Opinion ID: 1144129
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Defendant's references to various instances of the prosecutor's behavior fail to substantiate his contention of prejudicial prosecutorial misconduct.

Text: Defendant initially contends that his second guilt trial was prejudicially tainted by a series of improper prosecutorial comments which in sum allegedly implied that defendant was a gangster, engaged in the business of operating a prostitution ring. Defendant claims that although the prosecutor did not engage in the type of blatant accusation that resulted in the initial mistrial, [7] the district attorney in effect disclosed the same improper accusation through a more subtle approach of aptly timed insinuations. Defendant isolates a series of prosecution examination tactics which, defendant concedes, appear either quite innocent or of only minimal significance on their face; defendant argues that taken together, however, they illustrate conclusively the improper prosecutorial purpose that motivated all the incidents. We do not agree. The individual instances of alleged misconduct specified by defendant  20 in all  occurred at various times throughout both the prosecution and defense cases and opening and closing arguments; defendant objected to only five of these occurrences at trial, and his objections were sustained as to four of these prosecutorial comments. [8] (1) In general, [m]isconduct of the prosecuting attorney may not be assigned as error on appeal if it has not been assigned at the trial unless, the case being closely balanced and presenting grave doubt of the defendant's guilt, the misconduct contributed materially to the verdict or unless the harmful results of the misconduct could not have been obviated by a timely admonition to the jury. ( People v. Varnum (1969) 70 Cal.2d 480, 488 [75 Cal. Rptr. 161, 450 P.2d 553]; see People v. Lyons (1958) 50 Cal.2d 245, 262 [324 P.2d 556].) Although defendant contends that inferences arising from the alleged misconduct contributed materially to his conviction, after examination of the complete transcript, we do not believe that the designated instances of misconduct could have had the prejudicial impact that defendant ascribes to them. The challenged comments range from a reference to the fact that defendant wears a glove on only one hand (impliedly his gun hand?) to statements revealing the nicknames of two women, purportedly friends of the defendant's wife, but allegedly actually prostitutes working for defendant. [9] Although some of the allegedly improper comments  for example, references to the defendant's inordinate control over his wife (an alleged implication that she also worked for him as a prostitute) or to the defendant's possession of large amounts of cash  could conceivably bolster a preformed belief that defendant was presently engaged in some illegal prostitution operation, the comments in themselves give no indication of such a practice and are more susceptible to an innocent interpretation. None of the prosecutorial comments challenged as misconduct explicitly mention prostitution or gangsterism and though defendant may attribute this to the subtlety of the prosecutor, we believe that the sum of all the claimed misconduct did not, by itself, suggest the inferences drawn by the defendant. (2) We do not believe it necessary to recount each individual incident of purported misconduct; [10] it suffices to state that defendant presents no evidence that the prosecutor intentionally made these comments for the improper purpose of showing defendant's complicity in an illegal operation or to stigmatize defendant as a gangster, and that the occurrences, taken as a whole, do not rise to the level of prejudicial misconduct. (Cf. People v. Sweeney (1960) 55 Cal.2d 27, 45-48 [9 Cal. Rptr. 793, 357 P.2d 1049]; People v. Lyons (1958) 50 Cal.2d 245, 262-265 [324 P.2d 556]; People v. Coke (1964) 230 Cal. App.2d 22, 29-30 [40 Cal. Rptr. 649]; People v. Ramsey (1962) 202 Cal. App.2d 856, 860-861 [21 Cal. Rptr. 406].)