Opinion ID: 166399
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Appeal to Moral and Civic Duty of Jury

Text: 118 Mr. Thornburg also complains that during the guilt phase the prosecutor argued that the jury had a moral and civic duty to convict: 119 Justice is in your hands. Your decision here affects the lives of not only this defendant but other people in the community. We've shown you overwhelming evidence of why Mr. Thornburg would want to kill Mr. Poteet, why maybe he would want to kill Jimmy Scott, his motive, waited the night before, the next morning, his statements to Richard Goss when he was arrested. 120 Does that sound like meek, little, mild statements the testimony you heard from Mr. Thornburg up here? I will suggest to you that was the true Mr. Thornburg. With all the cuss words you can't prove it. He didn't say I'm innocent. What are you talking about? He said, you can't prove it. Folks, we have proven it. It's right here in front of you right now. 121 We talked about it in voir dire. We asked the question about passing judgment on somebody else. And that's a hard thing to do. Each of you in voir dire told us you could pass judgment. We've proven our case to you. We've shown it to you. 122 We've woven it together. Every little piece has fallen right in line. We've shown our case to you, said this is what we've got, this is the evidence. 123 One of you just got through reading a book before you came on here, When Justice Prevailed. Folks, justice must prevail in this case. Like I said, you're the ones that decide it. You are the justice in Grady County right now. You're the ones that make the legal decisions. 124 Justice must run in this case for three victims, for Donnie Scott. Mr. Thornburg has got to be told what he did was wrong. Not only was it wrong, this was terrible, folks. 125 One of you said about mass murder. One of the problems in our society is mass murder, violence, drugs, guns. This is a mass murder. This is three helpless people who were gunned down, kidnapped tortured, burned alive and left dead in a house. 126 Tr. IV at 112-113 (emphasis added). It is improper for a prosecutor to suggest that a jury has a civic duty to convict. See Spears v. Mullin, 343 F.3d 1215, 1247 (10th Cir.2003), cert. denied, 541 U.S. 909, 124 S.Ct. 1615, 158 L.Ed.2d 255 (2004). In a decision handed down during World War II, the Supreme Court warned that the prosecutor's references to the war constituted an appeal wholly irrelevant to any facts or issues in the case, and could have jeopardized the verdict had the Court not reversed on another ground. Viereck v. United States, 318 U.S. 236, 247-48, 63 S.Ct. 561, 87 L.Ed. 734 (1943). But here the prosecutor's comments were firmly rooted in the facts of the case. We see little, if any, impropriety. See Spears, 343 F.3d at 1247 (statement that justice cries out for [conviction] did not render trial fundamentally unfair); Le v. Mullin, 311 F.3d 1002, 1022 (10th Cir.2002) (prosecutor's comment that jury could only do justice . . . by bringing in a verdict of death did not render trial fundamentally unfair), cert. denied, 540 U.S. 833, 124 S.Ct. 80, 157 L.Ed.2d 60 (2003). 127