Opinion ID: 2678027
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Accumulation of Trial Errors Claim

Text: We need not linger long over Davis’s final claim. Davis contends that we should grant relief where “a combination of trial errors and prosecutorial misconduct [denies] a defendant a fair trial, regardless of whether the individual errors require reversal on their own.” Appellant’s Br. at 42 (citing United States v. Elkins, 885 F.2d 775 (11th Cir. 1989)). This is clearly correct as an abstract proposition of law, but it does not apply to this case. Our precedent counsels that a combination of trial errors and prosecutorial misconduct can serve to render a trial unfair, despite no single error requiring reversal. Id. at 787. However, such a combination is rare because “a conviction should be reversed only if ‘a miscarriage of justice would otherwise result.’” Id. (quoting United States v. Young, 470 U.S. 1, 15 (1985)). This is not one of those rare cases. As we make clear in our discussion above, the limited misconduct by the prosecutor was readily cured by the instruction of the trial court. The only cognizable error by the trial court is the admission of the cell site location information, which was at best understandable, given the uncertainty of the law on the subject, and at worst harmless, given that the evidence was admissible against 37 Case: 12-12928 Date Filed: 06/11/2014 Page: 38 of 38 Davis, albeit on a different theory (the Leon exception) than that on which it was propounded.