties, counsel, and jurors, we conclude that a mistrial was warranted and that the judge abused his discretion in refusing to declare one. In Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88, 55 S.Ct. 629, 79 L.Ed. 1314 (1935), the Court stated: The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor  indeed, he should do so. But while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one. It is fair to say that the average jury, in a greater or less degree, has confidence that these obligations, which so plainly rest upon the prosecuting attorney, will be faithfully observed. Consequently, improper suggestions, insinuations and, especially, assertions of personal knowledge are apt to carry much weight against the accused when they should properly carry none. See also Dyson v. United States, 418 A.2d 127, 130 (D.C.1980) (quoting Berger ). The conduct in Berger was more reprehensible than the prosecutor's comments in this case, but the principles of that decision nevertheless apply. We recognize, and take seriously, the Supreme Court's admonition that the court should not attach the most sinister possible interpretation to a prosecutor's remarks. Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 643-44, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 40 L.Ed.2d 431 (1974). The challenged portion of the government's opening statement, however, was not made in the heat of battle, when lapses in syntax or in precision of expression are not surprising, and, in some instances, more excusable. The portrayal of Najafi as a man who was running a drug-selling business was not improvised on the spur of the moment, nor was it vague or ambiguous. Rather, it was obviously planned in advance. We do not think that the prosecutor struck a fair blow that can or should be countenanced under Berger. We emphasize that this kind of exaggeration and distortion  repeated characterization of a single alleged sale of two ecstasy pills as running a [drug-selling] business  has no place in a courtroom of the District of Columbia.