Court Opinion

ID: 9560229
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:45:34.815447+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:27.614577
License: Public Domain

BURNETT, Judge, specially
concurring.
The Court’s opinion harbors an anomaly, if not an outright contradiction, in its discussion of the prosecutor’s comments about the testimony given by the bartender. The Court treats these comments as error, asserting that their “connotation” to the jury is unknown. The Court then dismisses the error as harmless, asserting that “the same verdict would have resulted absent this impropriety.” The Court explains its ruling by describing the state’s evidence as “strong” and “sufficiently conclusive.” Weighing the evidence is an improper approach to the issue of harmless error where the alleged error lies not in the admission or exclusion of evidence but in comments made by a prosecutor. The proper inquiry is whether it reasonably appears that the prosecutor’s comments could have materially affected the deliberations of the jury. See State v. LePage, 102 Idaho 387, 630 P.2d 674 (1981). My colleagues, by predicating error upon an unknown “connotation” of the prosecutor’s comments, have shortstopped the harmless error inquiry.
The Court need not have created such an anomaly. Despite the improvident concession in the state’s brief, I do not think the prosecutor’s comments, viewed in the full context of the trial, rose to the level of error. When the bartender testified, the prosecutor cross-examined her about the difference between a statutory standard of alcoholic “influence” and a bartender’s general impression of drunkenness. In closing argument, the prosecutor returned to this theme, as reflected by the long excerpt of his remarks quoted in the Court’s opinion. Only one sentence in that entire passage is alleged to represent error. It is the prosecutor’s concluding statement, “[s]he is not telling us that he was not influenced.” This statement does not purport to quote the bartender’s testimony. Rather, it expresses, albeit awkwardly, the prosecutor’s *776view that the bartender had not addressed the question of “influence,” in a statutory sense, during her testimony. This is a permissible line of argument.
I would hold, consistent with the district judge’s response to defense counsel’s objection, that the statement did not represent error. In all other respects, I concur with the Court’s decision today.