Opinion ID: 2507343
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The promptness of a curative instruction and the strength or weakness of the evidence against Lopez

Text: Generally, this court considers a curative instruction sufficient to cure prosecutorial misconduct because [it] presume[s] that the jury heeds the court's instruction to disregard improper prosecution comments. Id. at 516, 78 P.3d at 329. In this case, however, the circuit court declined to give a curative instruction when Lopez objected to the DPA's comments and, instead, overruled the objection. Thus, the circuit court's failure to give any form of curative instruction militates in Lopez's favor. See id. (holding that the circuit court's failure to give a curative instruction in response to the prosecution's comment on the defendant's decision not to testify at trial weighed heavily in the defendant's favor); State v. Rogan, 91 Hawai`i 405, 415, 984 P.2d 1231, 1241 (1999) (concluding that the second factor weighed heavily in favor of the defendant, because the circuit court did not give a curative instruction in the wake of the defendant's objection to the prosecutor's inflammatory argument). Nevertheless, the prosecution argues that the evidence against Lopez was strong because, pursuant to HRS  708-836, see supra note 3, it only had to prove that he intentionally or knowingly operated the car without first obtaining Gregory's or Mona's consent and because Lopez admitted those facts. The prosecution's argument rests on the false premise that it was not subject to the burden of proving that Lopez was not mistaken as to the identity of the registered owner. As we explained supra in section III.A, we believe that the intentional or knowing state of mind prescribed in HRS  708-836(1) applies to the authorization element of the offense, such that the prosecution bore the burden of proving that Lopez did not mistakenly believe that the person who authorized his use of the vehicle was the registered owner of the vehicle. Proof of this element turned principally on whether the jury believed Lopez's account of how he acquired the car. Accordingly, under the third factor, we think that the evidence in this case is not so overwhelming that we are convinced that the DPA's intrusion into Lopez's right to remain silent may not have contributed to his conviction. See Rogan, 91 Hawai`i at 415, 984 P.2d at 1241 (holding that the evidence against the defendant, which essentially turned on the credibility of the complainant and the defendant, was not so overwhelming as to outweigh the inflammatory effect of the deputy prosecutor's [racial] comments). In summary, we hold that all three factors counsel that the DPA's improper comments were not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt and, consequently, that Lopez is entitled to a new trial on remand. [11] See Wakisaka, 102 Hawai`i at 516, 78 P.3d at 329 (holding that, because all three factors demonstrated that the prosecution's improper comment on the defendant's failure to testify was not harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, the defendant was entitled to a new trial). The ICA erred insofar as it reached a contrary conclusion.