Opinion ID: 698644
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Largest drug conspiracy

Text: 64 In the beginning of his closing argument, the prosecutor stated: 65 Now, ladies and gentlemen, obviously as you have heard, this is, indeed, a sad occasion when you have a history of a family that were [sic ] nourished from the womb and has been dealing in narcotics in Washington, D.C. on a scale larger than anything that we have heard about in the history of this particular city. 66 XIV J.A., 3/29/90 Tr. at 12. At this point various counsel for the defense objected, and the district court overruled their objections. Id. The prosecutor then continued: 67 The scale of this narcotic trafficking which made in the millions of dollars ... is of overwhelming magnitude. 68 Id. at 12-13. Appellants argue that these statements were improper because they were not supported by evidence in the record and because they were intended to arouse the passions of the jury. 69 We find no reversible error. The prosecutor's statement that the narcotics trafficking was of an overwhelming magnitude did nothing more than invite the jury to draw a reasonable inference based on common knowledge and the evidence concerning the quantity of drugs involved in the conspiracy. The prosecutor went too far, however, when he asserted that the drug operation was the largest in the history of the District. He had not introduced any evidence to support the charge. Nevertheless, we find the risk of prejudice to be insignificant. The scale of the drug trafficking was not central to the prosecution, and the government's evidence of appellants' involvement in the charged drug distribution conspiracy was sufficiently strong to persuade us that the case was not so close or the convictions so uncertain that the improper remark prejudiced appellants. Moreover, the district court mitigated whatever impact the erroneous statement might have had by repeatedly instructing the jurors to disregard the character of the indictment's charges, to decide the case based on the evidence alone, and to remember that [t]he arguments of counsel are not evidence. XIV J.A., 3/30/90 Tr. at 107. In light of these instructions and the strength of the government's evidence, we conclude that the prosecutor's improper statement does not warrant reversal of the convictions.