Opinion ID: 2974154
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Isolated or Extensive Comments

Text: All of the comments were isolated, and none were repeated after an objection. Thus, the third Carter factor does not support granting Slagle’s petition. All of the minimally prejudicial comments mentioned in the immediately preceding discussion were mentioned only once, and the comments with more than minimal prejudicial harm were also made only once. For instance, the comment that Slagle had a lot of nerve to testify that he prayed was prejudicial because its only purpose appears to be to inflame the passions of the jury against a potentially nonreligious person. But this comment was also made only once, during the guilt phase of trial as the prosecution narrated the facts presented at trial. Only the vouching comments are arguably extensive, but even of these, there were only four such comments, one sentence each, in the closing argument that consumes over 100 pages of trial transcript. Unlike the prosecution in Bates, the prosecution here did not repeat certain tag lines or commit the same error after an objection. See Bates, 402 F.3d at 648. The fifteen comments were not extensive during this trial that comprises over 1000 pages of trial transcript, and therefore the prosecution’s misconduct was not “so pronounced and persistent that it permeate[d] the entire atmosphere of the trial or so gross as probably to prejudice the defendant.” Pritchett v. Pitcher, 117 F.3d 959, 964 (6th Cir. 1997) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). No. 04-3490 Slagle v. Bagley Page 19