Opinion ID: 2806519
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The prominence and timing of the comments

Text: also point to prejudice. The prosecutor’s inflammatory remarks were also prominent in the context of the entire trial. The prosecutor repeated the statements throughout the closing rebuttal, and they were among the last words the jurors heard before they were sent to deliberate. The presentation of improper material at the end of trial “magnifie[s]” its prejudicial effect because it is “freshest in the mind of the jury when [it] retire[s] to deliberate.” Crotts v. Smith, 73 F.3d 861, 867 (9th Cir. 1996) (internal citation and quotation marks omitted), superseded by statute on other grounds as stated in Van Tran v. Lindsey, 212 F.3d 1143 (9th Cir. 2000); see also Sanchez, 659 F.3d at 1261 (observing that improper prosecutorial comment in a closing rebuttal was particularly problematic because “it was the last argument the jury heard before going to the jury room to deliberate,” thus “increas[ing] the risk that the inflammatory statement would improperly influence the jurors”).