Court Opinion

ID: 9654765
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 18:50:11.816248+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:13.029000
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. Regardless of whether there was constitutional error in the presecutor’s argument about defendant’s failure to testify, this does not excuse or justify violation of our statute, Sec. 546.-270, V.A.M.S., which prohibits reference by the prosecutor to defendant’s failure to testify, and the case should therefore be reversed and remanded.
This view necessitates a statement of what the facts were at the trial. There were only three witnesses: the owner of the Chevrolet, the owner’s husband, and the policeman. The husband parked the car near their apartment at 3701 Lindell Boulevard around 2:00 p. m., July 21, 1968. Neither he nor his wife paid any attention to the car the rest of the day or knew that it had been moved, until the police called them sometime after midnight and took them to Compton and Delmar where the car had been found. The policeman testified he was on patrol in the early morning hours of July 22. He was unaware the Chevrolet had been stolen and his attention was attracted to the vehicle simply because he saw it was stopped “in the rear of approximately 720 North Compton” with its inside dome light burning. Upon investigation defendant was found “seated behind the [steering] wheel of the automobile * * * leaning over rummaging through the glove compartment”. At that time the windows of the Chevrolet were down, its motor was running, and there were “numerous articles on the front seat * * * that apparently had been taken from the glove compartment”. The ignition switch was missing. Also on the front seat was a screw driver and a bent coat hanger, which the owner’s husband said “I did not own”. When defendant was searched, an automobile ignition switch was found in his shirt pocket *560which the officer said fit the Chevrolet. Defendant proffered no evidence and did not testify at the trial. These were the facts before the jury on which the argument set forth on page 2 of the per curiam opinion was made.
On the record before us, there was no evidence before the jury that anyone other than defendant knew anything about how or why he happened to be in the automobile when it was noticed by the policeman. So when the prosecutor argues, “He can call any witnesses he wants * * * He was free to offer any evidence he had at that time and offered nothing”, what does this refer to? What did defendant have to offer, so far as the evidence before the jury indicated, other than himself as a witness?
When the prosecutor argues “ * * * the only thing the defense brought you is a complete lack of evidence * * * He had his chance”, the question would naturally occur to the jurors, chance to do what? Take the stand and testify?
The above statements of the prosecutor and the questions they raise must be viewed in the light of what had transpired in the case, the nature of the evidence produced, the fact that the burden of proof of proving defendant’s guilt was upon the state, the complete absence of any evidence there were witnesses (other than defendant himself) subject to call by defendant and available to him, and how the argument would appear to an ordinary reasonable person on the jury. So viewed, it is clear the prosecutor has accentuated defendant’s failure to testify, whereby the jury is induced to consider his silence as pointing to his guilt, because he has let the state’s case go unanswered. ^
The collection of quotations from approved arguments in the two cases cited by the per curiam opinion, State v. Baker (Mo.Sup.) 439 S.W.2d 515, and State v. Morgan (Mo.Sup.) 444 S.W.2d 490, show how we have kept extending what the prosecutors can argue. Now the court is holding that since the argument before us “did not contain direct and certain reference to failure of appellant to testify”, the comments of the prosecutor were not “plainly unwarranted and clearly injurious”, relying in part on a federal decision, Homan v. United States (C.C.A. 8) 279 F. 2d 767, which does not involve a statute such as we have here or even the question of comment by the prosecutor on the failure of the defendant to testify, and State v. Tiedt, 360 Mo. 594, 229 S.W.2d 582, which was a four to three decision by this court, which turned on waiver by defendant of his right of non-reference under the statute, an entirely different question. Waiver is not involved in the present case.
What the court is doing is to dilute Sec. 546.270, V.A.M.S. by adding to it the word “directly”, so that the portion here under consideration reads “nor be directly referred to by any attorney in the case”.
This, in my opinion, respectfully submitted, is wrong for two reasons:
1. We have no authority to change the statute by adding a word to it.
2. We thereby encourage the use of devious and indirect argument by prosecutors, who will now know they are safe so long as they do not not use a direct, meat-ax approach. We require new lawyers to take an oath of admission which says they “will never seek to mislead the judge or jury by any artifice”. Our Rule 4.22 requires a lawyer to conduct himself with “candor and fairness”. Yet we tell prosecutors they can refer to the failure of the accused to testify, so long as they do not do so directly. We are rewarding artifice and encouraging the tactic of getting before the jury indirectly what cannot be done directly.