Court Opinion

ID: 9662600
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:14:00.088977+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:41.006041
License: Public Domain

WAHL, Justice,
dissenting in part.
The evidence in the guilt phase of the trial was sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the acts of burglary and murder in the first degree. I cannot agree, however, that the conduct of the prosecutor in the insanity phase of the trial — eliciting evidence from two of the expert witnesses that they had originally been hired by defense counsel to examine the defendant but that counsel had chosen not to call them to testify, in addition to the following conduct — was harmless error. Not only did the prosecutor elicit that evidence, he pointed out in his opening statement that he would be calling two witnesses originally contacted by the defendant and emphasized in his closing argument that Dr. McCafferty and Dr. Schwartz were first contacted by defense counsel but gave unsatisfactory results causing the defense to employ Dr. Philander and Dr. Zuehlke at the last moment. The case involves both the admission of unfairly prejudicial evidence and comment on that evidence.
Comment on an accused’s failure to call a psychiatrist has been held by other courts to be inherently prejudicial, State v. Pratt, 284 Md. 516, 522-23, 398 A.2d 421, 425-26 (1979), or ultimately harmful to the credibility of those psychiatrists who do testify for the defense. People v. Pate, 108 Mich.App. 802, 310 N.W.2d 883 (1981).
This court in State v. Caron, 300 Minn. 123, 218 N.W.2d 197 (1974), held that it was improper for the prosecutor to comment on a defendant’s failure to call an alibi witness. We tested the effect of that prosecu-torial impropriety on the trial of the case by the standard used for non-constitutional error, i.e., whether the error substantially influenced the jury to convict. Id. at 127-28, 218 N.W.2d at 200. Applying that test to the case before us, it is unreasonable and unrealistic to conclude that the jury weighed the testimony of Dr. Philander and Dr. Zuehlke on the merits after being emphatically advised by the prosecution that the defense had first retained Dr. McCafferty and Dr. Schwartz, who also testified, but did not call them as witnesses because their opinions were not favorable to the defense and caused the employment of new defense psychiatrists at the last moment. It is more likely that the jury was substantially influenced to discount the credibility of the defense psychiatrists regarding the defendant’s insanity and to give greater credibility and weight to the testimony of Dr. McCafferty, Dr. Schwartz, and the lay witnesses. The conduct of the prosecutor under the facts and circumstances of this case was inherently prejudicial. The rulings of the trial court to the contrary were in error. The judgment should be reversed and the case remanded for a new trial on the defense of insanity.