Opinion ID: 1771702
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Reference to Defendant's Claim of Coerced Confession in Unrelated Case.

Text: Defendant argues that the prosecutor's comments in closing argument about defendant's attempts to suppress a confession in an unrelated case warrants a reversal of the penalty in this case. In the closing argument in the penalty phase, the prosecutor emphasized that this murder involved the highest degree of aggravation, since it was premeditated as opposed to a spontaneous killing in the course of a robbery. The prosecutor noted that the planning of the crime was revealed in defendant's confession. While conceding that defendant asserted the confession was coerced, the prosecutor made the following argument against the claim of coercion: [T]he taped statements that you heard by the defendant which, ... he alleged to have been coerced, just as [the arresting officer in the Clinton robbery] told you that when he gave a taped statement concerning his crime against [the victim of the Clinton robbery] that he readily confessed to the same day, later on, again you hear the allegations. It's his M.O. He's street smart, he's savvy, and after he's confessed, what is he going to do but go back and attack the officers who've gone about doing their job, giving him his rights and taking a proper statement? [3] Later, the prosecutor referred to counsel's cross-examination of the state witnesses, stating, during the course of this trial those very police officers who go about and try to protect us every day have been assailed, have been defamed through the allegations of this defendant when he is the person who is on trial. Closing arguments in criminal cases should be restricted to the evidence admitted, to the lack of evidence, to conclusions of fact that may be drawn therefrom, and to the law applicable to the case. La.Code Crim. Proc. art. 774. While the trial judge has broad discretion in controlling the scope of closing arguments, Louisiana jurisprudence on prosecutorial misconduct has allowed prosecutors wide latitude in choosing closing argument tactics. See State v. Prestridge, 399 So.2d 564, 580 (La.1981). Nonetheless, the prosecutor should refrain from making personal attacks on defense strategy and counsel. See State v. Duplessis, 457 So.2d 604, 609 (La. 1984). In the present case, the prosecutor did not suggest that defendant or his attorney did anything improper in attempting to suppress the confession in the earlier case. Rather, the prosecutor pointed to record evidence that this case was not the first one in which defendant had unsuccessfully claimed a confession was coerced. Because the jury had already rejected defendant's claim of a coerced confession in the guilt phase of this case, we conclude that the comments about defendant's claim of a coerced confession in a different case did not inject an arbitrary factor into the jury's deliberations during the penalty phase. Furthermore, the prosecutor's statement about defense counsel's cross-examination of police officers was a fair comment pointing out the frequently used strategy of attempting to shift the focus from the accused to the accuser.