Opinion ID: 2317416
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 18

Heading: Demeaning DeRosa's right to remain silent

Text: DeRosa next contends that the prosecutor, in questioning witnesses Kendall Ballew, the former LeFlore County Sheriff, and Shawn Ward, an investigator employed by the LeFlore County District Attorney's office, impermissibl[y] . . . denigrat[ed]. . . DeRosa's right to remain silent. Aplt. Br. at 56. Ballew and Ward were the two law enforcement officers who traveled to Corpus Christi, Texas, to take Castleberry and DeRosa into custody. The prosecutor asked Ballew whether he talked to Castleberry upon taking him into custody, and Ballew testified that Castleberry made a statement to him. The prosecutor in turn elicited testimony from Ward that Castleberry gave consent to search his vehicle (i.e., the vehicle that he and DeRosa drove to Corpus Christi), and that Castleberry subsequently pled guilty to two counts of murder. DeRosa complains that the prosecutor in first-stage closing arguments in turn made the following remarks that, he asserts, indirectly criticized DeRosa's decision to remain silent: Well, the defense has made great hay and will continue to make great hay with who actually puts the defendant [DeRosa] in the [Plummers'] house. Well, Mr. Castleberry testified, putting the defendant in the house, putting a knife in his hand and causing the initial stab wounds on both of the victims. And yet, the defense would have you believe that he is doing that simply because he has reached a plea agreement with the State. That the only reason that he took the stand to testify was to save his own life. That's what they're going to tell you, but you need to remember a very important fact, and that's the last fact you heard before we closed our evidence yesterday, and that is that Mr. Castleberry made a statement about what happened in the Plummer's household to Sheriff Kendall Ballew in Corpus Christi, Texas, on the day he was arrested; the day after the charges were filed and the warrant's [sic] issued for his arrest. Before he ever had an opportunity to talk to anybody who could have reached a plea agreement with them, he gave the same core statement that he testified to. So if his motivation to give that statement is that he's saving his life with a plea agreement, those two things just don't fit. He made that statement because his conscience required him to. He made that statement because he knew he was had. He made that statement because it was the right thing to do, and he's not going home. He's already pled guilty. He's done the right thing. Tr. at 531-32. [4] DeRosa presented this claim to the OCCA on direct appeal. The OCCA rejected it, stating: DeRosa also complains about a number of closing-argument prosecutorial remarks, including a particular characterization of Castleberry's confession to police, just after he was arrested. The substance of this confession was brought out through the testimony of Sheriff Kendall Ballew, who arrested Castleberry.FN114    DeRosa argues that the prosecutor went too far with this argument, because by describing Castleberry's actions as the right thing to do, he was inviting the jury to draw a negative inference about DeRosa's constitutionally-protected decisions to remain silent and go to trial. FN114. Castleberry had testified earlier in the trial and been cross-examined about the timing of and rationale for his coming forward. Although DeRosa objected to Ballew's confession testimony at trial, he now acknowledges that it was appropriate to allow this testimony, to rebut defense counsel's implied accusation of recent fabrication and/or improper motive. Since DeRosa did not object to this remark, all but plain error has been waived. [footnote omitted] The reference to Castleberry doing the right thing came up within a list of reasons that the district attorney offered as possible rationales for his decision to confess. No evidence was offered regarding Castleberry's actual reasons; and the jury would most likely have understood the prosecutor's remarks as merely hypothesizing about why an individual who fled the State, after participating in two murders, would confess a few days later. Directly contrasting one individual's decision to confess and plead guilty with that of a defendant who chooses to remain silent and go to trialparticularly if the first decision is described as the right thing to docould constitute an undue burdening of a defendant's Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. That is not, however, what happened in this case.FN116 While prosecutors must guard against remarks that could unduly burden a defendant's exercise of constitutional rights, appellate courts must evaluate prosecutorial remarks within the specific context within which they arise, and not presume that a prosecutor intendsor that a jury will comprehend an oblique but inappropriate interpretation, rather than a more direct, lawful one.FN117 This Court finds that the district attorney's remarks did not burden DeRosa's exercise of his constitutional rights; nor did the remarks violate due process. FN116. The prosecutor did not suggest that Castleberry's choices should be compared with those of DeRosa in this regard. And the current case is totally unlike Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609, 85 S.Ct. 1229, 14 L.Ed.2d 106 (1965), in which the trial court instructed the jury that it could infer guilt from the defendant's decision to remain silent, under conditions where it could reasonably be expected that an innocent person would speak up, and in which the prosecutor argued to the jury that it should do so in the case at issue. Id. at 609-15, 85 S.Ct. at 1230-33. FN117. See DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. at 647, 94 S.Ct. at 1873 ([A] court should not lightly infer that a prosecutor intends an ambiguous remark to have its most damaging meaning or that a jury, sitting through lengthy exhortation, will draw that meaning from the plethora of less damaging interpretations.). While the suggestion that the prosecutor's remarks served as an indirect criticism of DeRosa's failure to confess and plead guilty is interesting and thought-provoking, this interpretation is not the most natural onewhich probably explains why no one on DeRosa's defense team, which included current appellate counsel, objected at the time. DeRosa I, 89 P.3d at 1147-48 (internal paragraph numbers omitted). In this federal habeas appeal, DeRosa argues that the OCCA unreasonably concluded that the prosecutor's remarks did not burden the exercise of his constitutional right to remain silent. He argues that, because [t]here were two murder suspects presented to the jury, one who made use of his Fifth Amendment rights, and one who waived his Fifth Amendment rights, [t]he obvious and clear implication [of the prosecutor's remarks] is that if Castleberry's confession and guilty plea were the right thing, then DeRosa's invocation of his constitutional rights was the wrong thing. Aplt. Br. at 58. We conclude, however, that the OCCA reasonably applied the principle outlined by the Supreme Court in Donnelly, i.e., that a reviewing court should not lightly infer that a prosecutor intends an ambiguous remark to have its most damaging meaning or that a jury, sitting through lengthy exhortation, will draw that meaning from the plethora of less damaging interpretations. 416 U.S. at 647, 94 S.Ct. 1868. Although DeRosa asserts that the prosecutor's remarks in his case were not ambiguous, we disagree. The prosecutor's remarks, considered as a whole, were clearly intended to rebut the assertion by DeRosa's defense counsel that Castleberry had, in exchange for a plea deal with the prosecution, provided false testimony about DeRosa's involvement in the robbery and murders. And although the prosecutor's specific remarks about Castleberry doing the right thing perhaps could be interpreted as a comment on DeRosa's silence, the more natural and reasonable interpretation, as the OCCA effectively concluded, is that the prosecutor was simply asserting that Castleberry was following his conscience and telling the truth about what had happened. [5]