United States v. Reyes Vargas

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• “coming from the mouth of the representative of the United States, the [prosecutor’s] statements carry much weight ….”
• finding misconduct where prosecutor told jury that they had to choose between finding that four federal agents lied on the stand or that the defendant was guilty
• improper to state, “if you find the defendant not guilty, I want you to write on there that all of those people lied”
• it was prosecutorial misconduct to argue that, in order to find the defendant not guilty, the jury must decide that the federal agents who testified lied
• statements \that in effect distort the burden of proof by suggesting incorrectly what the jury must find in order to reach a certain verdict\ may constitute grounds for reversal
• the need for caution is particularly preva lent when the government’s statement involves evidence which, although arguably admissible, is subject to objections under Rules 403 and 404, which is recognized to be perhaps the most prejudicial kind of evidence

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).