Court Opinion

ID: 9474563
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:01:33.899032+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:10.890389
License: Public Domain

SWYGERT, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I agree that the district court did not abuse its discretion in receiving into evidence the redirect examination of Agent Lopez. I do not agree, however, that the impropriety of the prosecutor’s closing argument does not require reversal under the invited response doctrine.
Both the Supreme Court and this court have recently had occasion to reexamine the invited response doctrine. In United States v. Young, — U.S. -, 105 S.Ct. 1038, 1045, 84 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985), the Supreme Court cautioned that the idea of invited response had perhaps not evolved in the manner contemplated in Lawn v. United States, 355 U.S. 339, 78 S.Ct. 311, 2 L.Ed.2d 321 (1958). Prior to Young, defense counsel’s improper remarks were too often taken by the prosecutor as a license to make otherwise improper comments. 105 S.Ct. at 1045. Young makes it clear that this practice represents a misunderstanding of the invited response doctrine. Properly understood, the invited response doctrine means only that a reviewing court must weigh the impact on the jury of the prosecutor’s remarks against the impact on the jury of defense counsel’s comments. Under Young the prosecutor’s misconduct is “invited” only if it “did no more than respond substantially in order to right the scale.” Id. In effect, the misconduct of defense counsel and the prosecutor may cancel each other out. If, however, the prosecutor does more than merely “right the scale” and makes arguments that impact on the jury to a greater extent than defense counsel’s comments a reviewing court must determine if the “uninvited” comments, viewed in the context of the trial as a whole, prejudiced the fairness of the trial. Id. at 1047. Comments that exceed the scope of the invited response doctrine are error and will warrant a reversal if not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.
In United States v. Mazzone, 782 F.2d 757 (7th Cir.1986) this court adopted the approach outlined in Young:
The federal government’s lawyers may not fight fire with fire. If defense counsel exceed proper bounds in their closing arguments, the prosecutor can object; he can, if need be, ask that counsel be held in contempt for improper argument or questions ... but he cannot respond in kind and violate ethical standards himself.
Properly understood [the invited response] doctrine does not condone the prosecutor’s descending to the level of defense counsel or enact the proposition that two wrongs make a right; it merely recognizes that the impact on the defendant from the prosecutor’s misbehavior may be less if the defendant’s counsel aroused the jury against the prosecutor. See United States v. Young, — U.S. -, 105 S.Ct. 1038, 1044-45, 84 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985). The prosecutor’s misconduct may just have offset the defense counsel’s misconduct, thus producing no net effect on the jury’s deliberations.
Misconduct by the prosecutor that is promptly and vigorously corrected by the judge is not reversible error; misconduct that poisons the trial is. The difference is simply the likely impact of the misconduct on the jury. If the impact seems to have been nil (“harmless”), that is just another way of saying that the trial was *812not poisoned, due process was not denied, reversible error was not committed.
Mazzone, at 763 (citations omitted).*
I am willing to concede that defense counsel’s arguments entitled the prosecutor to make some of the complained of comments under the invited response doctrine. But, on the record before this court and in the context of the trial as a whole, I am unable to say that at least one of the prosecutor’s remarks did not “poison” and prejudice the defendants’ trial.
What this kilo bag 3-B represents, ladies and gentlemen, is the most destructive force in America today. This is the greatest threat to the lives and well-being of our children. Nothing short of nuclear war should scare you more than this. This is death, and people who deal in it are merchants in death.
Trial Transcript at 730.
This remark was completely inappropriate. Whatever defense counsel said it did not warrant this effort to connect the defendants to the spectre of nuclear holocaust. The majority relies on United States v. Zylstra, 713 F.2d 1332 (7th Cir. 1983), for the proposition that a prosecutor can impress upon the jury the gravity of the drug problem in this country. In Zylstra the prosecutor made a reference to the defendants bringing in marijuana “for distribution to our children and friends.” Id. at 1340. The comments in Zylstra are simply not as egregious or as prejudicial as the attempt to tar the defendants in this case with the brush of nuclear war. The prosecutor’s comments, as completely removed as they are from the facts of this case, can only be interpreted as a conscious attempt to inflame the jury.
,1 cannot say that these defendants received a fair trial in the radioactive glow cast by the prosecutor’s comments. I would reverse the convictions of the defendants and remand for a new trial.

 In the instant case, the district judge took no corrective action and there is some question as to whether any corrective action was properly asked for. See ante at 810, n. 10.