Opinion ID: 2335208
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Clean Up The Streets Argument

Text: The State also asserted during its rebuttal argument that residents of Baltimore City have a right to be safe and requested the jurors to protect their community and clean up the streets. The court repeatedly overruled Lee's counsel's objections, and thereafter, issued a curative instruction, by rereading the instructions provided before closing arguments and informing the jurors that this was argument and that they were not to consider appeals to passion and prejudice. Lee argues that the prosecutor's comments appealing to the jurors to protect their community and clean up the streets constituted an invocation of the prohibited golden rule argument. The State asserts that the prosecutor's argument did not call for the jury to divert its focus away from its function of judging the defendant on the evidence presented. A golden rule argument is one in which a litigant asks the jury to place themselves in the shoes of the victim, Lawson, 389 Md. at 593 n. 11, 886 A.2d at 889 n. 11, or in which an attorney appeals to the jury's own interests, Hill, 355 Md. at 214-15, 734 A.2d at 204. We have iterated that prosecutors should not implore jurors to consider their own interests in violation of the prohibition against the golden rule argument. [9] See Lawson, 389 Md. at 597, 886 A.2d at 892. In Hill, 355 Md. at 211-12, 734 A.2d at 202, the prosecutor, during opening arguments, told the jury that they were chosen to send a message to protect [the] community and to keep [][the] community safe. Later, during closing arguments, the prosecutor again requested the jury to send that same message to the community and to the defendant's cronies. We stated that the prosecutor's statements, which referred to the need for the jurors to convict petitioner in order to preserve the quality of their own communities, were wholly improper and presumptively prejudicial, id. at 216, 219-20, 734 A.2d at 205, 206, and iterated that appeals to jurors to convict a defendant in order to preserve the safety or quality of their communities are improper and prejudicial: As it noted in its opinion in this case, in Couser v. State, 36 Md.App. 485, 374 A.2d 399 (1977), aff'd on other grounds, 282 Md. 125, 383 A.2d 389, cert. denied, 439 U.S. 852, 99 S.Ct. 158, 58 L.Ed.2d 156 (1978), it had declared improper a prosecutor's statement to the jury that by your vote you can say no to drug dealers, to people who rain destruction. See also Holmes v. State, 119 Md.App. 518, 705 A.2d 118, cert. denied, 350 Md. 278, 711 A.2d 870 (1998). Courts throughout the country have condemned arguments of that kind, which are unfairly prejudicial and risk diverting the focus of the jury away from its sole proper function of judging the defendant on the evidence presented. See Arrieta-Agressot v. United States, 3 F.3d 525, 527 (1st Cir.1993) (criminal trial is not the occasion for superheated rhetoric from the government urging jurors to enlist in the war on drugs); United States v. Solivan, 937 F.2d 1146 (6th Cir.1991) (government prosecutors are not at liberty to urge jurors to convict defendants as blows to the drug problem faced by society or specifically within their communities, or to send messages to all drug dealers; such appeals are extremely prejudicial and harmful to the constitutional right of fair trial); United States v. Monaghan, 741 F.2d 1434 (D.C.Cir.1984), cert. denied, 470 U.S. 1085, 105 S.Ct. 1847, 85 L.Ed.2d 146 (1985) (the evil lurking in such appeals is that the defendant will be convicted for reasons wholly irrelevant to his own guilt or innocence); United States v. Barlin, 686 F.2d 81 (2d Cir.1982); Powell v. United States, 455 A.2d 405 (D.C.App.1982); Jenkins v. State, 563 So.2d 791 (Fla.App.1990); State v. Apilando, 79 Hawai`i 128, 900 P.2d 135 (1995); State v. Draughn, 76 Ohio App.3d 664, 602 N.E.2d 790 (1992); State v. Goode, 278 N.J.Super. 85, 650 A.2d 393 (A[pp].D[iv].1994). Hill, 355 Md. at 225-26, 734 A.2d at 209-10. [10] In asserting that the jurors should consider their own interests and those of their fellow Baltimoreans, and should clean up the streets to protect the safety of their community, the State clearly invoked the prohibited golden rule argument. Essentially, the State was calling for the jury to indulge itself in a form of vigilante justice rather than engaging in a deliberative process of evaluating the evidence. [11] Even if the prosecutor's comments were directed such that the jurors were asked to teach Lee a lesson, and not to send a message to the entire community, these comments were improper because they asked the jury to view the evidence in this case, not objectively, but consonant with the juror's personal interests.