Opinion ID: 2315112
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Appeals to the Passion of the Jury.

Text: Mills also complains of a number of allegedly inflammatory remarks made by the prosecutor during his closing argument. Many of the challenged comments appear to us to have been descriptions of the evidence in an especially horrifying and gory case, and to have fallen within the limits of permissible argument. As we stated in Dixon, supra, 565 A.2d at 76, [a] fatal stabbing is not an antiseptic event which could or should be made to look pretty. Some types of cases, particularly those involving tragic death or injury, have an inherent emotional impact. Some of the prosecutor's remarks, however, do appear to have generated considerably more heat than light. Describing Mills' assault on Sophia, the prosecutor told the jury Ladies and gentlemen, he put that young girl through a night of living hell. If there's a hell on earth, that young girl, that 17-year-old girl went through it that night. Can you think of what it felt to her to see the bodies of her younger brother and sister lying in that pool of blood that night? Not just to see the bodies but while she herself was being raped and sodomized and assaulted, while she thought she was going to die by a man who she had trusted and who her brother and sister and who Odella Hughes had trusted. With respect to Janelle, the prosecutor asked rhetorically Do we know whether she cried out or whether she struggled with him or how much pain that she felt when this was happening to her? No, we don't and we'll never know. The proper exercise of closing argument is to review the evidence and to explicate those inferences which may reasonably be drawn from the evidence. Conversely, it must not be used to inflame the minds and passions of the jurors.... Dixon, supra, 565 A.2d at 77 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). We think that the quoted remarks were improper. Rather than argue the elements of the offense, the prosecutor asked the jurors in an emotional way to think about the victims' suffering. A timely objection should have (and perhaps would have) precipitated a firm rebuke of the prosecutor as well as a corrective instruction to the jury. In the present case, however, the defense, represented by an experienced attorney from the Public Defender Service, interposed no objection. Reversal for plain error in cases of alleged prosecutorial misconduct should be confined to particularly egregious situations. United States v. Young, 470 U.S. 1, 15, 105 S.Ct. 1038, 1046, 84 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985); Irick, supra, 565 A.2d at 32. We must let the verdict stand unless the misconduct so clearly prejudiced [Mills'] substantial rights as to jeopardize the very fairness and integrity of his trial. Sherrod v. United States, 478 A.2d 644, 655 (D.C.1984) (citation omitted). In the absence of a defense objection, the question presented is whether the judge abused his discretion by failing to intervene sua sponte in the prosecutor's argument. Irick, supra, 565 A.2d at 33; Dixon, supra, 565 A.2d at 78. We do not for a moment condone the prosecutor's emotionalism in making the quoted remarks. In our view, however, this case does not present the extreme situation justifying reversal under the plain error doctrine. If the prosecutor had not said a word about the children's suffering, the torment which they were compelled to undergo would have been plain to the jury. See Lemon v. United States, 564 A.2d 1368, 1376 (D.C.1989). This was doubtless apparent to all concerned; the prosecutor was unnecessarily (and improperly) belaboring the obvious. It is difficult to believe that the prosecutor's emotional description of the children's suffering was responsible for any humane juror's sympathy for them. On a record like the present one, it was surely the events, and not their inappropriate rendition, that precipitated any feelings of indignation that the jury may have had. We recognize that judicial directions to prosecutors not to transgress are apt to be less effective if a conviction is not reversed when an advocate crosses the line. If the defense had objected, and if the judge had taken no action, the result might perhaps be different. Considering the record in its entirety, however, we cannot say that the very fairness and integrity of Mills' trial was jeopardized by remarks to which a seasoned defense attorney elected not to object. Accordingly, the convictions appealed from must be and each is hereby Affirmed.