Opinion ID: 767804
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Appeals to Racial, Ethnic, and/or Religious Prejudice.

Text: 45 Most of the relevant testimony presented, and the closing arguments made, by the prosecutor involving the beliefs of the adherents of the Sikh religion only were provided to explain the Sikh beliefs concerning marriage and divorce and thereby only were provided to offer a potential motive and to show a clear intent of Bains to have murdered Shergill. A not insignificant portion of the prosecutor's closing arguments, however, highlighted the relevant testimony in a way that went beyond merely providing evidence of motive and intent (i.e., without limiting his generalizations about Sikh persons as Officer Johl did at the end of his own testimony) and that invited the jury to give in to their prejudices and to buy into the various stereotypes that the prosecutor was promoting. 46 It is evident under clearly established federal law that this very kind of conduct by a prosecutor (to the extent that it involves either race or ethnicity) violates a criminal defendant's due process and equal protection rights. See, e.g., McClesky v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, 309 n.30 (1987) (noting that the Constitution prohibits racially biased prosecutorial arguments); Kelly v. Stone, 514 F.2d 18, 19 (9th Cir. 1975); Fontanello v. United States, 19 F.2d 921, 921-22 (9th Cir. 1927); see also United States v. Vue, 13 F.3d 1206, 1212-13 (8th Cir. 1994) (holding that the making of prosecutorial arguments associating members of a particular ethnicity and from a particular geographic region with the commission of drugrelated offenses violated the criminal defendant's constitutional rights); United States v. Doe, 903 F.2d 16, 21-29 (D.C. Cir. 1990); United States v. McKendrick, 481 F.2d 152, 15661 (2d Cir. 1973) (concluding that a constitutional violation occurred when a state prosecutor's closing arguments invited the jury members to view colored people as an entity separate and apart from themselves). 5 47 In its decision, however, the California Court of Appeal concluded that because the general beliefs of the Sikh faith already had been presented permissibly as evidence of Bains's motive and intent, the limited use by the prosecutor of concededly impermissible arguments did not have any significant prejudicial effect on the jury and therefore should not be deemed to be harmful error, let alone a constitutional magnitude error at all. We disagree. 6 The circumstances of the present case are not like those of United States v. Santiago, 46 F.3d 885, 891 (9th Cir. 1995), where a prosecutor's improper use of a potentially objectionable term (in that case, the gang name the Mexican Mafia) for ambiguous reasons amidst an overall dispassionate and intelligent presentation was held not to be sufficiently prejudicial so as to constitute an equal protection violation. Here, the prosecutor relied upon clearly and concededly objectionable arguments for the stated purpose of showing that all Sikh persons (and thus Bains by extension) are irresistibly predisposed to violence when a family member has been dishonored (If you do certain conduct with respect to a Sikh person's female family member, look out. You can expect violence.) and also are completely unable to assimilate to and to abide by the laws of the United States ([T]he laws in the United States [are] not what we're talking about. We're playing by Sikh rules.). Such prosecutorial arguments were actually more a statement about the stereotypical nature of a particular group rather than an explanation of the beliefs followed (to different degrees and in different ways) by some members of that group. 48 The fact that much evidence already had been permissibly introduced to show Bains's motive and intent does not alleviate these concerns. Such evidence, as does most evidence, permitted several inferences to be drawn, some permissible (e.g., Bains, a particular Sikh person, may have had a motive to kill Shergill) and others impermissible (e.g., Bains, like all other Sikh persons, solely on account of his being a Sikh rather than any other kind of person, was compelled to kill Shergill). Thus, the introduction of clearly inflammatory prosecutorial arguments very well might have had the effect of motivating the jury to draw and to focus upon the impermissible inferences from the otherwise properly admitted evidence of Sikh beliefs, thereby bolstering the prejudicial effect of the prosecutorial arguments--rather than minimizing their prejudicial effect as hypothesized by the state government and the California Court of Appeal. Moreover, this danger was exacerbated by the state trial court's reluctance to issue limiting instructions to the jury as to its consideration of the expert testimony and the prosecutorial arguments relating to adherents of Sikh beliefs. See, e.g., Amlani , 111 F.3d at 714-15 (noting that the prejudicial effect of the prosecutor's arguments were contained because, inter alia, the trial court had issued limiting instructions to the jury). 49