Opinion ID: 2790833
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Instruction to Hold Foley Accountable

Text: Foley also avers that the prosecutor engaged in misconduct by instructing the jury to hold Foley accountable. In his closing argument, Foley's lawyer asserted both a good faith defense premised on Reed's deceitfulness and a materiality defense premised on the lenders' willingness to advance loans despite their total disregard for the truthfulness of the information in the applications. Defense counsel posed the following rhetorical question to the jury: Will you permit subprime lenders . . . and the executives who ran those firms into the ground while making millions of dollars to continue to portray themselves as victims of mortgage fraud, or will you declare that [the prosecutor] and his team have fallen for a great misdirection campaign, joining forces with subprime members . . . to go after closing lawyers, glorified paper pushers like Mr. Foley? Among other things, defense counsel also alluded to the fraud convictions of various lending company executives. 11 Foley attempts to bolster his argument by pointing to the district court's statement that it was a little concerned about the reference to when Mr. Robbins supposedly got an admission from Mr. Foley as to whether he knew and when he knew that the funds were not forthcoming. But that remark was made immediately after Foley's objection to the alleged misstatement and thus before the court had reviewed the transcripts of Robbins's testimony and of the prosecutor's closing argument. After conducting such a review, the district court found no mischaracterization, as it explained in denying Foley's motion for a new trial. -28- In rebuttal, the prosecutor responded: Ultimately, what you heard in a fairly lengthy talk with you was that everybody should be held responsible except Mr. Foley. All of those lenders ought to be held responsible, but not Mr. Foley. All of those loan processors ought to be held responsible, but not Mr. Foley. Lisa Reed ought to be held responsible, and she is, but not Mr. Foley. Sean Robbins ought to be held responsible, and he is. But not Mr. Foley. The argument is that there was a very large scale across the industry in the go-go days, a lot of fraud, and people ought to be held responsible for that. Like the executives ought to be held responsible, and counsel made a big point of how they were held responsible. They were prosecuted. Then he tells you you have to stop letting those people be victims. Well, which is it, Mr. Goldstein [defense counsel]? They're responsible, and they got prosecuted, or they're victims? You can't argue it both ways. The fact is they are among the people who have been prosecuted out of the mortgage fraud in this country. And now it's time for Mr. Foley to be held accountable by you on the charges in the indictment based on all he knew and what he did. Following rebuttal, Foley objected to the remark that it was time for Mr. Foley to be held accountable by you. The government responded that this commentary was permissible as a direct response to what [defense] counsel had gone on at length about who else was responsible and ought to be held responsible, and the district court agreed. We, too, find no impropriety in these remarks. As the government recognized below, we have typically cede[d] prosecutors -29- some latitude in responding to defense counsel, distinguishing between [t]he Government's response to statements made by defendant's counsel and statements made by the Government without provocation. United States v. Skerret-Ortega, 529 F.3d 33, 40 (1st Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks omitted) (citation omitted). Given Foley's strategy of shifting blame to Reed and to the lenders, the government's rebuttal was within the latitude we recognized in Skerret-Ortega.12