United States v. Clement

WISDOM, Circuit Judge:

In this narcotics case the district judge explained to the jury that the term “rip-off”, used by the defendants’ attorney in referring to their attitude toward actions of codefendants, was limited — to the judge’s knowledge — to use in a narcotics context. We take judicial notice of the fact that in ordinary speech the term “rip-off” is used to refer to any fraud, confidence game, or deceitful overreaching by one person of another or of others. In the circumstances of this case, the evidence of guilt was far from overwhelming. The error therefore was not harmless. The…