Opinion ID: 1800657
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Neighbor's Testimony

Text: Garcia alleges that his appellate counsel was ineffective in failing to challenge victim impact testimony by one of the victims' neighbors. As the first witness at the guilt phase, the neighbor described her relationship with the victims and how she relayed news of the murders to one of their nieces, a nun. The defense objected to this testimony on relevancy grounds, but the trial court allowed it. Garcia alleges that appellate counsel was ineffective in failing to challenge the testimony on the grounds of bias, passion, and prejudice, and in failing to argue that Garcia's right to a fair trial was violated. We conclude, however, that appellate counsel adequately challenged the neighbor's testimony. As part of a general prosecutorial misconduct claim, Garcia's brief on direct appeal argued: Irrelevant references to a victim's family are improper appeals to sympathy. Making the point that such a family member was a nun and doing so through a witness for whom the prosecutor also sought sympathy magnified the impropriety. The prosecutor's actions here ignored her responsibilities and were clearly inappropriate. We rejected this argument on direct appeal, see Garcia, 644 So.2d at 63, and likewise reject Garcia's attempt to relitigate the issue in his habeas petition. Additionally, Garcia alleges that his appellate counsel provided ineffective assistance in failing to challenge the trial court's denial of a motion for mistrial based on an emotional outburst at the end of the neighbor's testimony. As she was leaving the stand, the neighbor allegedly thanked the Court, thanked the prosecutor, looked at [defense counsel] and advised [him] that she had just had three heart attacks, in a not very friendly fashion. The trial court denied the defense's motion for mistrial, stating that it could almost to a certainty say the jury didn't hear her, and that the witness's testimony, really, was simply for identification, and it doesn't really imply in any way that the defendant is guilty. Even if appellate counsel had challenged this ruling, we clearly would not have granted relief. As we have explained, in reviewing motions for mistrial dealing with emotional outbursts from witnesses, appellate courts should defer to trial judges' judgments and rulings when they cannot glean from the record how intense a witness's outburst was. Thomas v. State, 748 So.2d 970, 980 (Fla.1999). This is one of those situations.