Court Opinion

ID: 9644909
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 21:08:25.296959+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:19.965830
License: Public Domain

Steele Hays, Justice, concurring. I disagree with that part of the court’s opinion which chastises the prosecutor for arguing that the defendant hasn’t killed “Puddin” yet. The majority opinion declares there was “simply no basis in the record” for the prosecutor’s remarks. I take exception. The Dermott police chief testified that the defendant told him at the scene that he intended to kill “Puddin,” whom he did not like, but in the dark mistook James Earl Ford, whom he did like, for “Puddin.” Whether that testimony gave rise to an inference that the defendant posed a threat to “Puddin” was for the jury to weigh, but it was not inappropriate, as I see it, for the prosecutor to argue what he believed to be consistent with the trial testimony. It is the role of counsel, in this instance the prosecutor, to urge such inferences to the jury as he thinks are sustained by the evidence. Only when such remarks are clearly without basis should the argument be labelled “improper.” The trial court’s handling of the issue in denying a mistrial and instructing the jury to decide the case on the testimony, rather than the argument, was a proper handling of the matter and we should, I believe, let it rest there. Glaze, J., joins.