United States v. Kelvin Hasting, Gable Gibson, Napolean Stewart, Gregory Williams, and Kevin Wendall Anderson

FLAUM, Circuit Judge.

This appeal comes to us in an unusual procedural posture. The defendants were convicted in 1980 of three federal offenses: kidnapping in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1); transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes in violation of the Mann Act, 18 U.S.C. § 2421; and conspiracy to commit the foregoing offenses in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371. This court reversed the convictions in 1981 on the basis of the prosecutor’s impermissible allusion, during closing argument, to the defendants’ failure to deny raping and kidnapping the victims., See United States…