Opinion ID: 1113193
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 31

Heading: Custodial history.

Text: (35) Defendant complains that his due process, confrontation, and reliable-penalty rights were violated by improper evidence and argument about his history of incarceration. First, he asserts that without evidentiary support, the prosecutor improperly suggested he had not been violent between 1973 (the Ramirez burglary) and 1979 (the Mankin robbery and Ante murder) because he was continuously incarcerated during that period. Second, he complains his own counsel was incompetent for eliciting from Hortencia the irrelevant fact that he was in jail one month before the murder. Counsel did nothing in response to the prosecutor's argument, and defendant fails to persuade that an admonition would not have cured any harm. Hence, any direct appellate challenge to the prosecutor's remark is barred. In any event, we see no impropriety. After discussing the 1973 Ramirez burglary, the prosecutor said, We move on. January 13th, 1979. And ... obviously there's some time where the defendant is not available to victimize, to rob, to prey on people. (Italics added.) From defendant's 1973 burglary conviction, it was reasonable to infer he had spent some time in custody, and the prosecutor did not suggest his incarceration had been continuous. Reasonably understood, his comment merely placed the aggravating evidence in perspective by inviting the jury to assume that for some period after the 1973 burglary conviction, defendant had no opportunity to commit criminal acts on the street. Such argument was not precluded. Finally, we see no prejudice in Hortencia's brief statement about defendant's most recent prior incarceration. The valid evidence painted defendant as a chronic drug abuser who was periodically in trouble with the law. Any further improper aggravating inference the jury might draw from Hortencia's disclosure was marginal at worst. No basis for reversal appears.