Opinion ID: 200773
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: the vouching claim

Text: 17 Next, the appellant complains that the prosecutor was guilty of vouching for the government's witnesses. This complaint focuses on the following passages of the prosecutor's rebuttal argument: 18 &#x2022; You think, and think about this. If they were all going to get up and make up a story, wouldn't it have been a better story? Couldn't have Joelle come in here and made it a better story? That every day he was at the point, I saw Julio come in with Paquito with all of the bags of heroin. Wouldn't that make a better story? Couldn't Nazario have said: I saw Paquito, Goyito. I saw Goyito; I saw the money being passed. 19 &#x2022; [I]f Goyito has nothing to do with Paquito and his group, why would he participate in the killing of Saul Perez? Let's go over this, Joelle is in prison, and he doesn't come out till 1999. Wouldn't it have been a better story to say that Goyito (spoke in Spanish), that he had shot Saul? Wouldn't that be a better story, wouldn't it, to put the gun in his hand? 20 Since the appellant's plaints are raised for the first time on appeal — he interposed no contemporaneous objections to these comments — our review is for plain error. Under that grueling standard, we can reverse only if the appellant demonstrates (1) that an error occurred (2) which was clear or obvious and which not only (3) affected the defendant's substantial rights, but also (4) seriously impaired the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. United States v. Duarte, 246 F.3d 56, 60 (1st Cir.2001). We find no error here, plain or otherwise. 21 A prosecutor improperly vouches for a witness when she places the prestige of her office behind the government's case by, say, imparting her personal belief in a witness's veracity or implying that the jury should credit the prosecution's evidence simply because the government can be trusted. See United States v. Figueroa-Encarnación, 343 F.3d 23, 28 (1st Cir.2003). Such tactics are not to be condoned. They tilt the scales of justice, risk prejudicing the defendant, and carry the potential for distracting the jury from its assigned task of assessing credibility based solely on the evidence presented at trial and the demeanor of the witnesses. 22 We do not think that the statements by the prosecutor, quoted above, constituted vouching or were otherwise improper. As this court explained in United States v. Rodríguez, 215 F.3d 110, 123 (1st Cir.2000), an argument that does no more than assert reasons why a witness ought to be accepted as truthful by the jury is not improper witness vouching. Here, the prosecutor was merely asking the members of the jury to use their common sense in evaluating the witnesses' testimony. She neither expressed her personal opinion regarding the veracity of any witness nor implied that Irizarry should be trusted because of some connection to the government. 23 Moreover, the quoted statements were a logical counter to the assertions of defense counsel, made in summation, that various government witnesses had fabricated their testimony because they wanted the appellant behind bars and would stop at nothing to put him there. We typically cede prosecutors some latitude in responding to defense counsel's allegations of fabrication. See, e.g., United States v. Mejia-Lozano, 829 F.2d 268, 274 (1st Cir.1987). How much leeway should be accorded may well depend on the circumstances (the prosecutor's statements would comprise an odd, and perhaps dubious, argument if there were no charge of fabrication or something of like nature). Even then, however, the statements — though possibly questionable on other grounds — would not amount to vouching. 24 There is dictum inimical to this view in United States v. Auch, 187 F.3d 125, 131-32 (1st Cir.1999), which was embraced in United States v. Martínez-Medina, 279 F.3d 105, 119-20 (1st Cir.2002). We disclaim that dictum. Auch, like United States v. Sullivan, 85 F.3d 743, 750-51 (1st Cir.1996), rests on an understandable misreading of United States v. Manning, 23 F.3d 570, 572-73 (1st Cir.1994). In Manning, this court condemned as vouching a passage containing a similar argument — that a detective who testified for the prosecution would have told a more damaging story had he been prone to fabricate — but the vouching label was in fact directed only to the prosecutor's tail-end assertion that government witnesses do not lie. Id. at 572. Because the characterizations contained in Auch and Martínez-Medina are dictum, this panel is not obliged to adhere to them. See Kosereis v. Rhode Island, 331 F.3d 207, 213 (1st Cir.2003). We are at liberty to correct the misunderstanding and now do so. Those statements are not good law.