Opinion ID: 2584893
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Asserted Violations of Griffin v. California and Doyle v. Ohio

Text: Defendant testified at the penalty phase and attempted to create doubt about his guilt by testifying that Hilda and a man named Robert Beverly murdered Jamie Bowie. On cross-examination, the prosecutor asked two questions defendant now contends constituted misconduct because they commented improperly on defendant's exercise of his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. [33] Defendant did not object and request an admonition on either occasion, and therefore has forfeited these claims. In any event, and even if we were to assume the questions were misconduct as defendant contends and not legitimate comment on the very different account of the murder defendant had provided after his arrest (but see Anderson v. Charles (1980) 447 U.S. 404, 408 [65 L.Ed.2d 222, 100 S.Ct. 2180]), any such misconduct was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. The evidence of defendant's guilt was overwhelming, defendant's alibi witnesses were thoroughly discredited, and defendant's fanciful testimony concerning Robert Beverly's participation in the murder was refuted by Beverly's testimony during the prosecution's penalty phase rebuttal case, in which he stated that he had never met defendant, Hilda Riggs, or Jamie Bowie; that he did not participate in her murder; and that he was at work on a naval base on the day she disappeared, which could be confirmed by military records. The prosecutor's remarks, to the extent they were misconduct and not merely comments on the inconsistencies of the various accounts defendant had provided, did not influence the jury's verdict or otherwise make the trial fundamentally unfair.