Opinion ID: 743074
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Right to Due Process of Law

Text: 89 In addition to providing a path for the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to attach to state prosecutions, the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees a state criminal defendant due process of law, 17 including a fair trial. In determining whether prosecutorial misconduct during summation amounts to a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court has stated that [t]he relevant question is whether the prosecutors' comments 'so infected the trial with unfairness as to make the resulting conviction a denial of due process.'  Darden v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 168, 181, 106 S.Ct. 2464, 2471, 91 L.Ed.2d 144 (1986) (quoting Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 643, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 1871, 40 L.Ed.2d 431 (1974)); Gonzalez v. Sullivan, 934 F.2d 419, 424 (2d Cir.1991). See also, United States ex rel. Haynes v. McKendrick, 481 F.2d 152 (2d Cir.1973) (racially biased summation remarks violated due process rights of defendant). We have previously held that [w]e must examine the remarks in the context of the entire trial to determine whether the prosecutor's behavior amounted to prejudicial error. In determining whether there is prejudicial error we look at three factors: the severity of the misconduct, the measures adopted to cure the misconduct, and the certainty of conviction absent the misconduct. Strouse v. Leonardo, 928 F.2d 548, 557 (2d Cir.1991); see Bentley v. Scully, 41 F.3d 818, 824 (2d Cir.1994), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 1152, 116 S.Ct. 1029, 134 L.Ed.2d 107 (1996). 90 In assessing whether Agard's right to due process has been violated, then, we first examine the severity of the prosecutor's misconduct. The State argues that the comments were brief and isolated and therefore not severe. See Bentley, 41 F.3d at 825. Yet, the length of the commentary is not automatically decisive. As the late Judge Frank once said, [improper prosecutorial summation] remarks [have not been deemed] harmless because compressed into a single sentence, for experience teaches that a poisonous suggestion of that kind needs no elaboration. United States v. Antonelli Fireworks Co., 155 F.2d 631, 646 (2d Cir.1946) (Frank, J. dissenting) (footnote omitted). A comment which directly disparages the defendant's exercise of constitutional rights can be severe misconduct regardless of its length. More important to due process analysis are the nature and effect of the remarks. Under other circumstances, a prosecutor's closing commentary upon a witness' opportunity to fabricate testimony might only implicate state evidentiary law; when the witness in question is the defendant, however, and the commentary goes to the heart of the constitutionally guaranteed rights to be present at trial and testify on one's own behalf, the very fairness of the entire trial is compromised. 18 91 Moving on with the three-step analysis, we note that the trial court took no curative measures to correct the prosecutor's error (an unsurprising result, given that he did not find her comments to be erroneous). Though it is true that the judge instructed the jury that the lawyer's comments were not evidence and that the jury's recollections of events should control, see Charge at 827, this is a standard jury instruction and was not specifically directed at curing the error nor was it made at the time of the prosecutor's improper remarks. 92 Finally, we are not at all certain that Agard would have been convicted had the error not occurred. As we have already discussed, credibility was unquestionably the central issue at trial. The fact that the jury convicted only on anal sodomy and not on vaginal rape or oral sodomy indicates that it might have had trouble believing all of Winder's testimony; perhaps, without the prosecutor's summation comments, it would have believed Agard in the entirety. We cannot be certain. Our three-step test therefore indicates that the prosecutor's remarks, unchallenged by the trial judge, did deny Agard a fair trial. 93 Viewing these comments in the context of the entire trial, we also recognize that prosecutorial commentary which tramples upon a defendant's constitutional rights has been held to implicate the entire fairness of a trial more than non-constitutional error. When rejecting the defendant's due process claim in Darden, the Supreme Court stated that the prosecutors' argument did not manipulate or misstate the evidence, nor did it implicate other specific rights of the accused such as the right to counsel or the right to remain silent. Darden, 477 U.S. at 181-82, 106 S.Ct. at 2471-72 (emphasis added). In contrast, Agard's specific rights to testify on his own behalf, to compulsory process, and to confront the witnesses against him were all implicated by the comments we are reviewing. The entire fairness of his trial, and thereby due process, were likewise infringed. We therefore find that Agard's Fourteenth Amendment right to due process of law was violated by the trial court's error.