Opinion ID: 2599107
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Cross-Examination of Dr. Gentry

Text: The next point about which Kleypas complains took place during the cross-examination of Dr. Gerald Gentry, one of Kleypas' psychiatric experts. On redirect examination, Dr. Gentry testified that Kleypas had suffered some mental damage from the anticipation or fear of pain which accompanied him watching the beatings of his brothers by his father. On recross, prosecutor Barry Disney stated: So you would agree that the anticipation of fear or the anticipation of harm can cause severe mental distress? When Gentry replied that it would, Disney then stated: So would you care to venture an opinion as to the amount of severe mental distress that [C.W.] was feeling when the defendant was in her apartment for one and a half to three hours? Defense counsel objected and the trial court stated: I think it is beyond the scope of redirect, sustained. It is impossible to tell exactly what the prosecutor's motive in asking this question was. It was either, as Kleypas suggests, an attempt to remind the jury of C.W.'s pain and suffering in order to inflame the jury or it was an attempt by the prosecutor to garner additional testimony from a defense witness to support the State's alleged aggravating circumstance that the murder was committed in an especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel manner. In either event, the question itself was improper. We caution that a prosecutor who outside the scope of the examination seeks to gain an advantage with a question that arguably is intended to inflame and impassion the jury is perilously close to committing reversible error.