Opinion ID: 2714926
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Standard for Determining Prejudice

Text: A claim of prosecutorial misconduct requires the defendant to show both that the prosecutor made improper statements and that those statements caused prejudice. 19 State v. Lindsay (James Leroy)/State v. Holmes (Jennifer), No. 88437-4 To show prejudice, the petitioners must show a substantial likelihood that the prosecutor's statements affected the jury's verdict. State v. Emery, 174 Wn.2d 741, 760,278 P.3d 653 (2012) (citing Anderson, 153 Wn. App. at 427). The State argues that if the petitioners failed to object to a particular statement by the prosecutor, they must also show that a jury instruction would not have cured the potential prejudice. Id. at 761. 4 The State points out that the following statements did not draw immediate objections: calling Holmes's testimony funny, disgusting, and comical; the use of the jigsaw puzzle analogy and crosswalk analogy to explain reasonable doubt and the exhortation to the jury to speak the truth; and the crock and sit here and lie comments. However, directly after the prosecutor's closing argument, Holmes's counsel made a motion for mistrial. In that motion she identified a number of the prosecutor's statements as improper for the reasons noted above, stating specifically that he made his personal opinions about the evidence [known] on numerous occasions, 95 VRP at 8890, and that he is disparaging counsel, just, you know, egregiously, id. at 8891. The Ninth Circuit has recognized that a defense counsel entering objections to the language and tenor 4 We have often stated this standard as incorporating not only that objective inquiry but also an arguably subjective inquiry; that is, whether the prosecutor's misconduct was so flagrant and ill intentioned that an instruction could not have cured the resulting prejudice. Emery, 174 Wn.2d at 760-61 (citing Stenson, 132 Wn.2d at 727). We clarified, though, that [r]eviewing courts should focus less on whether the prosecutor's misconduct was flagrant or ill intentioned and more on whether the resulting prejudice could have been cured. Id. at 762. 20 State v. Lindsay (James Leroy)/State v. Holmes (.Jennifer), No. 88437-4 of the prosecutor's closing remarks by way of a mistrial motion after the government finished its summation is an acceptable mechanism by which to preserve challenges to prosecutorial conduct in a closing argument in lieu of repeated interruptions to the closing arguments, and therefore that the ordinary standard for examining prejudice applies. Prantil, 764 F.2d at 555 n.4 (citing United States v. Lyman, 592 F.2d 496, 499 (9th Cir. 1979)). The rule in Prantil advances the policy reasons for the contemporaneous objection rule, such as giving the trial court a chance to correct the problem with a curative instruction, and we therefore adopt it. Under this rule, the defense certainly preserved the issue for review.