Opinion ID: 2975648
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Cell phone comments

Text: In response to the objection of Roach and Sheldon to the government’s cell-phone comments, the court cautioned the jury as follows: “[Y]ou’ve heard the proof. It’s for you to decide the facts. If the lawyers misstate the facts, that’s up to you to decide.” The defendants assert on appeal that the government’s comments about the cell phone in Gomez’s car improperly argued facts not in the record. But the primary focus of their argument is that the government’s comments necessarily suggested to the jury that the only way that the defense investigator would have known to question Gomez about the borrowed cell phone was if Roach and Sheldon were the officers who made the stop and told the investigator about having seen the cell phone. Furthermore, Roach and Sheldon contend that these comments were “tantamount to a false claim that the defense team was accessories [sic] after the fact to the crime allegedly committed.” They claim that the government’s argument, when considered in the context of both trials, constitutes reversible error. The government, on the other hand, contends that its reference to the cell phone was made in response to Roach’s own closing argument, in which Roach’s counsel stated as follows: When did they start talking about cell phones? What did they tell you? Only after two months ago, after they testified, did it come up about cell phones. That’s important. What they are wanting to do is fix the Gomez/Vasques [sic] problems, and that is that they don’t even know when an alleged stop happened. Sheldon’s counsel likewise referred to the cell phone in his closing argument, stating that “Agent King had never heard of the cell phone being thrown or anything until recently.” A review of the evidence offered at the second trial undercuts the defendants’ position. Gomez testified that just prior to the traffic stop by Roach and Sheldon, he had received a phone call on the borrowed cell phone. He also testified that a call came in as Roach and Sheldon approached Nos. 06-6266/6298/6564 United States v. Roach et al. Page 7 his van during the stop. Although the cell phone was not in Gomez’s name, his coworker, Sandra Boles, testified that she had loaned him an extra phone on her cell-phone account and that he paid her for the calls that he made when she received her phone bill. Through the testimony of Boles and of an employee for Boles’s cell-phone service provider, the government introduced phone records for the cell phone to corroborate that it was in fact in use at times that were consistent with the government’s time line of events for the traffic stop. The district court considered Roach’s and Sheldon’s claims that the cell-phone comments constituted reversible error in its denial of their motion for a new trial. Concluding that “[t]he statements by the government attorney during the closing argument were not a misstatement of facts in the record,” the court found that “[t]he evidence in the record was simply that the first disclosure of the cell phone came because of a question asked by Hackett.” The court determined that the government’s argument “was not a misstatement and was certainly a reasonable inference based on the evidence in the record.” Moreover, the court found that the defendants had invited the government’s argument by making “Gomez’[s] credibility concerning the cell phone an issue in the case in the first place.” The court concluded that the comments, even if improper, were not “so pronounced and persistent that [they] permeate[d] the entire atmosphere of the trial,” (quoting United States v. Mahar, 801 F.2d 1477, 1503 (6th Cir. 1986)), but rather were confined to “a few short sentences in a lengthy closing made after four days of trial.” Viewed in context, the government’s comments about the cell phone constituted approximately five sentences in its rebuttal closing argument. The defendants argue that the statements nonetheless infected the jury’s deliberations and thus prevented Roach and Sheldon from receiving a fair trial. To be sure, the government may not rely on prejudicial facts not in evidence when making its closing arguments. United States v. Wiedyk, 71 F.3d 602, 610 (6th Cir. 1995). But the evidence tends to support the government’s argument in the present case. Gomez testified that the first person to ask him about a cell phone was “a man with a beard,” whom he later identified as Brian Hackett, an investigator for the defense. As the district court noted, the record demonstrates that the defendants “vigorously and continually attacked the credibility of the victims” over the course of the entire trial. The government’s comments regarding the cell phone and the credibility of Gomez and Mejia, even if not invited, drew a reasonable inference based on the evidence given at the second trial. See United States v. Hickey, 917 F.2d 901, 904 (6th Cir. 1990) (concluding that the prosecutor’s statement during summation that the defendant was actively involved in drug-dealing was “a permissible argument based on the evidence”). As Roach and Sheldon acknowledge, their defense theory was that they were not the ones who made the traffic stop, if such a stop indeed occurred at all. The government’s comments responded to that defense by suggesting that Roach and Sheldon must have made the stop in order for Hackett, their defense investigator, to know to ask Gomez about whether he had a cell phone. On appeal, the defendants contend that the district court’s conclusion that they had invited the government’s comments essentially punished them for “[t]he presentation of a defense [that] was nothing more than zealous representation of their clients.” This conclusory argument ignores the district court’s reasoned response to the defendants’ motion for a new trial and its analysis of their prosecutorial-misconduct claim. Roach and Sheldon also raise on appeal what the district court characterized as “the somewhat puzzling argument, without elaboration, that ‘[t]he government’s closing argument is a step beyond making improper comments on a defendant’s decision to remain silent, conduct which is prohibited by the Fifth Amendment.’” As the district court properly noted, “[t]he prosecution’s statement[s] in this case cannot reasonably be interpreted to have even been an indirect reference to the decision of these defendants to invoke their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent and refuse to testify at trial.” We agree with the reasoning of the district court and accordingly adopt its analysis of the defendants’ perfunctory Fifth Amendment argument. Nos. 06-6266/6298/6564 United States v. Roach et al. Page 8