Opinion ID: 1450284
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Defendant waived his right to object to prosecutorial misconduct.

Text: (6a) The public defender recites a number of instances of alleged misconduct by the prosecutor, and contends that the cumulative effect of this misconduct prejudiced the defense below. The most serious of these allegations concern comments by the prosecutor in his guilt phase argument to the jury which assertedly reflect on defendant's failure to testify. The public defender refers to five such statements. The first, quoted in the footnote below, probably referred not to defendant's failure to testify, but to omissions in defendant's statement to the police. [18] The remaining comments, however, all relate to defendant's failure to contradict Lufenberger's testimony that defendant kept on saying, let's shoot the people, or something like that. He wanted to steal the car or something. [19] (7) Prosecutorial comment which draws attention to a defendant's exercise of his constitutional right not to testify, and which implies that the jury should draw inferences against defendant because of his failure to testify, violates defendant's constitutional rights. ( Griffin v. California (1965) 380 U.S. 609 [14 L.Ed.2d 106, 85 S.Ct. 1229].) Applying that principle, federal courts have held that for the government to say, in summation to the jury, that certain evidence was `uncontradicted,' when contradiction would have required the defendant to take the stand, drew attention to his failure to do so, and hence was unconstitutional. ( United States v. Flannery (1st Cir.1971) 451 F.2d 880, 881; see United States v. Buege (7th Cir.1978) 578 F.2d 187, 188.) California decisions reach the same result. In People v. Vargas (1973) 9 Cal.3d 470 [108 Cal. Rptr. 15, 509 P.2d 959], the prosecutor commented that there is no denial at all that they [defendants] were there; we held that comment improperly reflected on defendants' failure to testify. (See 9 Cal.3d at pp. 476-477.) In People v. Medina (1974) 41 Cal. App.3d 438 [116 Cal. Rptr. 133], the prosecutor said the testimony of his witnesses was unrefuted; the Court of Appeal found Griffin error because the defendants, who were the only ones who could have refuted it, did not take the stand. (41 Cal. App.3d at p. 457; see People v. Northern (1967) 256 Cal. App.2d 28, 30-31 [64 Cal. Rptr. 15].) [20] (6b) Defense counsel failed to object to any of the asserted improper comments of the district attorney. Recently in People v. Green, supra, 27 Cal.3d 1, we had occasion to reconsider the standard to be determined in deciding whether failure to object to proscutorial misconduct bars defendant from raising that misconduct as error on appeal. (8) Overruling prior cases, we explained that the initial question to be decided in all cases in which a defendant complains of prosecutorial misconduct for the first time on appeal is whether a timely objection and admonition would have cured the harm. If it would, the contention must be rejected ...; if it would not, the court must then and only then reach the issue whether on the whole record the harm resulted in a miscarriage of justice.... (P. 34.) (6c) In our opinion, a timely objection and admonition, when the district attorney first referred to Lufenberger's testimony as uncontradicted, would probably have cured the effect of the misconduct. We acknowledge that repeated objections and admonitions might well, as the public defender asserts, merely emphasize to the jurors the defendant's failure to testify. We have no reason, however, to assume that the district attorney would have continued to make improper references to the uncontradicted testimony once the court has sustained an objection to such a comment. [21]