Opinion ID: 2155795
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Misstatement of the record.

Text: The defendants also contend that on several occasions, the prosecutor misrepresented the record, sometimes in an inflammatory way. The trial judge agreed with the defense regarding at least two such episodes, and he took appropriate corrective action. [16] The departure from the record by government counsel that we regard as most serious, however, was not mentioned at all in Dr. Anderson's motion for a mistrial. We refer to the prosecutor's repeated insistence that Mrs. J. was going blind. There appears to be no dispute between the parties regarding the result of Dr. Anderson's examination of Mrs. J. His diagnosis of Mrs. J.'s condition, evidently based on Dr. Anderson's measurement of Mrs. J.'s intraocular pressure (IOP), was [b]orderline glaucoma. Dr. Anderson testified without contradiction that he could not determine whether Mrs. J. was actually suffering from glaucoma until his patient had undergone a visual field examination. Furthermore, even though [t]he effects of glaucoma cannot be reversed,. . . the progress of the disease can be stopped; if detected early in its course, medication, surgery, or a combination of treatments usually keep glaucoma under control and save the patient's sight. David Kaufman, M.D. & Carey Fitzpatrick, Glaucoma (1998), in 8 ATTORNEYS' TEXTBOOK OF MEDICINE § 53.00(MB) (Roscoe N. Gray, M.D. & Louise J. Gordy, M.D., LL.B. eds., 3d ed.2000). Therefore, even if a visual field test were to reveal some impairment of Mrs. J.'s range of vision  and no such test had yet been conducted  then there indisputably remained ample weapons in an eye doctor's arsenal, including, inter alia, eye drops and laser surgery, to protect Mrs. J.'s eyesight. See THE MERCK MANUAL OF DIAGNOSIS AND THERAPY 735-37 (Mark H. Beers, M.D. & Robert Berkow, M.D. eds., 17th ed.1999) (hereinafter MERCK MANUAL). There was certainly no evidence before the jury that Mrs. J. was going blind, or indeed that she was ever likely to do so. The fact that glaucoma, and especially borderline glaucoma, is treatable is easily determinable from unimpeachable sources. The goal of medical, laser, or surgical therapy is to prevent glaucomatous optic nerve and visual field damage by stabilizing the IOP. MERCK MANUAL, supra, at 735. Furthermore, laser therapy[,]. . . surgery or a lifelong regimen [of] . . . medications are almost equally effective at achieving the reduction of intraocular pressure to the normal range. Kaufman & Fitzpatrick, supra, at §§ 53.91, 53.120(10). If a medical regimen is employed, it must be accompanied by examination three times a year to ensure that it effectively controls glaucoma. Id., § 53.91. In the present case, Mrs. J.'s IOP was apparently borderline, and no medication had as yet been prescribed. The notion that she was going blind was therefore completely unwarranted. Nevertheless, the prosecutor proclaimed on five separate occasions during her rebuttal argument that Mrs. J. was losing her eyesight: 1.  The woman is going blind.  2.  The woman is going blind.  3. This is a woman who needs a visual field examination. She is going blind.  4. People who[m] she loved, respected, looked up to, embraced, neede[d,]. . . she needed him. She's going blind.  5. I asked . . . the optician whether or not [Mrs. J.] bought lenses and frames, which, of course, only makes sense since the woman is going blind. Yes, she bought lenses. (Emphasis added.) This allegation during rebuttal came completely out of the blue. The notion that Mrs. J. was going blind had not been mentioned by any witness during the trial or by any attorney during the three closing arguments that preceded the prosecutor's rebuttal. [17] Yet the prosecutor did not allude to the loss of Mrs. J.'s eyesight as a hypothetical possibility, or as a danger, or as something Mrs. J. feared. On the contrary, on five separate repetitions, counsel for the government used the present tense: She is going blind. (Emphasis added.) Remarkably, neither defendant objected to any of the prosecutor's references to Mrs. J.'s supposed impending blindness, and the point was not included in the litany of complaints enumerated by Dr. Anderson's attorney when he asked the judge to declare a mistrial. In his postjudgment motion for a new trial, however, counsel for Dr. Anderson argued that the prosecutor's statements on this subject had mischaracteriz[ed] the evidence; that [t]here was no evidence that [Mrs. J.] was, in fact, or remotely, going blind; and that the prosecutor's assertion that she was going blind was designed to inflame the jury. [18] By the time Dr. Anderson's attorney raised this issue in his post-trial motion, the trial was over, and the objection came too late for the judge to communicate any corrective action to the jury. Accord, Coreas, supra, 565 A.2d at 600 (holding that a motion for mistrial based on improper prosecutorial argument was untimely when it was made two days after the jury had commenced its deliberations). The trial judge's failure to intervene, sua sponte, is thus reviewable for plain error. Id. The defendants were represented by experienced attorneys, and the judge's reluctance to interject himself into the proceedings when counsel did not complain was certainly understandable. Moreover, if an objection had been made, corrective steps could have been undertaken without derailing the entire trial. Nevertheless, the introduction and repetition, without any evidentiary support, of the notion that Mrs. J. was going blind may have packed an enormous emotional wallop. Apprehension of blindness is surely one of any person's most devastating fears, and the prosecutor's intensive focus on the subject during her rebuttal argument had the potential for distracting the jury from a calm and detached evaluation of the evidence. Under the circumstances, we believe that the judge would have done well to call counsel to the bench upon the prosecutor's first allusion to Mrs. J.'s going blind. A prompt correction of government counsel's misstatement could have effectively nipped the problem in the bud. [19] Although, standing alone, the judge's failure to intervene might not be sufficient to warrant setting aside the guilty verdicts, [20] we must surely take into account the prosecutor's unfortunate fusillade  she's going blind, she's going blind, she's going blind, she's going blind, she's going blind  in determining whether the defendants received a fair trial.