Opinion ID: 3160112
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Nelson’s Claim of Prosecutorial Misconduct

Text: Nelson asserts that the prosecutor’s statements about the victims’ testimony, made in closing argument, requires reversal. “To obtain a reversal based on prosecutorial misconduct, [Nelson] must establish both misconduct and prejudice.” United States v. Wright, 625 F.3d 583, 609–10 (9th Cir. 2010), superseded by statute on other grounds as recognized by United States v. Brown, 785 F.3d 1337, 1351 (9th Cir. 2015). Nelson did not “object[] at trial to acts of alleged prosecutorial misconduct.” Our review is for plain error. See United States v. Hinton, 31 F.3d 817, 824 (9th Cir. 1994). UNITED STATES V. LLOYD 73 Nelson argues that the prosecutor intentionally misstated the testimony Melvin Bitikofer gave at trial. Bitikofer testified that Slanaker, not Nelson, asked him to participate in the February 2009 reloading conference call in which he was persuaded to invest another $100,000 in a Cinamour movie, this time using money from his wife’s IRA. Bitikofer testified that he did not know if Nelson was on the call or not. During closing, however, the prosecutor told the jury that Nelson “got Mr. Bitikofer on a conference call—look at Exhibit 289—and he took a hundred thousand dollars more.” The prosecutor also incorrectly attributed to Melvin Bitikofer the testimony given by another victim, Richard Clark, that “Mr. Nelson told [him] that he wasn’t just a salesman, but was also involved in the technology aspect of the company as well.” The government concedes that the prosecutor’s closing argument contained both statements and that both were wrong. Our review of the record shows no basis for finding that the prosecutor’s errors were intentionally made or that they substantially affected Nelson’s right to a fair trial. The prosecution accurately described the testimony about the reloading conference call but inaccurately attributed the call to Nelson rather than Slanaker. There was no error in the prosecutor’s description of what the victim-witness said, only that Clark, not Bitikofer, was the victim who said it. In context, these mistakes appear to have been inadvertent. A prosecutor’s inadvertent mistakes or misstatements are not misconduct. See United States v. Del-Toro Barboza, 673 F.3d 1136, 1153 (9th Cir. 2012) (a prosecutor’s attribution of one defendant’s statement to both defendants was “an honest mistake and not prosecutorial misconduct”); Downs v. Hoyt, 232 F.3d 1031, 1038 (9th Cir. 2000) (a 74 UNITED STATES V. LLOYD prosecutor’s passing reference to a statement not in evidence was not misconduct when the prosecutor was “confused about which portions of the voluminous medical records had been admitted into evidence”); United States v. Carrillo, 16 F.3d 1046, 1050 (9th Cir. 1994) (a prosecutor’s “misstatement ha[d] earmarks of inadvertent mistake, not misconduct”). Nor were the misstatements “so gross as probably to prejudice” Nelson. United States v. Navarro, 608 F.3d 529, 536 (9th Cir. 2011). That is particularly so in light of Clark’s testimony that Nelson played a substantial role in his conference call and the district court’s repeated instructions that the jury’s recollections—not the prosecutor’s summation—controlled. The prosecutor’s misstatements during closing are not a basis for reversal.