Opinion ID: 2339307
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 14

Heading: Second Remark

Text: Bennington next argues the prosecutor improperly injected his personal opinion about Bennington's guilt a second time by making the following remark during the main portion of his closing argument: I know I've kind of blown through this pretty quick, but you know what am I going to say, folks. At the end of the day we havewe live in a world today where we have the benefit of technology, DNA here tells us what [V.B.] could not tell her nurse, what she could not tell her niece that the man who did this to her sitting right here, Mr. Bennington that it's his DNA on that bed sheet. (Emphasis added.) The State argues this remark was not a personal opinion offered by the prosecutor but was a statement meant to communicate to the jury that the DNA evidence proved Bennington was the person who committed the offenses. We agree. Again, during closing argument, the prosecutor may draw reasonable inferences from the evidence but may not comment upon facts outside the evidence. See King, 288 Kan. at 351, 204 P.3d 585. The evidence presented at trial supported the prosecutor's remark that the DNA linked Bennington to the crime scene. Cf. State v. Stano, 284 Kan. 126, 153, 159 P.3d 931 (2007) (prosecutor's closing-argument comment that there was 10 times as much of defendant's DNA on baseball cap found near crime scene than there was of anyone else's DNA was a fair construction of evidence at trial). The remark was not outside the wide latitude allowed to the prosecutor in discussing the evidence.