Opinion ID: 1901509
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Issue 2Victim Impact Testimony

Text: May next contends that trial counsel were ineffective for failing to object to alleged victim impact statements that the prosecutor made and elicited during the guilt phase of his 1991 trial. [13] Specifically, May alleges four instances of improper victim impact argument and testimony during the trial. First, May asserts that the prosecutor presented impermissible victim impact argument when he stated: [the charge of homicide] require[s] that you hear some evidence about a young lady from Lancaster who when she was twenty-two years of age had her life suddenly taken from her, and you are going to hear some testimony about her young son who hasn't been with his mother since that date, and that kind of testimony is never easy to hear. N.T., March 6, 1991, at 491. Generally, a prosecutor's arguments to the jury are not a basis for the granting of a new trial unless the unavoidable effect of such comments would be to prejudice the jury, forming in their minds fixed bias and hostility towards the accused which would prevent them from properly weighing the evidence and rendering a true verdict. Commonwealth v. Jones, 546 Pa. 161, 683 A.2d 1181, 1199 (1996). A prosecutor must have reasonable latitude in fairly presenting a case to the jury and must be free to present his or her arguments with logical force and vigor. Commonwealth v. Brown, 551 Pa. 465, 711 A.2d 444, 454 (1998). The prosecutor is also permitted to respond to defense arguments. Finally, in order to evaluate whether the comments were improper, we do not look at the comments in a vacuum; rather we must look at them in the context in which they were made. Commonwealth v. Weiss, 565 Pa. 504, 776 A.2d 958, 968 (2001). We determined in Commonwealth v. Story, 476 Pa. 391, 383 A.2d 155, 159 (1978), that evidence introduced to result in sympathy for the victim's family, while having no direct relationship to the facts and circumstances of the crime, is impermissible during the guilt phase of trial. In this case, the age of Ricky has no correlation to the determination of whether May committed the murder. Thus, the prosecutor's statements, whether intentionally designed to elicit sympathy or not, were improper. Nevertheless, the comment was a fleeting reference and clearly did not substantially affect the outcome of the trial, as required to demonstrate the prejudice prong of an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. Absent a demonstration of prejudice, [a PCRA petitioner] cannot prevail on a claim for ineffective assistance of counsel and no further inquiry into the claim is warranted. Commonwealth v. Pierce, 567 Pa. 186, 786 A.2d 203, 221 (2001) (citing Commonwealth v. Fletcher, 561 Pa. 266, 750 A.2d 261 (2000), cert. denied, 531 U.S. 1035, 121 S.Ct. 623, 148 L.Ed.2d 533 (2000)). May further avers that the prosecutor acted improperly when he stated, [n]o one ever saw her again, including her small son, and you are going to hear evidence that she was not the type of mother who would just ignore her son and go off places for long periods of time. N.T., March 6, 1991, at 499. The above quote fails to provide the context of the prosecutor's remarks. When read in its totality, the argument of the prosecutor was simply that it was reasonable for the police to assume that Fair was kidnapped and/or killed, rather than voluntarily missing, because she did not usually leave her son for extended periods of time. Therefore, the statement was both relevant and probative, and this claim has no arguable merit. May also argues that the prosecutor elicited inappropriate victim impact statements from Lisa Stern (Stern), Fair's sister, when he: (1) asked her the ages of Fair and Ricky; and (2) asked if, to her knowledge, Ricky had seen his mother since her September 4, 1982 disappearance. Id. at 660, 666. The initial comment of Stern was a simple statement indicating Ricky's age, not how the death of Fair affected him. Stern made the second statement not to result in empathy, but to illustrate the disappearance of Fair. While the comment may have been inapt, it was fleeting when viewed in the context of a trial that consisted of more than one-thousand pages of testimony. Even if the statement satisfies the definition of victim impact evidence, the remark was not so severe as to prejudice the jury to the point that it could not render a true and fair verdict. May proposes that the testimony of Stern, indicating that Fair was a wonderful sister, and that she had a very close relationship with Fair, was designed solely to inflame the jury. See id. at 660. Stern's testimony provided her opinion of Fair's personal qualities. May fails to cite any law indicating that it is impermissible to comment on the qualities of the victim. Moreover, while we do not condone the remarks of the prosecutor, we cannot say that the brief reference to Fair's loving relationship with her sister was so pervasive as to unfairly prejudice the jury to the point that they could not fairly weigh the evidence presented. Finally, May suggests that these occurrences of ineffective assistance of counsel were compounded by his inability to rebut the accuracy of Turner's testimony describing Fair's propensity for leaving her child with a babysitter for long periods of time. However, as discussed above, the proposed testimony of Turner would not have shown that Fair left Ricky for extended periods of time such that it was unreasonable for the police to believe that, when she became missing, she would not have voluntarily disappeared. Therefore, May's claim concerning Turner is devoid of arguable merit, and he fails to demonstrate entitlement to relief on any of his victim impact issues.