Opinion ID: 2347659
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The State's Attorney's Frequent Reference in Argument to Uncontroverted Testimony

Text: During his argument to the jury the attorney for the State frequently completed his comments on the various aspects of the State's testimony by remarking that this evidence was uncontroverted. The defendant's claim of error is not that the State's attorney incorrectly characterized the State's evidence but, instead, that it constituted an indirect prosecutorial comment upon the failure of the defendant to take the stand and give testimony. Defense counsel made no objection during the State's attorney's argument and waited until the completion of the Justice's charge to the jury to ask that the jury be instructed that it must not be inferred from the State's attorney's use of these words that the defendant had the burden of refuting such testimony. The Justice declined to give the jury this further instruction. [2] There was no request for a mistrial, the defense apparently choosing to go to this jury, as already instructed, on the strengths and weaknesses of the trial just completed. The question thus becomes one of whether the requested instruction was necessary to insure against a misconception of responsibilities of proof. The right of a Maine defendant to elect not to give testimony is assured by the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and by Article I, § 6 of the Maine Constitution as implemented by 15 M.R.S.A. § 1315. Prosecutorial comment must not suggest to the jury that guilt should be inferred from this election. Recently, in State v. Tibbetts, Me., 299 A.2d 883, 887 (1973), we examined the federal standards protecting this right which became obligatory upon us through the holding of Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, 10, 84 S.Ct. 1489, 1495, 12 L.Ed.2d 653, 661 (1964) and delineated what we would consider to be impermissible comment by the prosecution. We concluded that: Impermissible prosecutorial comment can never be deemed harmless error as a matter of law under either of two circumstances: 1. A direct, non-ambiguous and unequivocal prosecutorial comment on the failure of a criminal defendant to become a witness. 2. An indirect prosecutorial comment which, without equivocation or ambiguity, suggests that a jury must accept as true the State's evidence because it is undenied by a criminal defendant as a witness. If a prosecutorial comment is made that falls into neither of the preceding classifications the State must demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt, if the comment is to be deemed harmless, that the record contains no evidence, either direct or circumstantial, which would rationally support acquittal. Otherwise stated, it is only when it can be demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that the evidence in defense would not support acquittal by a rational and objective jury that ambiguous prosecutorial comment can be considered harmless error. 299 A.2d at 889. In Tibbetts the County Attorney had said in argument: And who, after all, Ladies and Gentlemen, knows what takes place at the scene of a crime? Probably those that have committed the crime, if you find that these two defendants did so do, know more about it than anyone else. Even the investigators. But that's a fact which you must find. 299 A.2d at 886. We construed these words to have been an ambiguous comment suggesting that the absence of the appellant as a witness aided the State in establishing the identity of the person criminally responsible for the crime charged. 299 A.2d at 890-891. In Tibbetts, we perceived a rational basis for a verdict of acquittal on the failure of the State to prove identity and we could not say that the Justice's refusal to grant a mistrial was harmless. We distinguish our present situation from that in Tibbetts. In the present case the State's attorney had reviewed the evidence presented by the State, witness by witness, and he had adopted a manner of speech in which, on no less than 26 occasions, he added that the testimony was uncontroverted. Similar to the manner in which some people, by habit, insert you know into their conversations, the State's attorney applied this particular rhetorical device to all types of testimony ranging from the most innocuous references to evidence of little or no significance [3] to one which gives us serious concern. In almost all the instances of the State's attorney's repetitious use of this expression, the testimony to which he referred was such as would have been controverted had it been controverted at allby persons other than the defendant himself. For example, the uncontroverted testimony of the physical layout of the victim's apartment, the medical evidence of the cause of death, the location of the palm print, etc. A more difficult problem, however, arises in reference to Lieutenant Bruton's conversation with the defendant. The State's attorney reminded the jury that Lieutenant Bruton had testified that the defendant told him (1) that he had been at home the entire night of the murder and (2) that he had never been inside the victim's apartment. The first may be considered insignificant as the defendant virtually conceded the falsity of his statement by presenting witnesses who testified that he was at a bar in Bangor that evening and that he said he had lied to Lieutenant Bruton in order to protect his probation status. The State's attorney said to the jury: Lieutenant Bruton further quoted Robert Inman as saying that he had rented the apartment from Miss Dunn, had transacted the renting of the apartment from a doorway and had never entered the apartment. And as I remember, this is extremely important, Lieutenant Bruton's testimony is that the Defendant definitely stated that he had never been in the Dunn apartment and he had not even been in the same building since October of 1969, and, after arguing the credibility of the officer, he described this testimony also as uncontroverted. This comment by the State's attorney was neither a direct reference to the defendant's failure to take the stand nor an indirect but unambiguous suggestion that the jury must accept the officer's testimony regarding this aspect of his conversation with the defendant as true because the defendant did not deny it as a witness. While we know from the transcript of the hearing on the motion to suppress that the officer and the defendant were alone in the room when the defendant made the statement, the jury had not been told whether there were other law enforcement people present who could have refuted the officer if his testimony had been erroneous. Other methods of controverting Lieutenant Bruton's testimony could conceivably exist, such as from his own notes, or from inconsistent reports he may have filed or conflicting comments he may have made verbally to others. In short, we consider the prosecutor's statement to have been, at worst, an ambiguous comment. After analyzing the evidence supporting conviction (which we have previously discussed) and that which would support acquittal, we conclude that the evidence in defense could not lead a rational and objective jury to a decision that the State had failed in its burden of proof. State v. Tibbetts, supra, 299 A.2d at 889. The defendant's friend, Mr. Gilbert, testified that he drove the defendant from the bar in Bangor to East Holden the night of the murder and last saw him walking toward the defendant's residence at about 10:45. The defendant's wife said the defendant arrived home at 10:45, that they talked for a while and that he went to sleep before she did, that Oh, it seemed like an hour before she went to sleep, but that she had no idea what time she went to sleep. She said when she awoke in the morning the defendant was in bed with her where he had been when she went to sleep. (The screams which had apparently resulted from the beating of the victim had been heard about midnight. One could under average conditions drive from the defendant's residence to the victim's apartment, without exceeding the speed limit, in approximately fifteen minutes. The defendant owned two automobiles.) Although the defendant went to work with her the morning after the murder, she said he had telephoned her at noon to come to drive him home as he was ill with diarrhea. Although she explained that he had a festering condition on the side of his face due to an allergy, she had seen no scratches on his hands except a scab on his hand which he showed her after he returned from the police station, and she had seen no floor burns on either of his elbows. While Mr. Gilbert minimized the extent of the scratches he saw on the defendant's hand the day after the murder he agreed that one was probably an inch long and he said that although he and the defendant (who wore a short sleeved shirt) had played bumper pool together for quite a period the evening of the midnight murder, he had not noticed this scratch on the defendant's hand then, or any floor burn type of marks on his elbows. The mother and father of the defendant also described a festering condition on the defendant's face which was evident on the day the murder was committed and before its commission. Mrs. Inman, the defendant's wife, also testified that during their occupancy of the Bangor apartment, she usually paid the rent to Miss Dunn but that on some occasions the defendant went to Miss Dunn's apartment to pay. Of course, she could not say whether the defendant had entered Miss Dunn's apartment on these occasions. The complete absence of evidence tending to show that he could not have committed the crime, the meager amount of evidence which, if believed, would tend to show that it was unlikely that he did so when viewed against the evidence pointing toward guiltand especially the significant position of his palm print beside the body of the savaged victim and the floor burns on his elbowssatisfy us beyond a reasonable doubt that the prosecutor's ill-advised comment was, in fact, harmless.