Court Opinion

ID: 9492755
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:50:01.793308+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:55:29.087305
License: Public Domain

BAUER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I dissent. I believe that my colleagues have reached a conclusion that runs contrary to firmly-established precedent in this Circuit.
This case is quite simple. A prosecutor uttered a single remark during closing arguments of a two-week-long trial. The defense objected, and Judge Holderman granted a mistrial because of the stray remark. One might wonder what single sentence could so seriously infect a lengthy trial as to render the entire process fundamentally unfair. In this case, the prosecutor said, “Tommy Burns has convicted 23 other people.” The remark was intended to rehabilitate Burns’ credibility after defense counsel had attacked his truthfulness during closing arguments. According to the district court (and now the majority), this statement so corrupted the entire process that it entitled Cheska to receive a new trial.
To determine whether a defendant is entitled to a new trial because of a prosecutor’s remark during closing argument, this court has formulated a two-part test. *955The first step requires the court to examine the contested remark in isolation to determine whether the statement is an “improper” remark. See United States v. Miller, 199 F.3d 416, 422 (7th Cir.1999); United States v. McClinton, 135 F.3d 1178, 1188 (7th Cir.1998); United States v. Lovelace, 123 F.3d 650, 655 (7th Cir.1997). If (and only if) we find that the statement was improper, the court then considers the remark in the context of the entire record to evaluate whether it deprived the defendant of a fair trial. See United States v. Ferguson, 935 F.2d 1518, 1531 n. 5 (7th Cir.1991).
The district court gave two reasons for declaring the contested statement improper. First, the district judge said the prosecutor’s remark was improper because the statement was literally untruthful. That is to say, the trial judge found the remark improper by pointing out that only juries and judges can “convict” criminal defendants and “Tommy Burns having never been a judge or a jury has never convicted anyone.” The technical error in the prosecutor’s statement clearly did not render the remark improper. No reasonable person could possibly believe that a witness has ever “convicted” a defendant. Rather, read in proper context, the remark was plainly intended to mean that Burns’ testimony had played a critical role in securing the convictions of 23 other criminal defendants. Judge Holderman himself recognized the prosecutor’s obvious intent when he wrote that the prosecutor probably “intended the remark to be a short-hand or slang way of saying that Tommy Burns’s testimony in previous cases brought about the conviction of 23 people.” The fact that the statement “Burns has convicted 23 other people” was literally untrue in its strictest sense does not render the comment improper. See United States v. Joy, 192 F.3d 761, 769-70 (7th Cir.1999) (finding prosecutor’s remark appropriate when viewed in proper context even though it was literally not true).
Judge Holderman also found the statement improper because it was “not supported by the evidence or any fair inference there from and thus can only be considered the personal opinion of the Assistant United States Attorney, which when stated in closing argument was improper and amounted to prosecutorial misconduct.” This conclusion seems to me to be erroneous.
This court has repeatedly and consistently adhered to the basic rule allowing the government to comment on the credibility of a witness so long as the remark constitutes a reasonable inference from evidence adduced at trial. See United States v. Morgan, 113 F.3d 85, 89 (7th Cir.1997); United States v. Patterson, 23 F.3d 1239, 1250 (7th Cir.1994); United States v. Goodapple, 958 F.2d 1402, 1409 (7th Cir.1992); United States v. Spivey, 859 F.2d 461, 466 (7th Cir.1988). In this case, the evidence supporting the prosecutor’s remark could not be more clear. The jury heard Burns identify Jerry Farmer as “[jjust one of the 23 people that were convicted in the horse crimes.” The jury also learned that Burns had helped convict Farmer by cooperating with the government and testifying against Farmer. The jury was told that Burns had cooperated extensively with prosecutors, had met with the FBI 200 times, and discussed numerous horse killing cases with the government. Burns admitted to personally killing 15 horses to defraud insurance companies. Finally, the jury also knew that Burns’ agreement with the government extended far beyond Cheska’s case, that Burns had “testified a lot,” and that Burns had testified in other trials. Confronted with this information, it is reasonable to infer that Burns was a pivotal part of an expansive investigation that helped the government catch “the 23 people that were convicted in the horse crimes.”
Rather than recognize that the jury heard evidence which supported the inference that Burns played an important part in helping convict 23 defendants, the majority discusses various inferences that the jury could have drawn from the evidence. Because the jury could have drawn several other inferences, the majority concludes *956that the prosecutor’s remark was not reasonably based in the evidence. I simply cannot agree that this conclusion is reasonable.
Simply put, the number of inferences that could be drawn from evidence is completely irrelevant to whether one specific inference is reasonable. In other words, just because a jury can draw more than one inference from a set of facts does not, as the majority wrongly concludes, automatically render any of them unreasonable. Rather, an inference is reasonable if that conclusion bears a logical connection to the evidence upon which it is based. Here there was ample evidence to conclude that Burns’ assistance to the government was of paramount importance to obtaining 23 other convictions. Because the prosecutor’s remark was reasonably based on evidence that the jury heard, it was completely appropriate.
Normally when assessing whether a prosecutor’s remark deprived a defendant of a fair trial, we look to five factors: (1) the nature and seriousness of the prosecu-torial misconduct; (2) whether the prosecutor’s statement was invited by the conduct of defense counsel; (3) whether the trial court’s instructions to the jury were adequate; (4) whether the defense was able to counter the improper arguments through rebuttal; and (5) the weight of the evidence against the defendant. United States v. Butler, 71 F.3d 243, 254. This analysis “includes an assessment of ‘whether and to what extent the improper remark was provoked by the defense counsel’s argument — the so-called ‘invited response’ doctrine.’” United States v. DePriest, 6 F.3d 1201, 1210 (7th Cir.1993) (quoting United States v. Swiatek, 819 F.2d 721, 730 (7th Cir.1987)).
Applying these factors, and bearing in mind the invited response doctrine, it becomes apparent that Cheska received a fair trial. First, the prosecutor’s conduct was completely appropriate; the isolated remark was reasonably based in evidence that the jury heard. Assuming arguendo that the statement was improper, it was an isolated remark during a lengthy trial intended to rehabilitate Burns’ credibility — a purpose that the majority concedes was appropriate. Since the remark was appropriate because of defense counsel’s attack on Burns’ credibility, the second factor and the invited response doctrine both favor finding that Cheska received a fair trial. Third, after defendants objected to the statement, the trial court immediately gave a curative instruction by telling the jury to make its “determination based on the evidence, not upon any argument by any counsel” and then later told the jury that it should reach its verdict using only the evidence in the case. The district court’s instructions cured any possible prejudice from the stray comment. See United States v. Kelly, 991 F.2d 1308, 1314 (7th Cir.1993) (we presume that curative instructions are taken seriously). Although defendants did not have an opportunity to counter the argument because it was made during the prosecutor’s rebuttal, they certainly took advantage of their opportunity to denigrate Burns’ credibility. Finally, the weight of the evidence against Cheska was considerable. As the government explained in its brief, there was ample evidence to convict Cheska in this case even if the jury did not believe one word of Burns’ testimony.
Viewing this trial and the evidence presented as a whole, two things are quite obvious: (1) the prosecutor’s closing remark was appropriate because it was reasonably based on evidence that the jury heard; and (2) Cheska was not deprived of a fair trial by the prosecutor’s single comment. Because these two conclusions are abundantly clear from a proper application of the law to the facts of this case, the district court abused its discretion when it granted Cheska’s motion for a mistrial. I would reverse the district court’s order granting Cheska a mistrial and remand the case with instructions to reinstate the jury’s verdict.