Opinion ID: 2633881
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Argument Regarding Condition of Victims' Bodies and Clothing

Text: Defendant contends the prosecutor engaged in misconduct during closing argument by telling the jurors they could use your imaginations based on what you have heard here to recreate what those women would have looked like if we had found the bodies the next day, and by theorizing the victims' clothing was not torn because they might have given in to defendant's demands in the hope of avoiding harm. Defendant claims the prosecutor improperly argued the existence of facts outside the record and, in suggesting what the victims might have said to defendant, improperly sought to inflame the passions of the jury. Defendant did not object to the statements regarding the state of the victims' bodies, and therefore has forfeited any challenge to that comment. Even had he preserved that claim, we would conclude that, like challenges he preserved to other parts of the prosecutor's argument, it is without merit. The prosecutor's comments properly asked the jurors to draw certain inferences from the evidence presented at trial. This is not a case like those cited by defendant in which a prosecutor's statements implied the existence of facts outside the record of which counsel, but not the jury, were aware. (See, e.g., People v. Benson (1990) 52 Cal.3d 754, 794-795, 276 Cal.Rptr. 827, 802 P.2d 330; People v. Bolton (1979) 23 Cal.3d 208, 212-213, 152 Cal. Rptr. 141, 589 P.2d 396.) Here, the whole point of the prosecutor's statements was that there was no available credible evidence regarding the state of Garcia's and Sorensen's bodies immediately after the murders were committed or what actually happened to the victims during the killings. It was therefore necessary for the jury to draw inferences based upon the evidence presented at trial. Counsel's suggestions concerning those inferences were not improper invitations to the jury to engage in speculation or references to facts outside the record. The prosecutor properly left it to the jury to determine the reasonableness of his suggestions. ( People v. Navarette (2003) 30 Cal.4th 458, 520, 133 Cal.Rptr.2d 89, 66 P.3d 1182; People v. Dennis (1998) 17 Cal.4th 468, 522, 71 Cal.Rptr.2d 680, 950 P.2d 1035.) In any event, the prosecutor's description of the possible scenario of the victims submitting to defendant's demands and his suggestion of what might have been said was not prejudicial misconduct, especially in light of the evidence of the brutal killings already presented to the jury.