Court Opinion

ID: 9730813
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:24:39.507378+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:09.495970
License: Public Domain

McCORMICK, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent from parts of division III and V, and the result. Because I believe defendant was denied a fair trial, I would reverse and remand for new trial.
I. Prosecutorial misconduct. The prosecutor asked questions insinuating that defendant used cocaine shortly before the shooting and that he beat up his own sister the previous day. The prosecutor also stated during the course of his interrogation that defendant’s gun was the one which had killed the victim and that the victim’s clothing contained powder burns. Neither the insinuations nor statements had a factual basis in the evidence.
The fact the question concerning cocaine usage received a negative answer is not determinative of the present issue. The issue now is whether the insinuation in the question was prejudicial, either alone or in combination with the remainder of the prosecutor’s conduct.
The same problem is presented regarding the insinuation during cross-examination of defendant concerning the origin of his dispute with the victim. The prosecutor suggested the confrontation occurred because the victim gave refuge to defendant’s sister whom defendant allegedly had beaten up the previous day.
Similarly, the prosecutor told a witness a handgun in evidence had been “introduced into evidence as Willie Love’s gun that killed Ernie Gibson.” In reality, the State’s evidence was that the bullet which killed Gibson was too mutilated to be tied to a particular weapon. One of defendant’s theories of defense was that the victim may have been accidently shot from behind by his brother during the fracas. Other evidence supported that possibility. Therefore the prosecutor’s statement, to which objection was sustained, was calculated to contradict the defense on a material issue.
Defendant’s objection to the prosecutor’s statement that the victim’s clothing contained powder burns was also sustained, but of course not until the statement had been made in an effort to impeach defendant’s version of the shooting.
This court has condemned such conduct by a prosecutor: “[I]t is not within the province of a prosecutor, under the pretense of affecting the credibility of the witness, to propound interrogatories without any pretense or attempt to establish the truthfulness of the matters suggested by such inquiry, and solely to cast insinuations upon the defendant.” State v. Burris, 194 Iowa 628, 636, 190 N.W. 38, 41 (1922). The court said: “Such methods to secure the conviction of one charged with crime do not comport with the spirit of fairness which has always been one of the most cherished tenets of our administration of criminal law.” Id. More recently, this court has said: “A defendant is denied procedural fairness when the prosecutor persistently attempts to secure his conviction on the basis of innuendo and insinuation having no basis in evidence.” State v. Johnson, 222 N.W.2d 483, 488 (Iowa 1974); see 6 J. Wigmore, Evidence § 1808, at 371 (Chadbourn Rev. 1976) (“The jury may under certain circumstances obtain an impression, from the mere putting of illegal questions which are either answered in the negative or are not answered because illegal and excluded, that there is some basis of truth for the question. When a counsel puts such a question, believing that it will be excluded for illegality or will be negatived, and also having no reason to believe that there is a foundation of truth for it, he violates professional hon- *125or.”); ABA Standards, The Prosecution ' Function § 5.7(d), at 98 (Approved draft 1971) (“It is unprofessional conduct to ask a question which implies the existence--of. a factual predicate which the examiner knows he cannot support by evidence.”)
It is unnecessary to determine whether the trial court was right in its rulings during trial. The critical inquiry is whether the cumulative effect of the prosecutor’s conduct was sufficiently prejudicial to require sustention of defendant’s motion for new trial. I would hold that the cumulative effect of the prosecutor’s conduct, including his withholding of exculpatory evidence, was sufficient to deny defendant a fair trial.
II. Withholding exculpatory evidence. I cannot agree with the court that the evidence concerning the victim’s acquisition of a handgun “does not go to show that Gibson was armed with a gun at the time of his encounter with defendant.” The State’s theory was that ill feeling existed between defendant and the Gibsons concerning one or more incidents which occurred the day before the shooting. In urging self-defense, defendant sought to show the victim was about to shoot him at the time he fired toward him. He also sought to establish that William Gibson was armed. Edgar Gibson testified the victim owned a handgun, and defendant introduced Roy Williams’ testimony relating to finding a weapon where the evidence tended to show William Gibson hid it after the shooting.
The jury, however, could reasonably believe the weapon hidden by William Gibson was one he rather than defendant had at the time of the shooting. Furthermore, the evidence concealed by the State was not simply that defendant had access to a gun. Instead, it was that the victim had obtained a handgun from Cleo Luter on the morning of the day the shooting occurred. Viewed in the light of the State’s theory that the shooting was provoked by something which had happened the day before, evidence that the victim armed himself on the morning of the shooting was critically important to the defense. It was an additional indication that the victim was armed at the time of the shooting. Thus it was of vital significance on the central issue in the case.
I would hold that the State’s nondisclosure of this evidence was sufficient to deny defendant a fair trial. See United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 108, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 2400, 49 L.Ed.2d 342, 352 (1976).
ALLBEE, J., joins this dissent.