Opinion ID: 622371
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Discussion of Brother’s Guilty Plea

Text: The Colorado Court of Appeals reasoned that a prompt curative instruction corrected any prejudice from the improper discussion of the guilty plea; the district court also noted that there was overwhelming evidence of guilt. 1 R. 137; Valenzuela, 2011 WL 4369206, at . Mr. Valenzuela argues that no instruction could effectively cure the reference to his brother’s plea, and that any error could not be harmless because the jury was bound to speculate that his brother pled to first-degree murder. Aplt. Br. 4(a)-(c). This presumes that jurors would ignore express instructions to disregard the statement, which is not legally supportable. Penry v. Johnson, 532 U.S. 782, 799 (2001) (appellate courts presume that jurors follow instructions).