Court Opinion

ID: 9778912
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 21:25:45.730437+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:15.824852
License: Public Domain

Steele Hays, Justice, concurring. While I concur in the result, I respectfully disagree that it was error for the court not to order a mistrial on its own motion because of a “veiled reference” by the prosecutor during closing argument to the defendant not testifying in his own behalf. It is quite apparent that the prosecuting attorney was not referring to the defendant not having testified, but to the fact the defense had produced several potential witnesses to be sworn at the beginning of the trial, and then rested without calling a witness. Two of the cases cited by the majority provide a common basis for analysis. In neither case were the remarks of counsel “veiled” or ambiguous, but were direct and deliberate references to the defendant’s failure to testify. In Lee v. State, 73 Ark. 148, 83 S.W. 916 (1904), the deputy prosecutor told the jury “If the defendant is not guilty, no one knows it better than he does. Why did he not take the stand and tell you that he did not steal those cattle? He sits there silent as the grave, and asks you to turn him loose, without opening his mouth as a witness.” Similarly, in Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1966), the state’s attorney took full advantage to comment upon the defendant’s silence. The Chapman court described the prosecutor’s argument to the jury, as “filled from beginning to end with numerous references to their silence and inferences of their guilt resulting therefrom.” In contrast to Lee and Chapman, the remarks of counsel in this case (“they don’t have to prove anything, and a little bit to my surprise they didn’t”) pale in comparison, as the majority opinion tacitly concedes. I agree entirely with the Lee and Chapman cases, but the majority would apply the rule, as it did in Bailey v. State, 287 Ark. 183, 697 S.W.2d 110 (1985), whenever the attorney for the state makes even the faintest allusion to the lack of proof from the defense. That was, I believe, never the intent of the Lee and Chapman courts. I expressed my views at some length in my dissent in Bailey v. State, supra, and will not repeat those comments here. Suffice is to say the improvidence of extending the rule beyond its intended boundaries is thoughtfully stated by Justice Fogleman in his dissenting opinion in Adams v. State, 263 Ark. 536, 566 S.W.2d 387 (1978): Of course, a prosecuting attorney should not comment on a defendant’s failure to testify. But for an advocate to be prohibited from pointing out that no witness testified except those presented by the state, as a basis for eliminating reasonable doubt and as a factor in determining the weight to be given that evidence, is extreme and unnecessary. See 14 ALR 3d 723, 729, § 3, Practice Pointers. It reads something into the Fourteenth Amendment that isn’t there. I fear that it means that a prosecuting attorney cannot ask a jury to accept even an isolated statement by one witness because no one denies it, when dozens of people could if it were untrue. It is all very well to relegate the prosecuting attorney into the role of a minister of justice in some stages of the prosecutorial process, for he must act in a quasi-judicial capacity. But in closing argument to a jury, his role as an advocate completely overshadows any other role. Then he is society’s — the people’s — only advocate. Sending him into the arena shackled, hamstrung and gagged destroys his ability to act as such, at a time when society’s need for strong advocacy was never greater. Nor can I agree that when an objection is overruled, it is tantamount to a motion for mistrial because the motion itself would be a “vain and useless act.” The appellant makes no such argument. The implicit holding of the majority produces a curious and troubling precedent — whenever there is an objection during trial proceedings, unless the objection is sustained, there is a built-in motion for mistrial in the record, albeit none was requested, presenting the appellate court with the burden of deciding whether the trial court abused its discretion by not granting a mistrial on its own initiative as a result of a ruling which is only later held to be erroneous. Hickman, J., and Glaze, J., join. SUPPLEMENTAL OPINION ON DENIAL OF REHEARING SEPTEMBER 11, 1989