Opinion ID: 577009
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Prosecutor's Rebuttal Argument

Text: 37 Nickens contends that his conviction on all counts should be reversed because the prosecutor, in her rebuttal argument, injected her personal beliefs about Nickens' guilt, suggested an alliance between the prosecutor and the jury, and made damaging accusations about Nickens' role in a fictional drug conspiracy. As no contemporaneous objections were made to these statements, we again review only for plain error. United States v. Moreno, 947 F.2d 7, 8 (1st Cir.1991); United States v. Rodriguez-Estrada, 877 F.2d 153, 158 (1st Cir.1989); United States v. Mejia-Lozano, 829 F.2d 268, 272 (1st Cir.1987). While we disapprove of many of the prosecutor's statements, we do not think they amounted to plain error. 38 Nickens first complains that the prosecutor continuously stated her personal beliefs about his credibility and other critical facts in the case throughout her rebuttal argument. Moreover, Nickens contends that the prosecutor suggested an alliance between herself and the jury by repeatedly using the word we in her statements. The prosecutor opened her rebuttal argument stating I am sorry to say that I do not agree with anything [defense counsel] said. Recounting various aspects of Nickens' testimony, and defense counsel's argument, the prosecutor stated that Nickens' testimony as to what happened to him is totally unbelievable and it is not logical and it does not make any sense whatsoever; and that things do not happen that way.... I submit to you that is not possible and that is not believable. At other points in the argument the prosecutor ended her review of the evidence with statements such as [h]e thinks that we are going to believe him. We are not going to believe him; can we really believe that after he lost his glasses ... he went with four students ... that doesn't make sense; and can we really believe that this man went to a hotel gift shop with one of those students ... and that gift shop did not sell to anybody who was not a hotel guest? Finally, expressing her disbelief of Nickens' testimony more blatantly, the prosecutor suggested that Nickens could not explain why his insulin was in the bags that he claimed were not his [b]ecause those are his bags. And sometimes when you are lying, even though you have provided a perfect story, sometimes it does come out that something does not make sense. She also stated this man is not really blind. This man is not really telling the truth.... [h]e made-up that whole story so you could be misled. 39 This court has repeatedly stated that it is improper for a prosecutor to inject personal beliefs about the evidence into a closing argument. See, e.g., Mejia-Lozano, 829 F.2d at 273; United States v. Cresta, 825 F.2d 538, 555 (1st Cir.1987), cert. denied, 486 U.S. 1042, 108 S.Ct. 2033, 100 L.Ed.2d 618 (1988); United States v. Rosa, 705 F.2d 1375, 1379-80 (1st Cir.1983); United States v. Flaherty, 668 F.2d 566, 596-97 (1st Cir.1981). It is also inappropriate for a prosecutor to call defendant a liar. Rodriguez-Estrada, 877 F.2d at 159 (the prosecutor's obligation to desist from the use of pejorative language and inflammatory rhetoric is every bit as solemn as his obligation to attempt to bring the guilty to account.). There can be no doubt the prosecutor here violated these fundamental precepts. 40 Our mission, however, is not simply to decide whether the prosecutor's remarks were improper. Reversal is appropriate only if the improper remarks were so egregious as to amount to plain error. United States v. Young, 470 U.S. 1, 14, 105 S.Ct. 1038, 1046, 84 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985) (the dispositive issue under the holdings of this Court is not whether the prosecutor's remarks amounted to error, but whether they rose to the level of plain error when he responded to defense counsel); United States v. Maccini, 721 F.2d 840, 846 (1st Cir.1983). To constitute plain error the misconduct must be so egregious that it seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings. Young, 470 U.S. at 15, 105 S.Ct. at 1046. We evaluate the prosecutor's comments, moreover, not in sterile isolation, but within the framework and context of the actual trial. Rodriguez-Estrada, 877 F.2d at 159. 41 In this case, the tainted remarks appeared in the prosecutor's rebuttal to defense counsel's own inflammatory closing argument. Defense counsel had made the following statements at various points in his closing argument: 42 [defense's character witnesses] told you the truth about David. 43 what did the agents do? ... They came here and they tried to square his case away to get him convicted. They lied about him. 44 Ruiz came up here and said, 'oh David told me ... he had lost the key. Does that make sense.... Hey, that is a lie. Wouldn't agent Ruiz have put that in his report ...? Sure he would have. Man, that guy is an expert.... But you know why it is not here? Because he made that up to get this guy convicted. Are you going to let the government act that way? You shouldn't.... They have to come here with the truth. They can't come here to make up stories to get a guy in a prison. 45 Isn't that disgusting, that people would come to a court of law, agents ... would come to a court of law and make-up stories about David to convict him? I mean, you can't let them get away with it. 46 They lied, they made it up afterwards as they went. 47 You saw the way [defendant] testified. He is believable. 48 These remarks suffer from the same impropriety as did the prosecutor's rejoinder to them. Defense counsel indicated, as his own view, that the prosecution had conspired to railroad an innocent man, that the government witnesses were lying, that the prosecution's case was a fabrication, and that Nickens is believable. Counsel for both parties have an obligation to confine arguments to the jury within proper bounds, and defense counsel, no less than the prosecutor, must refrain from interjecting personal beliefs into the presentation of his case. Young, 470 U.S. at 8-9, 105 S.Ct. at 1043. 5 49 The overall prejudicial effect of the prosecutor's improper remarks must be evaluated in light of defense counsel's analogous impropriety in provoking them. In United States v. Young, the United States Supreme Court recognized the invited response or invited reply rule. Under this, if the prosecutor's remarks were 'invited,' and did no more than respond substantially in order to 'right the scale,' such comments would not warrant reversing a conviction. Id. at 12-13, 105 S.Ct. at 1045. Thus, we have held that a prosecutor deserves some leeway to respond to inflammatory attacks mounted by defense counsel. Rodriguez-Estrada, 877 F.2d at 158; see also Cresta, 825 F.2d at 556 (prosecutor is given somewhat greater leeway in rebuttal to rehabilitate his witnesses in response to defense counsel's inflammatory statements); Mejia-Lozano, 829 F.2d at 274; Maccini, 721 F.2d at 846 (prosecutor's improper statements must be viewed within the context of appellant counsel's own style and verbiage). Here, defense counsel's remarks set the tone for the prosecutor's rebuttal. In her initial closing argument, the prosecutor made none of the offensive comments complained of in her rebuttal. It was only after defense counsel, in his closing argument, repeatedly expressed his personal beliefs, accused prosecution witnesses of lying, and suggested a government conspiracy to convict Nickens that the prosecutor, by way of rebuttal, engaged in the same kind of inflammatory discourse. 50 Similarly, the prosecutor's references to Nickens' involvement in a sophisticated drug trafficking scheme--the source of Nickens' second objection to the prosecutor's rebuttal argument--were also invited by defense's discussion of the way drug traffickers operate. See Rodriguez-Cardona, 924 F.2d at 1154. During the course of his closing argument defense counsel stated: 51 Use your common knowledge, your common sense. Drug traffickers have been caught putting narcotics in vans, commercial airlines, cars that don't belong to them. That's nothing unusual.... And why do they do this? Of course. To avoid getting caught.... It's very logical for a trafficker to want to avoid placing himself in that jeopardy and letting someone else take the rap. And I submit to you that is exactly what's happened in this case. 52 But, you know, traffickers don't operate, you know in a likely fashion. They operate in a lot of different ways. They are people that have a lot of tricks ... and they take advantage of people. They use people.... 53 In her rebuttal, the prosecutor responded with the following statements: 54 [t]his man, the defendant is a drug trafficker, and he deals and he sells cocaine. This cocaine is part of his drug trafficking; ... 55 he goes to Quito, Ecuador, not for the mountains, not because it's beautiful, not because its peaceful. He goes to get the drug, and he goes to Madrid to sell the drug. He sells the drug in Madrid and comes back to Quito, because that is evidence in this case, he comes back to Quito ... and he is paid in cash or with cocaine so that he can go back to Los Angeles and sell it in Los Angeles.... 56 I submit to you that does make sense. And the defense counsel wanted an explanation and I gave it to him, and you must understand that is the way drug traffickers work, not Juan and Ricardo, 18 years, 19-year-old students who will give this unknown man $30,000 worth of cocaine so that he can disappear. 57 Nickens argues that the prosecutor's remarks went beyond the evidence, being suggestive more of facts known to the prosecutor than simply of inferences the jury might wish to draw from the evidence. Unfairness to Nickens was mitigated, however, by the fact that the prosecutor was responding to defense counsel's own off-record vouching for Nickens' scenario. That the prosecutor was responding is shown by her statement that she was giving defense counsel the explanation he was seeking. 58 Nickens would have us find plain error on the authority of United States v. Santana-Camacho, 833 F.2d 371 (1st Cir.1987). But the circumstances in that case were considerably more egregious and less excusable. In Santana-Camacho, the court found plain error where the prosecutor made a remark that was not made in response to any improper statement made by the defense counsel ... [it] lacked any basis in the evidence and, indeed, contradicted the evidence. Santana-Camacho, 833 F.2d at 375. Here in contrast, the prosecutor's overblown remarks were in response to overblown defense rhetoric. And they were not themselves lacking in any basis in the evidence. Id. Nickens' tickets established that his travel route was Los Angeles to Quito, Quito to Madrid, Madrid to Quito and Quito to Los Angeles. Moreover, the tickets from Los Angeles to Quito did not indicate that he had checked any baggage when he left Los Angeles, even though he had two suitcases with him when he left Quito. A jury might reasonably infer from such circumstances that drug trafficking was, indeed, Nickens' object. 59 We do not suggest that a prosecutor has license to respond in kind to a defense counsel's improper remarks. [T]wo wrongs do not make a right. Rodriguez-Estrada, 877 F.2d at 158; see also Young, 470 U.S. at 11, 105 S.Ct. at 1044. An appropriate remedy in such circumstances, which both parties failed to take, is a contemporaneous objection. Nevertheless, in light of defense counsel's own inflammatory and suggestive statements, the strength of the evidence against Nickens and the judge's clear instructions to the jury, 6 we hold that the offending conduct did not so poison[] the well that the trial's outcome was likely affected. Mejia-Lozano, 829 F.2d at 274. Under the circumstances, the prosecutor's remarks were not plain error.