Court Opinion

ID: 9674321
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:26:32.300474+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:26.900209
License: Public Domain

OPINION CONCURRING IN RESULT
SEILER, P. J.
(concurring in result).
In view of State v. Baker (Mo.Sup.) 439 S.W.2d 515, where I dissented on the argument point and was overruled, I feel I have no choice but to concur in result in the main opinion. However, in my opinion, for us to approve argument of the sort here used by the prosecutor is to invite prosecutors to continue to see how far they can go in indirectly calling to the attention of the jury the failure of the defendant to testify, despite the forthright language of Sec. 546.270, RSMo 1959 and our Rule 26.08 that no reference shall be made to the fact. We recently held the trial judge could not in a civil case countenance the doing indirectly of that which he knew could not be done directly, Will v. Gilliam (Mo.Sup.) 439 S.W.2d 498. The same should be true in a criminal case, where defendant’s liberty is at stake. No one can be so naive as not to know that what the prosecutor is really driving at in this kind of argument is the failure of the defendant to testify, *495which the jury should consider against him, because “if * * * you [were] charged with a crime as serious as this and you could prove you were not guilty surely you would bring forth evidence to show that.”1
The state had a strong case here against defendant (as the trial court pointed out in trying to restrain the prosecutor’s arguments) and there was no impelling need I can see for the prosecutor to flirt with the chance of reversible argument. An examination of the cases where this contention has been made of improper argument which in effect comments on the defendant’s failure to testify shows that almost without exception they have been cases where the state had a strong case. Sooner or later a prosecutor will push his luck too far when there really is no reason to do so.

. The court sustained an objection to this argument, but it shows what the prosecutor was trying to convey to the jury.