Opinion ID: 2268089
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Alleged Improprieties

Text: Appellant contends that the prosecutor acted improperly in three respects: (1) by making improper comments during his opening statement; (2) by persistently asking leading questions throughout the trial, even after the judge ordered him to stop; and (3) by making an improper comment in his closing argument. [11]
The purpose of an opening [statement] is to give the broad outlines of the case to enable the jury to comprehend it. It is not to poison the jury's mind against the defendant .... Government of the Virgin Islands v. Turner, 409 F.2d 102, 103 (3d Cir.1968). Thus an opening statement should not be argumentative, see Wright v. United States, 508 A.2d 915, 921 (D.C.1986) (the court may curtail an opening statement that becomes argumentative or inflammatory (citations omitted)), nor should it appeal to the passions and sympathies of the jury. See Hill v. United States, 367 A.2d 110, 113 (D.C. 1976). In addition, an opening statement generally should not refer to facts that will not be presented as evidence, although [t]he law does not require that opening trial statements be completely supported by evidence introduced during the trial. Mares v. United States, 409 F.2d 1083, 1085 (10th Cir.1968), cert. denied, 394 U.S. 963, 89 S.Ct. 1314, 22 L.Ed.2d 564 (1969), quoted in Owens v. United States, 497 A.2d 1086, 1091 (D.C.1985), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 1085, 106 S.Ct. 861, 88 L.Ed.2d 900 (1986). So long as the unproduced evidence is not touted to the jury as a crucial part of the prosecution's case, a limiting instruction from the trial court is usually a sufficient cure for any possible prejudice. Frazier v. Cupp, 394 U.S. 731, 736, 89 S.Ct. 1420, 22 L.Ed.2d 684 (1969). In this case, the prosecutor began his opening statement with a description of the events of December 10, 1994, and then discussed the circumstances surrounding the investigation into the murders. Defense counsel objected four times during the prosecutor's statement; the court overruled three of the objections. [12] Appellant now maintains that numerous remarks made by the prosecutor in his opening statement were improper because they referred to facts that were never proven by evidence, appealed to the sympathies of the jury, and were argumentative. Appellant first challenges statements that Roy Irby was now in a nursing home and that he never recovered from the incident. He argues that the government did not offer any evidence of these facts and that they were intended to garner sympathy from the jury. The government concedes that no evidence was introduced concerning Mr. Irby's present whereabouts or state of health (Irby did not testify), but it maintains that whether Irby was still suffering from the effects of the incident or was in a nursing home was not crucial to the case, nor was Irby's status touted to the jury. See Frazier, 394 U.S. at 736, 89 S.Ct. 1420. Indeed, Mr. Irby's present condition was only touched upon near the beginning of the opening statement and was never mentioned again over the course of a six-day trial. We find no prejudice warranting reversal. Although the statement was improper because there was no evidence to support it, the impropriety was slight and only tangentially related to the issues at trial. Appellant next complains of the comment that the intruders entered the house through the back door because no evidence was ever presented to show how the intruders gained access to the house. All the doors had been locked the night before, and there was no evidence of a forced entry. The government argues, however, that the jury could infer that the visitors entered through the back door because the front door was barricaded throughout the morning and visitors were instructed to use the back door instead. On this record such an inference is entirely plausible. The evidence was sufficient to enable the jury to infer that the intruders entered through the back door, and thus there was nothing improper about this comment. Appellant also disputes the prosecutor's statement that the hostages were unclear as to the amount of time that passed while they were being held hostage. [13] Appellant claims the statement was argumentative because it set[] up excuses in advance for witness discrepancies that may have been brought out on cross .... We cannot agree. Contrary to appellant's contention, the prosecutor's statement did not assert, or even allude to, any discrepancies in the witnesses' testimony; it simply noted that witnesses would not be able to give an accurate account of the time. Such a statement is not argumentative or improper. Appellant next complains about several comments during the latter part of the prosecutor's opening statement, when he was discussing the course of the police investigation. Some of these comments are troubling. First, appellant criticizes the prosecutor's characterization of the investigation as a monumentally difficult task because the police had to focus on some false facts ... put in their path by [appellant]. Defense counsel objected to this statement and moved for a mistrial. The trial judge denied the motion, but noted that the prosecutor was focusing too much on a glorification of the investigation and urged him to describe the investigation without describing its heroism and the difficulties of it all. We agree with the trial judge that the prosecutor's characterization of the investigation came close to the limits of permissible comment, but it did not cross the line, nor was it serious enough to warrant a mistrial. The course of the investigation was not central to the government's case, and the comment did not seriously prejudice the defense. The prosecutor then went through some of the facts that were known to the police and said that the jury could draw several inferences about the murders based on those facts. After stating that Mr. Irby's home was a crack house, the prosecutor said that this fact suggested that perhaps these murders were drug-related. Additionally, from the actions and words of the intruders, the prosecutor suggested that the perpetrators knew at least two of the victims and that the killings might have been related to drug debts. These remarks resemble a closing argument more than an opening statement. Although it is certainly proper for the prosecutor in any case to alert the jury to the facts that the government expects to prove during the trial, the manner in which the prosecutor did so in this case was unduly argumentative. Instead of saying simply that the government intended to prove that the murders were drug-related or that the murderers knew their victims, the prosecutor urged the jury to draw inferences based on the facts he had already recounted. Asking a jury to draw such inferences is not a proper function of an opening statement. Nevertheless, the prejudice to the defense was slight. Most importantly, the inferences argued by the prosecutor were ultimately supported by the evidence. Moreover, the context of the comments mitigates to a large extent the argumentative tone, in that the prosecutor was attempting at this point to explain to the jury how the police had zeroed in on appellant as a suspect. Although it would have been preferable for the prosecutor to construct his opening statement in such a way as to avoid these argumentative inferences, his failure to do so did not result in any significant prejudice to the defense. Continuing his discussion of the police investigation, the prosecutor also described the alibis of Mr. Robinson and Mr. Harley, the two men originally arrested for the murder, as airtight. Appellant contends that this characterization was improper, and we agree. While it is true that both men had alibis, the strength of those alibistheir airtightnesswas a matter for the jury to decide and should not have been the subject of comment by the prosecutor in his opening statement. Once again, however, this comment was an isolated remark, and the resulting prejudice, if any, was negligible. Finally, appellant challenges the prosecutor's exhortation of the jurors to be attentive during the trial out of respect for the three individuals who lost their lives. Appellant argues that this statement appealed to the sympathy of the jury by subtly hinting that he was responsible for the murders. We agree that this remark should have been left unsaid, but in context we do not think it was unduly prejudicial. We note that the prosecutor only asked for the jurors' undivided attention and did not ask them to send a message to the defendant, something we have repeatedly condemned. See, e.g., Crutchfield v. United States, 779 A.2d 307, 319 (D.C.2001); Bowman v. United States, 652 A.2d 64, 71 (D.C.1994).
In addition to the allegedly improper comments during his opening statement, appellant maintains that the prosecutor acted improperly by repeatedly asking leading questions of his own witnesses throughout the trial. Leading questions should not be used on the direct examination of a witness except as may be necessary to develop the witness' testimony. FED. R. EVID. 611(c). The purpose of prohibiting leading questions on direct examination is to avoid the evil of supplying a false memory for the witness. Green v. United States, 121 U.S.App. D.C. 111, 112, 348 F.2d 340, 341 (citations omitted), cert. denied, 382 U.S. 930, 86 S.Ct. 321, 15 L.Ed.2d 342 (1965); see Scott v. United States, 412 A.2d 364, 371 (D.C. 1980). The trial court, however, has fairly broad discretion to allow leading questions to be asked, and reversal is usually not required if the record shows that the court exercised that discretion. Green, 121 U.S.App.D.C. at 112, 348 F.2d at 341. The record in this case clearly and repeatedly demonstrates that the trial judge was alert to the possibility of prejudice and acted appropriately. Defense counsel made approximately sixty-four objections to leading questions in the course of the trial; the trial judge sustained forty-two of those objections, but frequently remarked that counsel was objecting to matters of little or no importance. Appellant also asserts that there were numerous questions that were leading to which his counsel did not object because he did not want to annoy the jury. For example, the prosecutor asked such questions as Did you go in through the front door of the house?; Did you do what you could, along with Officer Downing, to secure [the scene]?; With glasses, do you have good vision?; Did you remain under that blanket until the ordeal ended?; and Was the watch special to you? Defense counsel, on four separate occasions, requested a mistrial due to the prosecutor's excessive leading questions. On the last occasion, the judge called a recess in the trial in order to discuss proper questioning with the prosecutor. The prosecutor denied that he was asking leading questions. [14] The judge replied, I don't believe that any of these instances, either taken separately or as a whole, have begun to come to the point where they are denying Mr. Bailey a fair trial. I do find that there's a problem that I'm having trouble managing, and I don't know what to do about the disagreement [with the prosecutor] about what's a leading question and what isn't a leading question. Although the frequency and persistence of the prosecutor's leading questions gives us some concern, we agree with the trial judge that they did not, either individually or collectively, result in any meaningful prejudice to the defense. Many of them concerned preliminary information or were deemed not consequential by the judge. Additionally, the witnesses generally corroborated one another through their testimony, indicating that the prosecutor was not supplying the witnesses with false memor[ies]. See Green, 121 U.S.App.D.C. at 112, 348 F.2d at 341. As a result, any prejudice caused by the prosecutor's leading questions was not substantial enough to arouse in us any real doubt about the fairness of the trial.
During his rebuttal closing argument, the prosecutor attempted to encourage the jurors to draw on their collective experience as citizens of a large metropolitan area. In doing so, he said: You are a remarkable jury in the sense that you are richly diverse. Up to twelve of you who will be sitting in this case, four of you are men and eight of you are women. Of those twelve, you range in age from twentynine to sixty. Thirty-one years separates the youngest from the oldest member. Three of the twelve of you reside in Northeast, nine reside in Northwest, two of you work in Southwest. None of you, as far as I can tell, live or work in Southeast, the part of this city where these awful crimes were committed. You have a range of job experience. You work for Howard University, the United States Information Agency, for the World Bank. One of you is retired. One of you works for the Department of Transportation. One of you [works] for the University of Maryland. One of you is a banker with Nations Bank. Defense counsel objected, asserting that the prosecutor's statements terrorized the jury. The trial court sustained the objection, but denied defense counsel's subsequent motion for a mistrial based on these comments. Appellant now argues that the comments were improper in that they violated that sanctity of juror anonymity and gave the government a hidden advantage by identifying a mutuality of economic and class status. These statements by the prosecutor were clearly improper and should not have been made. Although there is nothing inherently wrong in seeking to draw on the collective experience of the jury, there was no need for the prosecutor to recite the occupation and residence of any individual juror. That information was totally irrelevant to the issues at trial and may well have made some jurors very uncomfortable. The prosecutor took a great risk by breaching the anonymity that, as a general rule, is designed to shield individual jurors from harassment. The government suggests that the prosecutor's comments were invited by a highly rhetorical closing argument by defense counsel. That is true to some extent, [15] but it does not justify what the prosecutor did here. We cannot agree with the assertion in the government's brief that the prosecutor's observation was entirely benign. Once again, however, we conclude that the impropriety was not severe enough to warrant reversal. The statements came during the rebuttal portion of a long closing argument, after a long trial, and they were not related to the evidence in the case. Appellant has not persuaded us that they made any real difference in the outcome of the proceedings.