PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 25-4318
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff – Appellee,
v. ISAAC FIDEL MARTINEZ-CHAVEZ, a/k/a Issac Fidel Martinez-Chavez, Defendant – Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, at Roanoke. Elizabeth K. Dillon, Chief District Judge. (7:24-cr-00011-EKD)
Argued: May 8, 2026 Decided: September 9, 2026
Before GREGORY, HARRIS, and RICHARDSON, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Richardson wrote the opinion, in which Judge Gregory and Judge Harris joined.
ARGUED: Erin Margaret Trodden, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Charlottesville, Virginia, for Appellant. Jonathan Patrick Jones, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Roanoke, Virginia, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Mary E. Maguire, Federal Public Defender, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Charlottesville, Virginia, for Appellant. Robert N. Tracci, Acting United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charlottesville, Virginia, for Appellee.
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RICHARDSON, Circuit Judge:
Just after midnight on New Year’s Day 2024, a Franklin County sheriff’s lieutenant clocked a Kia doing sixty in a forty-five. The Kia sped up, cut its lights, and pulled into a yard. The driver and sole occupant was Isaac Martinez-Chavez, a convicted felon. When the lieutenant stopped him, a sawed-off .22 rifle, a .22 revolver, and .22 caliber ammunition lay inside the car. A jury convicted Martinez-Chavez of possessing firearms as a felon, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), and possessing an unregistered short-barreled rifle, 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d).
Martinez-Chavez seeks a new trial on two grounds. He contends that the prosecutor’s closing argument crossed the line, and that the district court should have told the jury it could draw an adverse inference from the government’s failure to preserve recordings of the arresting officer’s radio calls to dispatch. The government concedes that two of its closing remarks were improper. But these remarks did not prejudice Martinez- Chavez, whether considered separately or together. And the district court acted within its discretion in refusing the adverse-inference instruction. We affirm. I. BACKGROUND A. Trial Evidence
Lieutenant Justin Hylton was patrolling for drunk drivers on New Year’s Day when a Kia passed him at speed. He turned around, briefly lost sight of the car, then caught up as it accelerated and “blacked out” its headlights and taillights. J.A. 795. When Hylton flashed his emergency lights, the Kia turned quickly and parked at an angle on the grass outside a house. Hylton pulled in behind and shined his spotlight on the car. He saw the
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driver leaning into the front passenger area, apparently reaching for something. Hylton drew his weapon and ordered the driver out.
Neither the pursuit nor the initial stop was recorded. Hylton’s patrol car had no dash camera, and—contrary to department policy—he did not activate his body camera until Martinez-Chavez was behind the car. But Hylton was not the only witness to the pursuit. Officer Poulin had been on the phone with Hylton when the Kia flew past, and, once the call ended, he monitored Hylton’s radio traffic with dispatch in real time. When Poulin heard Hylton report that the car had “blacked out,” he recognized the danger and drove to the scene.
With Hylton’s body cam now on and Poulin on the scene, the officers’ cameras captured some of what followed. Hylton checked Martinez-Chavez’s identification as he pleaded in Spanish with a man who came out of the house: “Close the car, yes? . . . Close it. Close it. . . . Close them, the windows, man. Please.” J.A. 1251. Poulin looked through the car’s passenger window and saw the sawed-off rifle in the footwell. The front passenger seat was blanketed with tools and a portable battery pack. Then dispatch reported an outstanding felony warrant, and the officers arrested Martinez-Chavez. Their continued search of the car revealed the revolver and .22 rounds.
At trial, Martinez-Chavez disputed that he had knowledge of the firearms. But the only evidence he offered in support of his contention came from the testimony of Olman Vallejos. Vallejos testified that Martinez-Chavez gave him a ride home in the Kia that night; that he discovered the two guns in a borrowed jacket; that he slid them under the
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passenger seat without Martinez-Chavez noticing; and that he had Martinez-Chavez drop him at a roadside store when the police appeared because he was carrying crack.
The story collapsed on the stand. Vallejos denied meeting “the defense team” before trial and denied that anyone had shown him photographs of the guns. J.A. 1119. But on redirect, Vallejos flipped—he said the defense team had met him at the jail and shown him the photographs. Not only that, he conceded the point again on recross. In rebuttal, Deputy Edwin Alejandro recounted Vallejos’s earlier, inconsistent stories: different guns, different sizes, and a different ride home. Defense counsel’s own closing called Vallejos “clearly addled by the drugs that he smokes.” J.A. 1197. The district court later said it “frankly found him to be not a credible witness,” an assessment that would not, the court added, surprise anyone “who was attending that trial.” J.A. 1407.
B. District Court Rulings Two rulings frame this appeal. The first came before trial. Under the sheriff’s department records-retention policy, dispatch recordings not retained as evidence are deleted automatically after six months, while the computer-aided dispatch logs—the “call for service,” or CFS, reports—are kept for ten years. Martinez-Chavez sent a standard discovery letter to the prosecution on May 1, 2024, requesting Rule 16, Brady, and Jencks material. Only months later, on October 24, did he ask for “the radio runs (or dispatch calls) made by [Lieutenant] Hylton.” J.A. 206. Hylton asked the records custodian for them the next day. But the recordings had already been automatically deleted on July 1, 2024, in accordance with the department’s retention policy.
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Martinez-Chavez moved for an adverse-inference instruction based on spoliation.
At the hearing, the custodian described the record-retention policy and the automatic purge. Defense counsel told the court, “I don’t think the government acted in bad faith,” and the “government acted with due diligence after we specifically requested this.” J.A. 634. Ultimately, the district court denied the motion in a written opinion. Because the recordings were not apparently exculpatory and comparable evidence remained available, the due process holdings of California v. Trombetta, 467 U.S. 479 (1984), afforded no relief. Nor did United States v. Johnson, 996 F.3d 200 (4th Cir. 2021): No evidence showed the government knew the recordings “would be relevant to an issue at trial” before they were deleted, and their automatic disposal under the retention policy was not willful conduct. J.A. 750.
The second ruling came during closing arguments. After cataloguing Vallejos’s contradictions, the prosecutor said: “There are only two people who know whether Vallejos was in the car. One of them was Vallejos, the liar; Vallejos, who under oath told you that he has no reason to lie, and then lied to your faces several times.” J.A. 1172. No objection followed. Then, ending his argument, the prosecutor told the jury: “This case is important not just to the defendant, but also to the government and to the law enforcement personnel. These folks are professionals who are out there protecting the community and taking felons, armed felons”—at which point defense counsel objected to the “[i]nappropriate argument and vouching.” J.A. 1179. The court overruled the objection, and the prosecutor finished: the officers are “removing armed felons, especially felons armed with sawed-off rifles, off the streets. Toward that end, I ask that you find the
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defendant guilty of all charges.” J.A. 1179–80. At the recess, Counsel renewed the objection, which was overruled again. While acknowledging that “both parties have an interest in the case,” the court confirmed that it would instruct the jury about weighing law- enforcement testimony. J.A. 1180–82. It did so, charging the jury that an officer’s status “does not mean that his or her testimony necessarily deserves more or less consideration or greater or lesser weight than that of any other witness.” J.A. 1220–21. The court also charged that “arguments (including closing arguments) . . . by the lawyers are not evidence” and that “[i]f what a lawyer says . . . is different from the evidence, the evidence is what matters.” J.A. 1215–16.
The jury convicted Martinez-Chavez on both counts, and the court imposed a sentence of fifty-nine months. Martinez-Chavez appealed. II. DISCUSSION A. Any Improper Closing Arguments Did Not Prejudice Martinez-Chavez A prosecutor’s remarks warrant reversal only if they were improper and “prejudicially affected the defendant’s substantial rights so as to deprive the defendant of a fair trial.” United States v. Chorman, 910 F.2d 102, 113 (4th Cir. 1990) (quoting United States v. Brockington, 849 F.2d 872, 875 (4th Cir. 1988)). Six factors guide the prejudice inquiry: the tendency of the remarks to mislead; whether the remarks were isolated or extensive; the strength of proof absent the remarks; whether the remarks deliberately diverted the jury to extraneous matters; whether defense counsel’s improper conduct invited the remarks; and whether curative instructions were given. See United States v. Harrison, 716 F.2d 1050, 1052 (4th Cir. 1983); United States v. Lighty, 616 F.3d 321, 361
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(4th Cir. 2010). The factors are weighed “in the context of the entire trial, and no one factor is dispositive.” Lighty, 616 F.3d at 361. Martinez-Chavez objected to the law- enforcement remark at trial, but not the “liar” remark. We take the preserved claim first.
1. The Law-Enforcement Remark Because the objection to the law-enforcement remark was preserved, the government must show that the remark was harmless. See Fed. R. Crim. P. 52(a). Here, the government does not defend the prosecutor’s parting appeal—that the case was “important . . . to the government and to the law enforcement personnel” who work to take armed felons “off the streets,” and that “[t]oward that end” the jury should convict. J.A. 1179–80. Juries find facts; they do not weigh what a verdict means to the prosecution or to the officers who built the case. See United States v. Runyon, 707 F.3d 475, 515 (4th Cir. 2013) (urging the jury to send a message to the community was improper). We accept the government’s concession. The remark was still harmless.
Start with the tendency of the prosecutor’s remarks to mislead the jury, which was slight. That the government cares about the outcome of its own prosecution told the jury nothing it did not already know. And while the appeal to community-protecting work may have improperly bolstered the officers, the court’s charge addressed any potential danger. The instructions stated that an officer’s testimony deserves no “more or less consideration or greater or lesser weight than that of any other witness,” and lawyers’ arguments “are not evidence.” J.A. 1220–21, 1215–16. Instructions of this kind “minimize[] any risk” that a fleeting argument, rather than evidence, drives a verdict. Runyon, 707 F.3d at 515. Therefore it’s unlikely that the jury was misled given the curative instruction.
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The second factor also weighs against Martinez-Chavez. The prosecutor’s remark was isolated—a few sentences closing an argument that spans more than twenty transcript pages, nearly all of them a march through the evidence.
The fourth and fifth factors do favor Martinez-Chavez. The comment was deliberate. Indeed, the prosecutor defended it as something that “counterbalances the attack on [the officers’] credibility.” J.A. 1181. And the defense, which had not yet closed, invited nothing. 1 But deliberateness without more does not establish prejudice. See United States v. Woods, 710 F.3d 195, 204 (4th Cir. 2013).
Finally, the third factor—the strength of the proof—weighs heavily against reversal.
Set the prosecutor’s remarks aside, and the case remains straightforward. Martinez-Chavez sat alone in a car with a sawed-off rifle visible through the passenger window, a revolver on the floorboard, and same-caliber ammunition in the console. His evasion did not depend on Hylton’s memory: Poulin heard the “blacked out” call in real time. His recorded pleas—“Close it. Close it. . . . Close them, the windows, man. Please.”—supported a powerful inference that he knew what an open door would reveal. J.A. 1251. And the lone innocent explanation asked the jury to credit a witness caught lying under oath in front of them, whose implausible story seated him atop a pile of tools and a battery pack. The evidence “overwhelmingly supported a finding of guilt.” Woods, 710 F.3d at 204. The challenged statements did not tip this verdict; the evidence did.
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The government has not argued that the comment was responsive to anything raised in opening arguments. Cf. Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 594–95 (1978).
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Martinez-Chavez responds by arguing that the government’s only evidence of knowledge—the one contested element—rested on Hylton’s uncorroborated recollection of the stressful eighteen seconds between his arrival on the scene and his turning on his body camera. So praising the officers struck at the heart of the case, he argues. But in proving the knowledge element, the government relied on a myriad of evidence other than Hylton’s memory: Poulin’s real-time monitoring, the defendant’s own recorded words, the visible rifle, the console ammunition Vallejos never claimed, and the buried passenger seat all supported his knowledge. Along with the nature of the remarks, this extensive proof separates this case from Plymail v. Mirandy, 8 F.4th 308, 317–19 (4th Cir. 2021), where a pervasive course of vividly improper argument capped a pure credibility contest. Here, the improper matter was brief and anodyne, the instructions were pointed, and the proof did not rise or fall with the witnesses the prosecutor praised. The error was harmless.
2. The Liar Remark
Because Martinez-Chavez did not object to the “liar” remark, he must show plain error: an error, plain, that affected his substantial rights and that seriously affects the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 732–36 (1993); Woods, 710 F.3d at 202.
The “liar” remark leads to the same result under plain-error review. This Court has said that the government may not refer to a defense witness as a liar. See United States v. Cooper, 827 F.2d 991, 995 (4th Cir. 1987) (calling defense witnesses “liars” was “quite improper—although perhaps well-founded”—but not reversible). The government concedes the first two prongs of plain error, and we accept the concession. But
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Martinez-Chavez cannot show that the remark affected his substantial rights. Olano, 507 U.S. at 734–35.
Before the prosecutor gave his closing argument, Vallejos’s credibility had been severely undermined. The jury heard him deny meeting the defense team or seeing photographs of the guns. But it then saw defense counsel correct the record minutes later. It heard Deputy Alejandro describe Vallejos’s earlier statements that differed on the guns, their size, and the ride home. It heard Vallejos admit he was smoking crack that night and had threatened the boss he now blamed: “You don’t know who you’re messing with.” J.A. 1093, J.A. 1123. It saw the photograph of the passenger seat where he claimed to sit. During closing, even defense counsel labeled him a “clearly addled” “crackhead” who could neither “remember one question to the next” nor “remember exactly what happened.” J.A. 1197. A one-word label added nothing beyond what the record reflected. See Lockett, 438 U.S. at 594–95 (“[T]he prosecutor’s closing remarks added nothing to the impression that had already been created.”). Given the strength of the evidence establishing guilt and undermining the witness’s credibility, the remark did not affect the outcome. See Woods, 710 F.3d at 204–05.
Nor would affirmance here tarnish the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. The jury convicted on overwhelming proof, and the challenged word described a witness the jurors themselves saw get caught. Plain-error relief is not warranted.
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B. The District Court Did Not Abuse Its Discretion In Refusing An Adverse-Inference Instruction
Martinez-Chavez next challenges the district court’s refusal of his adverse-inference instruction, a decision we review for abuse of discretion. Johnson, 996 F.3d at 217. Refusing an instruction is reversible only if the instruction “(1) was correct, (2) was not substantially covered by the charge that the district court actually gave to the jury, and (3) involved some point so important that the failure to give the instruction seriously impaired the defendant’s defense.” United States v. Raza, 876 F.3d 604, 614 (4th Cir. 2017).
Martinez-Chavez claims no due-process violation, conceding that the government acted without bad faith. See Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U.S. 51, 57–58 (1988). His claim rests on Johnson. There, this Court observed that “[e]ven absent a due process violation, a criminal defendant may be entitled to an adverse inference instruction pursuant to the spoliation of evidence rule.” 996 F.3d at 206. We explained that the inference requires “a showing that the party knew the evidence was relevant to some issue at trial and that his willful conduct resulted in its loss or destruction.” Id. at 217 (quoting Vodusek v. Bayliner Marine Corp., 71 F.3d 148, 156 (4th Cir. 1995)). Bad faith suffices but is not necessary; negligence never suffices.
The government casts doubt on whether that passage states a binding rule. Johnson vacated the district court’s decision on a due-process question for development of the record; it expressly declined to answer the separate question, “whether the court committed further error . . . by refusing to instruct the jury that it could draw an adverse inference.” Id. at 216. What followed was guidance for a contingency: If the due-process claim failed
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again and a retrial occurred, the district court “should assess anew whether the defendants are entitled to an adverse inference instruction.” Id. at 216–17. Providing a framework for a ruling is not making the ruling. And a statement that “could have been deleted without seriously impairing the analytical foundations of the holding” is dictum. Payne v. Taslimi, 998 F.3d 648, 654–55 (4th Cir. 2021) (citation omitted). 2 Martinez-Chavez responds that Johnson’s directions bound the district court on remand and that it should bind this Court too. We need not resolve that dispute. Even taking Johnson as the standard, his claim fails on both elements.
Martinez-Chavez first argues that the government “knew the evidence was relevant to some issue at trial” before losing it. Johnson, 996 F.3d at 217. Relevance under Rule 401 is a low bar, and the district court allowed that the recordings “could provide additional context” to Hylton’s account. J.A. 750. But Johnson does not view the evidence with the benefit of hindsight; it asks whether the government knew the evidence mattered to a trial issue while the evidence still existed. The district court permissibly found no such showing. The May 1 letter was a general discovery request that specified no recordings.
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The borrowed standard would be an odd transplant. Vodusek announced an evidentiary rule for civil spoliation two decades before the Civil Rules answered the same question for electronically stored information. Since 2015, Rule 37(e)(2) has permitted a civil adverse-inference instruction for lost electronic information like the recording here “only upon finding that the party acted with the intent to deprive another party of the information’s use in the litigation.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(e)(2). Recordings that expire on a county server are electronically stored information. On Martinez-Chavez’s reading, then, a criminal defendant would obtain a spoliation instruction on a lesser showing—willfulness without intent to deprive—than the Civil Rules now demand of civil litigants for the same category of evidence, and on a lesser showing than due process demands for merely “potentially useful” evidence. See Youngblood, 488 U.S. at 57–58; Illinois v. Fisher, 540 U.S. 544, 547–48 (2004) (per curiam).
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Only in late October did defense counsel identify the dispatch calls as relevant. And Martinez-Chavez offers no evidence that the government knew of their relevance before then. Johnson itself shows the difference: the lost evidence there was the deceased victim’s cell phone that an investigator knew contained evidence relevant to the disputed source of the fatal drug. See 996 F.3d at 217.
The Jencks Act does not fill the gap. Martinez-Chavez argues that Hylton’s radio transmissions were “statements” of a government witness, 18 U.S.C. § 3500(e)(2), which the government was obliged to preserve and produce—and that this duty supplies both the knowledge and the willfulness Johnson requires. 3 The argument fails three times over. First, the Jencks Act applies only to a “statement or report in the possession of the United States.” § 3500(a). And Martinez-Chavez identifies no evidence that the United States possessed these recordings, only the local police department. See United States v. Silva, 745 F.2d 840, 845–46 (4th Cir. 1984); Campbell v. United States, 365 U.S. 85, 92–93 (1961). Second, even if the recordings were covered under the Jencks Act, that disclosure obligation would not itself establish the government’s knowledge of relevance. The Jencks Act is broader than relevance, reaching every statement of a testifying government witness that “relates to the subject matter” of his testimony. § 3500(b). And the Jencks Act’s production duty is keyed to a witness’s eventual testimony. So even if the recordings fell
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The government observes that Martinez-Chavez never cited the Jencks Act in the district court. But we need not identify exactly what Martinez-Chavez preserved, because the argument fails even if considered. See United States v. Diaz, 865 F.3d 168, 174 n.2 (4th Cir. 2017) (not deciding whether a claim was preserved because the outcome would be the same).
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under the Jencks Act, that would not show that anyone knew that these routine radio calls bore on an issue that would be contested in court. Third, Johnson asks what the government knew before the evidence was destroyed. Determining that the Jencks Act applied with the benefit of legal briefing and hindsight would not establish the government’s knowledge of the recordings’ relevance before their deletion.
Willfulness fares no better. The recordings were deleted automatically under a neutral six-month retention policy. Martinez-Chavez provides no evidence that an officer selected them for destruction, considered a duty to preserve them, or deliberately allowed them to disappear. When defense counsel first identified their relevance and requested them, the government acted promptly. Martinez-Chavez has thus failed to show willful conduct under Johnson. 4 The district court acted within its discretion in refusing to give an adverse-inference instruction.
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The prosecutor’s improper remarks did not deprive Martinez-Chavez of a fair trial, and the district court reasonably refused to give an adverse-inference instruction. The judgment is AFFIRMED.
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Martinez-Chavez also suggests that “plain indifference” makes the omission willful. But Johnson demands “willful” conduct, not negligence or plain indifference. 996 F.3d at 217.