Court Opinion

ID: 9719855
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 08:07:00.425328+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:47:15.462876
License: Public Domain

FIGONE, J.*
I concur:
Demanding serious consideration is the defense contention of appeal to ethnic prejudice in the prosecutor’s argument during the sanity trial.
The traditional test of prejudicial error in applying the harmless error rule on appeal is whether it is “reasonably probable that a result more favorable to the defendant would have occurred had the district attorney refrained from the comment attacked by the defendant.” (People v. Bolton (1979) 23 Cal.3d 208, 214 [152 Cal.Rptr. 141, 589 P.2d 396], citing People v. Beivelman (1968) 70 Cal.2d 60, 75 [73 Cal.Rptr. 521, 447 P.2d 913].)
A second test of prejudicial error is referred to in Bolton, supra, as one involving federal constitutional error. Under this test, as enunciated by Justice Hugo L. Black in Chapman v. California (1967) 386 U.S. 18, 24 [17 L.Ed.2d 705, 710-711, 87 S.Ct. 824, 24 A.L.R.3d 1065], “... before a federal constitutional error can be held harmless, the court must be able to declare a belief that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The prosecutor’s allusion to Italians and his unsupported statement that “women are not given equal treatment” in his argument ignite the flames of ethnic prejudice. 1 Twice before during the cross-examination of the defense forensic expert, the prosecutor gave unsworn testimony of two studies he had of Italian-American lifestyles and mores and unsworn testimony about Italian men "... to have many women but the women to remain pure.”2 The insinuation is that the defendant was not *297insane, but normal and sane in the eyes of his peer group because, he argues, Italians are known to have different standards in relationships with women. The implication is that Italian-American mores are different than contemporary community standards—so that a normal Italian-American male treats women brutally, as did the defendant in the instant case.
However, the felling blow in the prosecutor’s appeal to ethnic prejudice came when in argument he gave personal opinions concerning the defendant’s sanity, by referring to his understanding of Italians and, in particular, to his own wife. “I hope my wife doesn’t hear me say that. But that’s not a sign of manicness.” The implication was, clearly, that he, as the prosecutor and an Italian-American, knew that the defendant acted as a sane man, because Italian men normally abuse women.
In confronting the issue of a black prosecutor commenting on the guilt of a black defendant the court in People v. Bain (1971) 5 Cal.3d 839, 849 [97 Cal.Rptr. 684, 489 P.2d 564] recognized that a personal belief in defendant’s guilt, built on racial foundations, might well have swayed the jury.3 (See also Witkin, Cal. Criminal Procedure (1963) Appeals to Passion or Prejudice, § 463, p. 468.)
Under the traditional test of prejudicial error as enunciated in People v. Bolton, supra, 23 Cal.3d 208, it is reasonably probable that a result more favorable to the defendant would have occurred had the prosecutor refrained from ethnic slurs and from continuously harping on the fact that defendant was an Italian-American.

Assigned by the Chairperson of the Judicial Council.

“The artistic and hot-tempered Italian, representing a cross between the temperamental maestro and the cheerful organ grinder, is still with us; but ... he is only a faded image of his former self.” (Gilbert, Stereotype persistence and change among college students (1951) J. Abnormal & Soc. Psych., 46, 245-254.)

Prosecutor did not, of course, reveal his sources. However, it is interesting to note that in a study undertaken by Andrew M. Greeley and William C. McCready and edited by Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Ethnicity, Theory and Experience (1975) the sociologists conclude the exact opposite. “Our only mistake was to assume that Italian sexual restrictiveness would be limited to female sexual behavior. In fact, the Italians are also sexually restrictive for males.” (Ibid., at p. 220.)

“[T]he prosecutor, in effect, asked the jury to give credence to his belief in defendant’s guilt from the inception of the case, because he, as a black man, ‘understood’ black defendants. This tactic was a way of persuading the jury that the defendant’s story was a sham that could not convince any other black person. [Fn. omitted.]” (People v. Bain, supra, 5 Cal.3d at p. 848.)