United States v. Velazquez, No. 19-50099 (9th Cir. 2021)
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The Ninth Circuit vacated defendant's conviction for importing controlled substances into the United States, and remanded for a new trial. At trial, defendant took the stand and testified he did not know the car he was driving contained drugs—what is sometimes referred to as the "blind mule" defense.
During closing argument, the government compared the reasonable doubt standard to the confidence one needs to "hav[e] a meal" or "travel to . . .court"—without worrying about the "possib[ility]" that one will get sick or end up in an accident. The panel agreed with defendant that this improper argument, and the district court's failure to cure it, caused him prejudice. The panel explained that the ultimate issue at trial boiled down to whether the government proved that defendant knew about the drugs in his car beyond a reasonable doubt. However, the prosecutor's comments created an unacceptable risk that an honest, fair-minded juror would succumb to the prosecutor's personal—rather than constitutional—view of the government's burden of proof to obtain a conviction and therefore overlook his or her reasonable doubts. In this case, the evidence demonstrating defendant's knowledge was not overwhelming and the district court failed to neutralize the prejudice. Therefore, the panel concluded that it is more probable than not that the misconduct materially affected the verdict.
Court Description: Criminal Law. The panel vacated a conviction for importing controlled substances into the United States, and remanded for a new trial, in a case in which the defendant testified he did not know the car he was driving contained drugs. During closing argument, the prosecutor compared the reasonable doubt standard to the confidence one needs to “hav[e] a meal” or “travel to . . . court”—without worrying about the “possib[ility]” that one will get sick or end up in an accident. The panel held that the prosecutor engaged in misconduct by trivializing the reasonable doubt standard and, as a result, caused the defendant substantial prejudice. The panel wrote that the prosecutor’s comments regarding the government’s burden of proof diverged significantly from what is required at trial, and was troubled by the suggestion that reasonable doubt can be compared to an “everyday” experience. The panel was not convinced that the district court’s providing the correct instruction and admonishing the jury earlier during closing argument sufficiently neutralized the prejudice. The panel did not believe that the evidence demonstrating the defendant’s knowledge of the drugs was so overwhelming that the prosecutor’s misstatements were harmless. Dissenting, Judge Bade agreed that the prosecutor’s comments were at best unhelpful, and potentially misleading, but wrote that the record overwhelmingly UNITED STATES V. VELAZQUEZ 3 establishes that the comments did not affect the verdict and, thus, the defendant’s due process rights were not violated.
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