Opinion ID: 1818171
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Improper Penalty Phase Prosecutorial Argument

Text: Next, Salazar claims that the trial court erred in overruling his objection to the State's use of the word terrorize during penalty phase final arguments. We deny this claim. During penalty phase closing arguments, the prosecutor argued: In this case, we have a burglary by two men who come two and a half ... hours from Miami, ... and they come, park the car, go down the road, come up on the house in the middle of the night, well after dark, break the door in.... Pushed their way basically into the house and held everybody at gunpoint and terrorized the two occupants until their decision or until the actions were taken to kill them. Burglary and a lot of other things we talked about earlier are bases for felony murder and basically the thinking behind all that is you put somebody else's life on the line, you create a dangerous situation where somebody else could be killed, and even if it's an accident, it's felony murder. Here we have much, much more than just a burglary that went bad. We have a burglary for the purpose of terrorizing the occupants and maybe a burglary for killing the occupants. You'll make the determination, and probably have, When was the decision to kill made? Was it made before they came up? Was it made before, you know, Neil Salazar went in that house? Wasor was it made at some point I mean, the statement was made If I don't get some answers, people are going to die. Clearly at some point the decision to kill replaced that of simply terrorizing them. They came with the duct tape and Neil Salazar came armed with the knowledge that those Wal-Mart bags were there in the house because he had lived there. They clearly or he clearly had knowledge (Emphasis added.) At that point, the defense objected and a brief sidebar conference was held. Defense counsel argued that by saying terrorize the State was arguing a nonstatutory aggravator. The trial court overruled the objection. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in overruling Salazar's objection. It is within the court's discretion to control the comments made to a jury, and a court's ruling will be sustained on review absent an abuse of discretion. Ford, 802 So.2d at 1132. Contrary to Salazar's argument, the State's use of the word terrorize was not improper and did not refer to nonstatutory aggravation. In context, the argument specifically referred to the burglary statutory aggravator and alluded to two other statutory aggravators, namely HAC and CCP. First, the prosecutor's use of the word terrorize referred to the underlying assault supporting the burglary aggravator. An `assault' is an intentional, unlawful threat by word or act to do violence to the person of another, coupled with an apparent ability to do so, and doing some act which creates a well-founded fear in such other person that such violence is imminent. § 784.011(1), Fla. Stat. (2000). Similarly, terror is defined as a state of intense fear, and to terrorize is to coerce by threat or violence. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary at 1213 (10th ed.2001). Accordingly, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in allowing the prosecutor to use the word terrorize when referring to the assault underlying the burglary aggravator. Second, the State's argument alluded to both the HAC and CCP aggravators. [F]ear, emotional strain, and terror of the victim during the events leading up to the murder may be considered in determining whether [the HAC] aggravator is satisfied.... Pooler v. State, 704 So.2d 1375, 1378 (Fla.1997) (emphasis added). And the question of whether Salazar's original purpose for entering Nutter's home was to terrorize her or to kill her relates to the heightened premeditation element of CCP. Accordingly, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in overruling Salazar's objection to the State's use of the word terrorize during penalty phase final arguments.