Opinion ID: 2639278
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Prosecutor's Opinion on Truthfulness of State's Witnesses

Text: The defendant also argues the prosecutor improperly commented on the truthfulness of the State's witnesses. In closing arguments, the prosecutor argued: Why wouldn't he just say somebody else did it? Why wouldn't he blame Shawn? Why wouldn't he blame Lonnie Pugh? Why wouldn't he say Mike Quinn and him were doing it? Why would he point to Tom? There's no ax for him to grind against Tom Finley. He says it was Tom because it's true. He and Tom were up there making the meth. And all the physical evidence and the testimony of the witnesses corroborates George LaMae's story, his version of it, not Tom Finley's. The above comments discuss the testimony of a critical witness for the State, the co-defendant George LaMae and his apparent lack of motive to lie compared with the defendant's motive to lie. The comments do not constitute error but are fair comment based upon the trial evidence. The prosecutor did commit error when she argued before the jury that every time that the defendant objected to the admission of their evidence, you noticed that it was overruled because there's no basis in law for that objection. They didn't do anything wrong. The defendant's objection was overruled. It is a well established law in this state that rulings of the trial court on objections to evidence are not a proper subject for a prosecutor's closing argument. Why any prosecutor would conclude otherwise and mention such rulings in closing argument to bolster its case before the jury is beyond any good answer. When the law is so clear we cannot understand why such errors occur. However, we conclude that the error had little likelihood of changing the result of the defendant's trial. Given the overwhelming evidence of guilt in this case, and the brief nature of the prosecutor's comment, we conclude that the error committed was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.