Case Title: Dooley v. State

Citation: 393 N.E.2d 154

Docket Number: 179S26

State: indiana

Court: Indiana Supreme Court

Date: 1979-08-24T00:00:00Z

Document:
393 N.E.2d 154 (1979)
Carl Fletcher DOOLEY, Appellant (Defendant below),
v.
STATE of Indiana, Appellee (Plaintiff below).
No. 179S26.

Supreme Court of Indiana.
August 24, 1979.
Melvin Reed, Lark, Reed & Chamblee, P.C., South Bend, for appellant.
Theodore L. Sendak, Atty. Gen. of Indiana, Richard Albert Alford, Deputy Atty. Gen., Indianapolis, for appellee.
HUNTER, Justice.
Defendant, Carl Fletcher Dooley, was convicted by a jury of rape, Ind. Code § 35-13-4-3 (Burns 1975), and burglary in the first degree, Ind. Code § 35-13-4-4 (Burns 1975), and was sentenced to a twenty-year determinate term and a ten-to-twenty-year indeterminate sentence respectively. The trial judge merged the indeterminate sentence into the twenty-year determinate sentence and, consequently, did not issue a separate order of commitment on the charge of first-degree burglary.
The defendant raises essentially two errors on appeal. However, because of the result reached here, we consider only whether the trial court erred in permitting the prosecuting attorney to comment upon defendant's failure to testify at trial.
The facts relevant to this issue consist only of the following exchanges which took place during the prosecuting attorney's final argument:
The trial court gave the jury no prompt admonishment to disregard the prosecutor's statements to which defendant properly objected. At no time did the trial court instruct the jury on the matter of defendant's failure to testify.
Such comments are subject to scrutiny under the federal constitution. The United States Supreme Court, in striking down a provision in the California Constitution which allowed prosecutorial and judicial comment on a defendant's failure to testify, stated:
Ind. Code § 35-1-31-3 (Burns 1975) provides in relevant part:
This Court has consistently construed this statute to mean that:
In Long, the prosecutor commented that he "would have been pleased to have heard from the other [side]." 56 Ind. at 185. In Rowley, the prosecutor made the remark that there had been not "one bit" of evidence from the witness stand that indicated the defendant was not guilty. In both cases this Court reversed the convictions based on the prosecutor's comments. In other cases, reversal has not been warranted when another defense witness's credibility is attacked by the prosecutor on final argument, Lake v. State, (1976) 264 Ind. 129, 340 N.E.2d 789, or when the prosecutor's remarks are in response to attacks on the credibility of state's witnesses and when the defendant did put on witnesses in his case-in-chief. Ross v. State, (1978) Ind., 376 N.E.2d 1117; Fortson v. State, (1978) Ind., 379 N.E.2d 147. In Ross, we noted that unless it appears that there are witnesses other than the defendant who have denied or contradicted the evidence against him, any direct or indirect reference to the defendant's failure to testify has been strictly regarded as an impingement of his constitutional and statutory rights not to testify.
*156 In the case at bar, the defendant rested after the state's case, putting no witnesses on the stand. We are not swayed by the prosecuting attorney's clumsy attempt to distinguish between the defendant's silence, which the jury cannot consider, and "the fact that nobody else got up ..." and offered evidence of alibi on defendant's behalf. We find that Rowley v. State, supra, is controlling here.
While the trial court properly sustained defendant's objection, the failure to promptly admonish the jury constituted reversible error. Moore v. State (1977) Ind., 369 N.E.2d 628; Clark v. State (1978) Ind., 380 N.E.2d 550. Although an instruction at the end of the trial cannot take the place of a prompt admonishment, Rowley v. State, supra, the trial court here did not give any instruction on the issue whatsoever. Of course, we are mindful that an instruction on this matter cannot be given over defendant's objection. Gross v. State, (1974) 261 Ind. 489, 306 N.E.2d 371; Hill v. State, (1978) Ind., 371 N.E.2d 1303.
The state contends that the court's sustaining of defendant's objection coupled with the prosecutor's earlier admonition adequately fulfilled the requirements of Ind. Code § 35-1-31-3 (Burns 1975) and the case law construing that statute. We do not agree.
Admonitions and instructions to be given to the jury are not the province of the prosecuting attorney. They must come from the judge, an impartial source not involved in trial advocacy. In fact, we find the prosecutor's "admonition" itself to be an improper comment on defendant's decision not to testify. It came after another improper comment, "The testimony of Donna Drudge has not been controverted in any way by other evidence." A jury can hardly be influenced by an advocate's admonition regarding his own prejudicial remark. Furthermore, the prosecutor, after a discussion at the bench, followed his own "admonition" with yet another comment on defendant's silence  that "nobody else got up" and offered evidence of alibi. As the prosecutor started to explain the statutory defense of alibi, defense counsel objected and, after another bench conference, the objection was sustained.
The state further asserts that defendant should not prevail on this issue because he failed to request the court to admonish the jury or strike the comments from the record. The record is not complete in this regard. We do not know what occurred during the two bench conferences. Of course, we will not assume that the defendant made a request for admonishment absent appearance of same in the record. It is the duty of the party alleging error to present this Court with a proper record. Buchanan v. State, (1975) 263 Ind. 360, 332 N.E.2d 213; Pulliam v. State, (1976) 264 Ind. 381, 345 N.E.2d 229.
However, we agree with the opinion of the Court of Appeals in Bland v. State, (1973) 158 Ind. App. 441, 303 N.E.2d 61. In a caveat added to a reversal on this issue, Judge Robertson noted:
The tenor of the decisions of this Court would indicate that a specific request for admonishment is not required to preserve this error for appeal. We believe that there was fundamental error in the case at bar.
For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the trial court is reversed and remanded *157 with the instruction to grant defendant a new trial.
GIVAN, C.J., and DeBRULER, PRENTICE and PIVARNIK, JJ., concur.