Opinion ID: 1148242
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Did the Prosecution's Closing Argument at the Penalty Phase Inject the Impermissible Element of Lockett's Parole Eligibility?

Text: The specific comments complained of under this assignment of error are as follows: [T]his particular defendant is deserving of no more mercy than being given the death sentence by lethal injection. The reason I say that is this: the Courts have already tried mercy on him. He is not the kind of person that will accept it and straighten up. He is the kind of person that just gets worse. He graduates from an auto theft to a double murder. He does not deserve mercy. Society can't stand mercy where Carl Lockett's involved. Where does he go from here? Where does he go from here. The mitigating circumstances I can't see but the one. Now, the Judge has instructed you on two. He said the defendant's age weighs in his favor. He is twenty years old. That seems reasonable. I will just say this: It doesn't weigh very high. If he had been sixteen years old, never done anything else, I would say that would weigh high. If he was seventy and we were relatively sure that he would never do this again, that might weigh very high, but where his age is twenty and he has already committed auto theft and now what he has done here today, I would say at that age and the kind of record he has built over it does not give that particular mitigating circumstance very much weight to weigh against the aggravating circumstances. [H]ow many times should we grant mercy. Perhaps, and I have read somewhere not seven times seven but seventy times seventy, and perhaps that is not correct. We have got a preacher out here in the audience and somebody that can correct me. That is probably not right, but I think it is true. I also recall something about if a person takes your cloak to give him your coat as well, but never have I read when a person murders two people you give him back his gun and turn him back to do it again. Lockett's argument is twofold: 1) that the comments alerted the jury to the possibility of parole if he were given a life sentence, and 2) that since the prosecutor knew that Lockett had been given the death penalty in the first trial, the comments regarding parole were gross misstatements of fact. The quoted comments could not possibly be reasonably construed as inferring parole and are more properly viewed as argument refuting the mitigating effect of Lockett's youth. Further, no objection was made at trial to any of these statements and thus Lockett is procedurally barred from making this argument on appeal. Even if we reach the merits of this issue, we find the statements quoted above to come nowhere near those deemed by this Court to erroneously place before the jury the possibility of the defendant's parole. See Gilliard v. State, 428 So.2d 576, 584 (Miss. 1983) ([L]ife is ten years and you are eligible then for parole.); Williams v. State, 445 So.2d 798, 812-13 (Miss. 1984) (prosecutor extensively questioned a witness on the amount of time he would serve with a life sentence). This argument is more akin to that which we found to be fair argument in Johnson v. State, 477 So.2d 196, 216 (Miss. 1985). See also, Faraga v. State, 514 So.2d 295, 303, (Miss. 1987).