Court Opinion

ID: 9620716
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:46:30.813534+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:35:36.222525
License: Public Domain

Lewis, Chief Justice
(dissenting) :
I am convinced that the judgment should be affirmed and, therefore, dissent.
The appellant offered no testimony and the agreed Statement contains the following summary of the facts:
The record shows that appellant was driving his vehicle at a high and excessive rate of speed while under the in*484fluence [of intoxicants]; that his wife, driving another vehicle, was following behind the vehicle of appellant; that upon rounding a curve on the highway, appellant was confronted with a vehicle proceeding along the highway in the same direction in front of him; and that while so proceeding appellant’s vehicle ran into and struck the left rear bumper of the forward vehicle, causing it to be knocked down an embankment, after which it burst into flames, resulting in the death of the occupants therein.
The facts overwhelmingly support the finding by the jury that the death in question resulted from the malicious act of appellant.
It is in the light of the overwhelming proof of appellant’s guilt that we consider the issues.
The first assignment of error concerns certain alleged prejudicial comments made by the trial judge to appellant’s counsel during his argument to the jury. The alleged prejudicial remarks were as follows:
“. . ., if you inject one other racial question before this jury I shall have you placed in jail, and I mean that, and don’t you forget it. Now continue your argument.”
Counsel concluded his argument to the jury immediately thereafter. It is now contended that the foregoing comments by the judge to counsel deprived appellant of a fair trial.
The record shows that appellant’s counsel had previously made comments of a racial nature and had been stopped by the court. The factual statement in respondent’s brief, that both appellant and the victim were white, is unchallenged, so it would appear that the trial judge’s limitation of the references to race was proper.
While we think the admonition in question, if considered proper, should have been made outside the presence of the jury, we find no prejudice to appellant from the comment by the trial judge. The trial judge properly stopped counsel *485from injecting irrelevant racial issues into the trial. The comment did not reflect upon counsel’s integrity but was no doubt intended, and so interpreted by counsel, as simply a forceful warning to counsel that further violation of the court’s prior ruling would not be tolerated. Trial counsel in this case was an able and experienced lawyer and we doubt that the comment from the judge so unnerved him that he had to cease his argument, as appellant is now implying.
Finally, it is contended that prejudicial error was committed when the solicitor made comments in his argument to the jury concerning the failure of the wife of appellant to testify. The wife was not called to testify and the record is silent as to her whereabouts at the time of trial, except for a statement by appellant’s trial counsel from which it might have been inferred that she was out of the State. The record does not show the exact argument of .the solicitor, but it seems to be conceded that it was intended to leave an inference that the wife’s testimony would not have been favorable to appellant if she had been called as a witness.
Assuming that the reference by the solicitor to the wife’s failure to testify was improper, there was no prejudice. The record, admittedly shows that appellant drove his automobile into the rear of the victim’s vehicle while “driving his vehicle at a high and excessive speed while under the influence.” The evidence was overwhelming that appellant was operating his vehicle upon the public highway, while under the influence of intoxicants, in such manner as to indicate an active intentional disregard of human life. There is nothing in the remarks of the solicitor, under the facts of this case, to deny appellant a fair trial.
The judgment should be affirmed.
Littlejohn, J., concurs.