Opinion ID: 1621755
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 19

Heading: prosecutor's personal views

Text: The appellant next contends that the prosecutor erred in referring to this murder as being a murder of the worst kind, one of the worst kind of murders imaginable, and a most heinous and brutal act. The appellant contends that the prosecutor expressed his personal views of the offense in an effort to inflame the passions of the jury. However, evaluating the prosecutor's comments in light of his entire argument, we conclude that the comments referred to the fact that the appellant took advantage of a lady who was a close friend of his grandmother. Even if improper, we do not view this argument as being so prejudicial as to require a new trial. This issue is without merit.
Finally, the appellant contends that the prosecutor erred by improperly bolstering the testimony of William Roger Moore and Shelia Bush (Hammock) by asking them if they were telling the truth. He also asked Ms. Bush if she was having dreams about the case. In State v. Carpenter, 773 S.W.2d 1, 11 (Tenn. Crim. App.), perm. to appeal denied, (Tenn. 1989), this court held that bolstering was permitted to rehabilitate an impeached witness to rebut the inference that the witness's testimony was a recent fabrication. Bolstering has also been permitted to allow seemingly inconsistent statements to be placed into context. State v. Boyd, 797 S.W.2d 589, 594 (Tenn. 1990). We conclude that the prosecutor's questions were not inappropriate. The question asked of Ms. Bush concerning whether she had dreams about the offense were posed in the context of remembering things that she had not thought of and explaining why there had been inconsistencies in previous statements. Again, we conclude that the prosecutor could use this question to rehabilitate his witness. This issue is without merit.