DC Police Officer Entitled to New Trial in Close PPP Fraud Case

A former Washington, D.C. police officer convicted of pandemic loan fraud was properly granted a new trial after the district court failed to provide a no-adverse-inference instruction to the jury, a federal appeals court said Friday.

The evidence in the case was close, and the jury could have held Roberto Adams’s decision not to testify against him without an instruction not to, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said.

Counsel for Adams had asked the district court to instruct the jury that it shouldn’t draw any adverse inference from his decision not to testify at trial. ...