Court Opinion

ID: 9672939
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:03:05.874969+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:19.392762
License: Public Domain

WHITE, Judge,
dissenting.
The principal opinion accuses the Chunn court of “inventing” the “extreme rule ... that an isolated direct reference to a defendant’s failure to testify mandates reversal regardless of corrective action taken by the trial court.” Chunn says no such thing. If, as the principal opinion claims, Chunn stands for the proposition that a mistrial is automatically required whenever the prosecutor directly refers to the defendant’s exercise of his constitutional right not to testify, then the court’s careful weighing of the prejudicial impact of the particular statements in the specific case at issue would be superfluous:
In a close case errors resulting from prosecutor’s statements warrant reversal. This was a close case. The jury deliberated for approximately seven hours and reached a verdict on only one of the two counts. We cannot conclude that the direct reference did not affect the jury’s deliberations even though the jurors were told to ignore the prosecutor’s statement and were instructed that defendant was not required to testify. Nor can we permit prosecutors to place defendants who have the constitutional right not to testify, in a position where they risk conviction if they do not explain apparently incriminating circumstances.1
The Chunn court did not apply a “special” automatic mistrial rule. As the case explicitly holds “[[Instructions to juries to disregard prosecutor’s statements have sometimes remedied the violations of defendant’s rights.”2 Shuts is not cited, as the principal opinion claims, for the proposition that a mistrial is required in every case, but rather for the entirely unremarkable proposition that an admonishment to the jury may, under some circumstances, be insufficient to correct the prejudice generated by a prosecutor’s improper comment. Chunn is only objectionable if the Court intends to hold that the trial court’s failure to grant a mistrial can never be reversible error. I consider that to be a much more extreme rule than that actually adopted in Chunn.
Given that the principal opinion frames the question in such a distorted fashion, it is remarkable that it has such little success in contradicting the notion that a direct reference by the prosecutor always requires a *348mistrial. While the statute prohibiting such comment is more than one hundred twenty years old, the principal opinion does not cite a single ease where a conviction was affirmed despite a direct comment, properly objected to, by the prosecution on the defendant’s right against self-incrimination. Instead, the principal opinion obfuscates the issue by citing numerous cases that are clearly inappo-site.
Initially, for instance, the principal opinion cites several cases where the court, as opposed to counsel, refers to the defendant’s silence as refuting the supposed argument that “regardless of the circumstances, a direct reference to the defendant’s failure to testify mandates a mistrial.” These cases are simply irrelevant to the issue, since the statutory prohibition at issue here prohibits references “by any attorney in the case.... ”3 While this Court did once allow the trial court to instruct the jury to disregard defendant’s silence whether or not defendant objected and continues to find such instruction proper with defendant’s agreement, this Court has always distinguished these instructions, as the statute does, from references by counsel for the State.4 As the principal opinion reiterates, references by counsel are always improper. I do not understand how the fact that the Court refused to require a mistrial based on remarks that were, at the time, considered proper comment, informs the issue of what is an adequate remedy to correct what are admitted here to be improper, direct comments, by opposing counsel, on the defendant’s invocation of his constitutional right to silence.
Similarly, the refusal of this Court to require a mistrial in cases where the defendant never asked for one do not control what should be done in cases where a mistrial is promptly requested. As Kempker notes, a rule that requires the trial court to interrupt closing argument and sua sponte declare a mistrial presents “myriad problems.”5 Not least of these problems is the fact that such a rule would preclude the defendant from assessing the prejudicial impact of such a remark on the jury and opting to forgo a mistrial and choosing to request some lesser remedy like an admonishment, or indeed from choosing, as a strategic matter, to forgo any objection whatsoever. Kempker can easily be read to hold merely that the defendant is not entitled to two bites at the apple, and cannot hope for a favorable jury verdict, but later claim that the argument was so prejudicial as to require a mistrial. Even assuming that this plain error standard is relevant here, where proper objection was made, this means only that, as Chunn itself holds, a prejudicial remark may, in some circumstances, be corrected by a trial court admonishment. Nevertheless, Kempker provides no guidance on the question of when such an admonishment is sufficient to correct an error timely objected to.
Next, the principal opinion cites State v. Wickline for the proposition that: “The prejudicial impact of such a statement is a matter within the sound discretion of the trial court and a prompt instruction by the trial court to the jury to disregard the comment may cure any error in a particular case.”6 The problem with this citation is that the statement at issue in Wickline “was not an indirect or direct reference to defendant’s failure to testify_”7 Indeed, the defendant in that case actually testified on his own behalf.8 Again, I do not see how the refusal of an appellate court to order a retrial due to statements that were deemed proper has any bearing on the issue of whether a mistrial is required to correct the prejudice from an admittedly improper direct reference by the prosecutor. In a similar vein, I believe the principal opinion’s reliance on United States v. Robinson is misplaced. The holding of that case is that (at least as a matter of federal constitutional law — the *349Missouri statute offers broader protection9) comment by the prosecutor on the defendant’s silence is, under some circumstances, proper retaliation.10 Again, the principal opinion conflates the question of what constitutes improper comment with the entirely distinct question of what the appropriate remedy for improper comment should be. Since the State admits that this was a direct reference by the prosecutor, and the principal opinion concedes that such references are always improper under Missouri law, only the second issue is presented in this case.
As to that issue, the ten cases cited in footnote 4 of the principal opinion support only one half of the “traditional rule” the majority cites them for. That is, they unambiguously support the notion that reversal is required when an objection is made and overruled. But again, this is not at issue here. The question is whether the cases support the quite different notion that reversal is only required if an objection is overruled. Of the cited cases, the three where convictions were affirmed are clearly distinguishable from the situation here. In these cases, the disputed remarks were either found by this Court not to be a reference to the defendant’s failure to testify,11 or, in one case that seems particularly irrelevant, the disputed remark apparently occurred after defendant had already testified.12 Thus, despite its thorough review of the long history of this area of the law, the principal opinion cannot find a single case that would actually demonstrate this supposedly traditional rule, one case where a conviction was affirmed despite a properly objected to, direct reference by the prosecutor to the defendant’s failure to testify.
The point of illustrating that the majority’s supposedly general rule has never actually been followed is not to argue that the law automatically, blindly, requires a mistrial in every case where such a reference occurs. The point is to demonstrate that, in more than a century of considering these sorts of cases, our courts have, to this point, found it extremely difficult to fashion a remedy that corrects the clear prejudice created by a prosecutor’s direct, certain comment on a defendant’s failure to testify. Even accepting the majority’s point that a mistrial is not the automatic result of such a reference, I cannot understand how the majority can hold that the remedial action taken by the trial court here was adequate to correct an admitted violation of the law and of the privilege against self-incrimination. It is conceded that the remark was a direct reference, and, as the majority holds, such a reference, when objected to, requires reversal if the objection is overruled. I submit that there is no effective difference between what actually happened in this case and the overruling of an objection. The trial court did not specifically rule on defendant’s objection, and since this colloquy was (apparently) out of the hearing of the jury, the question of whether the objection was overruled or not is immaterial. What is relevant is what the jury heard. The entire admonishment of the court was: “The court will admonish the jury that the last remark by the prosecutor will be disregarded by the jury.” The problem with this admonishment is that the last remark by the prosecutor was not the remark at issue hez’e. The last remark was “There is no evidence of that,” meaning that there was no evidence that the defendant had a clean record. Even a juror with a perfect memory who scrupulously followed the judge’s instruction would not have disregarded the statement on the defendant’s failure to testify. Instead, such a juror would very likely infer that he or she was not supposed to consider whether or not the defendant had a criminal record in reaching their verdict. This is a reasonable understanding of the judge’s admonition, especially in this case, where the judge had just cautioned the attorneys to refrain from further mention of defendant’s criminal record or lack thereof. The judge could, of course, have corrected this ambiguity by specifying *350which objectionable remarks he wished the jury to disregard. But, as the transcript shows, he was concerned with highlighting the remarks and inflaming the possible prejudice. This is a reasonable concern, since, as this Court has held, such an admonishment may, itself, constitute reversible error.13 Since mistrial is such a drastic remedy, the idea that an admonishment can correct the prejudice created a by a direct reference from the prosecution is an appealing one — in theory. Unfortunately, when it comes down to actual cases, the long experience of the appellate courts is that direct references to the defendant’s failure to testify place the trial court in a position where it has few effective weapons to correct the prejudice, short of declaring a mistrial. Certainly, in this case, the prosecutor’s remark placed the trial court in a double bind. It saw that it could not admonish the jury to disregard the remark without aggravating the prejudice already created. While the trial court attempted to admonish the jury in an indirect and ambiguous way, it did not actually succeed in doing so.
There may be, as the principal opinion holds, some conceivable circumstance where a direct, certain reference by the prosecutor to the defendant’s failure to testify does not require a mistrial. That conclusion is necessary to affirm the conviction here, but it is not sufficient. Whether a particular admonishment sufficiently cures the prejudice of a direct remark in a particular case must, nevertheless, be reviewed on appeal, and the principal opinion’s refusal to review the trial court’s actions in this case amount to an abdication of that duty. As the cases cited in the majority opinion demonstrate, no previous court has been willing to uphold a conviction based upon an admonishment to disregard the direct, improper comments of the prosecutor. This case is hardly a convincing candidate to be the first since, in point of fact, the admonishment here was not just insufficient, it was nonexistent.
I respectfully dissent.

. State v. Chunn, 657 S.W.2d 292, 295 (Mo.App.1983).

. Id. at 294.

. Section 546.270, RSMo 1994.

. See, e.g., State v. DeWitt, 186 Mo. 61, 84 S.W. 956, 957-58 (Mo.1905).

. State v. Kempker, 824 S.W.2d 909, 911 (Mo. banc 1992).

. 647 S.W.2d 929, 931 (Mo.App.1983).

. Id. at 932.

.Id. at 931.

. State v. Barker, 399 S.W.2d 1, 3 (Mo.1966).

. 485 U.S. 25, 32, 108 S.Ct. 864, 99 L.Ed.2d 23 (1988).

. State v. Gregg, 399 S.W.2d 7, 10-11 (Mo.1966); State v. Busby, 486 S.W.2d 501, 505 (Mo.1972).

. State v. Fitzgerald, 130 Mo. 407, 32 S.W. 1113, 1120 (Mo.1895).

. State v. Snyder, 182 Mo. 462, 82 S.W. 12, 31 (Mo.1904).