Opinion ID: 2383219
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Whether There was Plain Error.

Text: In determining whether Hunter's conviction should be reversed, it is our function to review the record for legal error or abuse of discretion by the trial judge, not by counsel. Irick, supra, 565 A.2d at 33. Applied to the present case, this means that we must decide whether the judge compromised the fundamental fairness of the trial, and permitted a clear miscarriage of justice, by not intervening, sua sponte, when the prosecutor made his impermissible remarks about Hunter's post-indictment failure to disclose his version of events to the government. Id.; see also Dixon, supra, 565 A.2d at 78. Although the judge might well have nipped the problem in the bud by calling counsel to the bench when the prosecutor made his unorthodox argument, we cannot say that it was unreasonable for the judge not to do so. The lack of any reaction from defense counsel might have suggested that she did not perceive any prejudice, a fact which is itself suggestive in some measure of lack of prejudice. See Parks v. United States, 451 A.2d 591, 613 (D.C.1982), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 945, 103 S.Ct. 2123, 77 L.Ed.2d 1303 (1983). The allegedly offending remarks consisted of but a few lines in a lengthy closing. Defense counsel could easily have responded to them, at the bench or in her own closing argument. The judge could thus reasonably conclude, in the absence of a defense objection, that the situation was not extreme enough to warrant his uninvited intrusion into the adversary process. Unless the reasons for intervention are compelling, a judge generally acts within his discretion when he declines to inject himself unilaterally into the controversy or to take measures which counsel have not asked him to take. Mack v. United States, 570 A.2d 777, 782 (D.C. 1990). In her own comparatively forceful closing argument, Hunter's attorney made no mention at all of the issue presently under discussion. As we have previously noted, she also demanded first a mistrial and then a new trial on other grounds, but eschewed any reliance on this one. In Parks, supra, this court found it significant, in holding that improper prosecutorial argument had not prejudiced the defendants, that counsel first raised the issue in a post-verdict memorandum supporting a motion for a mistrial. In the present case, Hunter first raised the issue even later, on appeal. Reversal for plain error in cases of allegedly improper prosecutorial argument should be confined to situations which can fairly be characterized as particularly egregious. Mills, supra, 599 A.2d at 787, quoting United States v. Young, 470 U.S. 1, 15, 105 S.Ct. 1038, 1046, 84 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985). We view the prosecutor's argument in this case as a significant departure from permissible advocacya departure, indeed, that we trust will not be repeated. Nevertheless, viewing the offending remarks in the context of the case as a whole, see Young, supra, 470 U.S. at 15, 105 S.Ct. at 1046, we think it most unlikely that a few lines of impermissible comment, to which neither counsel nor the judge again alluded, compromised the fairness or integrity of the entire trial or threatened such a clear miscarriage of justice that the plain error doctrine may properly be invoked.