Opinion ID: 2994362
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: 2d 774, 785 (7th Cir. 1992), we shall confine

Text: our discussion to the one line of argument that Adeniji objected to at trial. While laying out the evidence against Adeniji and her co-defendants in closing, the government referred repeatedly to telephone conversations between Adeniji and her co-defendants. The assertion that Adeniji was conferring by phone with Adediran and Allismith was based, of course, on the telephone records that reflected the many calls between numbers associated with Adeniji and with her co-defendants. But Adeniji argues, as she did (unsuccessfully) to the district court, that because the telephone records relied upon by the government do not reveal either the content of the conversations or the speakers, it was improper for the government to assert that Adeniji was a party to any of the telephone calls. The government may properly put before the jury the inferences that one can reasonably draw from the evidence, however, United States v. Ward, 211 F.3d 356, 365 (7th Cir. 2000), and for that reason we find nothing improper in the prosecutor’s argument. See, e.g., United States v. Poole, 207 F.3d 893, 899 (7th Cir. 2000) (first step in assessing whether prosecutor committed misconduct in closing argument is to examine objected-to comment in isolation to determine whether it was improper). Records that reflect calls to and from telephone numbers associated with the participants in a criminal scheme permit the inference that the participants were in telephonic contact with one another; and where, as here, the timing and frequency of the calls coincide with key events in the scheme, one may reasonably infer that the participants were consulting one another in regard to those events. See, e.g., United States v. Magana, 118 F.3d 1173, 1202 (7th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 522 U.S. 1139, 118 S. Ct. 1104 (1998), quoting United States v. Garcia, 35 F.3d 1125, 1129 (7th Cir. 1994); United States v. Knox, 68 F.3d 990, 999 (7th Cir. 1995), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 1119, 116 S. Ct. 926 (1996); and see United States v. Theodosopoulos, 48 F.3d 1438, 1451 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 871, 116 S. Ct. 191 (1995) (collecting cases). Of course, it is theoretically possible that persons other than the defendants were parties to the telephone calls at issue in this case, and even if the defendants themselves were conversing, they were not necessarily speaking about the scheme to defraud Motorola. But it would have been reasonable for the jury to infer that that these calls reflected conversations between Adeniji and her co-defendants about the nuts and bolts of the effort to defraud Motorola. And because the jury was entitled to draw that inference, it was entirely appropriate for the prosecutor to argue that inference in his closing remarks.