Opinion ID: 71998
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Effect of Certain Comments to the Jury

Text: In Abdul-Kabir and Brewer, the Court indicated that a prosecutor's comments to the jury at voir dire and at closing may further impede the ability of the jury to give meaningful consideration and effect to mitigating evidence. Pierce complains that the prosecutor, at his sentencing, impressed upon the jurors in closing argument that they could not consider evidence with relevance beyond the special issues: You each promised me individually that if the State brought you evidence that convinced you beyond a reasonable doubt that the answers to these special issues would be yes and you knew that a yes answer to each one of these issues would mean the death penalty that you would answer those questions yes and that you would never change your answer despite the evidence in this case just so that the death penalty would not be imposed. As the district court observed, these comments are very similar (indeed, nearly identical) to those that the Court criticized in Abdul-Kabir, in which the prosecutor reminded jurors that they had `promise[d' to] look only at the questions posed by the special issues, which, according to the prosecutor, required the jurors to put the petitioner's mitigating evidence `out of [their] mind[s]' and `just go by the facts.' 550 U.S. at 261, 127 S.Ct. 1654. The Abdul-Kabir Court concluded that these comments had the effect of impermissibly convinc[ing] jurors that the law compels them to disregard the force of the evidence offered in mitigation that had relevance outside the special issues. Id. The prosecutor's closing comments in this case are also similar to those that the Court criticized in Brewer, where the prosecutor urged the jury that `you don't have the power to say whether [the petitioner] lives or dies. You answer the questions according to the evidence, much like you did at the guilt or innocence [phase]. That's all.' Brewer, 550 U.S. at 291, 127 S.Ct. 1706 (alterations omitted). Finding a Penry violation, the Brewer Court concluded that [t]here [wa]s surely a reasonable likelihood that the jurors accepted the prosecutor's argument at the close of the sentencing hearing that all they needed to decide was whether Brewer had acted deliberately and would likely be dangerous in the future, necessarily disregarding any independent concern that, given Brewer's troubled background, he may not be deserving of a death sentence. Id. at 293-94, 127 S.Ct. 1706 (footnote omitted). To the extent that Pierce presented evidence that could not be given meaningful consideration and effect under the special issues, the prosecution's closing argument may have exacerbated the problem by instructing the jury to consider only the special issues. Certain of the prosecutor's comments at voir dire were also problematic. The prosecutor elicited agreement from one venire member (who was later selected to serve on the jury) that under our law . . . the age of an individual . . . in and of itself does not give anyone special rights, and that whether a person is 17 or they're 85, the law doesn't ask how old you are . . . it asks that you follow certain norms and those norms determine the interaction between human beings and violation of those be tried by a jury . . . . The prosecutor elicited agreement from another venire member (also selected to the jury) that our law, as far as making a person guilty or being charged with capital murderlike that doesn't distinguish whether or not that person happens to be 17 or 18 . . . as far as whether or not they violate the law and the statement that she would not necessarily answer the second special issue no because of the defendant's age. The Abdul-Kabir majority observed that comments like these, which tak[e] pains to convince jurors that the law compels them to disregard the force of evidence offered in mitigation, might undermine[ ] a jury's ability to give meaningful consideration and effect even to evidence encompassed by the special issues. 550 U.S. at 261, 127 S.Ct. 1654. By essentially instructing the venire members that youth isn't relevant, the comments may have undermined the jury's ability to give mitigating effect to evidence of Pierce's youth through the special issues.