041007P.pdf   07/07/2005  USA  v.  Xavier Holmes
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  04-1007
   Western District of Missouri   
   [PUBLISHED] [Melloy, Author, with M. Arnold and McMillian, 
   Circuit Judge] 
   Criminal case - criminal law. District court erred in refusing to admit 
   evidence which would have been relevant in providing background and 
   contextual information that would have been useful in assessing the 
   relative credibility of the police officers' and defendant's testimony; 
   prosecutor's statements in the rebuttal portion of closing argument, taken 
   as a whole, improperly accused defense counsel of conspiring with 
   defendant to fabricate testimony; because the comments were highly 
   prejudicial and could reasonably be found to have affected the verdict, the 
   conviction must be reversed, and the case must be remanded for a new 
   trial; the district court did not err in refusing to give an instruction 
   limiting use of defendant's prior felony convictions as those convictions 
   were substantive evidence that he had committed the charged offense of 
   being a felon in possession of a firearm. Judge Morris S. Arnold, 
   Dissenting.