Opinion ID: 2398540
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: emotional outbursts

Text: The defendants also argue that the prosecutrix's conduct on the witness stand was so highly emotional that it prevented them from effectively cross-examining her, made a fair and impartial trial impossible, and consequently called for favorable action on their several motions for a mistrial. To deny those motions, they contend, was error. It is, of course, true that there are cases where a witness' displays of emotion are so frequent and so intense that they produce such passion and prejudice as to justify taking a case from the jury. But whether or not they produce that result is a matter which under established case law rests largely in a trial justice's sound judicial discretion, and, except in an instance where that discretion is clearly shown to have been abused, his refusal to grant a mistrial because of a complaining witness' outbursts, outcries and the like will not be disturbed. Commonwealth v. Dies, 248 Mass. 482, 487-88, 143 N.E. 506, 508-09 (1924) ; State v. Cox, 172 Minn. 226, 228, 215 N.W. 189, 190 (1927) ; State v. Schaffer, 354 S.W.2d 829, 833-34 (Mo.1962) ; State v. Gill, 243 Or. 621, 622, 415 P.2d 166, 167 (1966) ; Annot., 46 A.L.R.2d 949 (1956). In denying defendants' motions for a mistrial in this case the trial justice in effect held that the prosecutrix's emotional outbursts in the light of all the circumstances seemed to him to be inevitable, and he also specifically stated his satisfaction that the prosecutrix's conduct had not interfered with an effective cross-examination. The defendants refer to nothing in the record that would justify our concluding that in so finding he abused his discretion.