a defendant is under no obligation to put forward evidence on his or her own behalf. As Hall correctly points out, when the prosecution raises the spectre of a flawed alibi and the defendant chooses not to offer any alibi evidence, it may well leave the jury with an unfavorable impression of the defendant. In any event, whether it was improper for the prosecutor to comment on potential alibi witnesses under the facts of this case is an issue we need not reach in order to dispense with Hall’s appeal because improper prosecutorial remarks standing alone cannot justify a new trial unless they “undermined the fairness of the trial and contributed to a miscarriage of justice.” United States v. Young, 470 U.S. 1, 16 n. 14, 105 S.Ct. 1038, 84 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985); see also Mealy, 851 F.2d at 903 (<HOLDING>) (citations and internal quotations omitted).
holding that alleged prosecutorial misconduct must be evaluated in light of the prosecutors argument and the entire record and if a review of the record convinces the court that the jury would have convicted defendant even if it were not exposed to the alleged improper prosecutorial comments then no actual prejudice occurred recognizing that even if the prosecutor engaged in improper conduct we must reexamine the improper remark in light of the entire record to determine whether the remark deprived the defendant of a fair trial holding that we may reverse a conviction under plain error only if the prosecutors improper conduct so affected the jurys ability to consider the totality of the evidence fairly that it tainted the verdict and deprived the defendant of a fair trial holding that a defendant was estopped from asserting improper service where the defendants conduct caused the allegedly improper service recognizing that we are obligated to reverse where the improper exclusion of evidence places the underlying fairness of the entire trial in doubt or where the exclusion affects the substantial rights of the defendant