Court Opinion

ID: 9562663
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:32:28.641387+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:28.453297
License: Public Domain

Riley, Judge,
concurring in part, dissenting in part, and concurring in result:
I concur in the result reached in the opinion of the Court in reversing the judgment of conviction, and concur in all of the points of the syllabus, and in that part of the opinion which sets forth the reasons which prompted the Court to reverse the judgment of the trial court. With deference, however, to the members of the Court who *546concurred in the'opinion of the Court, I respectfully dissent from that part of the opinion in which the Court held that the trial court did not err in overruling the objection of counsel for the defendant to the statement of the prosecuting attorney made before the jury during the course of the final argument to the effect that he knew that H. D. Meador, a Justice of the Peace of Jefferson District, Kanawha County, who died before the trial of this indictment, was a person of the highest integrity, and that the record of the deceased justice, bearing on the question whether defendant had been previously convicted of the offense of “drunken driving” upon a plea of guilty was correct. While the statement of the assistant prosecuting attorney concerning the justice and his record did not bear directly on any issue in the prosecution of the indictment, the question raised by the assistant prosecuting attorney’s statement bears directly on defendant’s credibility, and thus a comparison between the defendant’s credibility, as a witness in his own behalf, and the integrity of the deceased justice, as a public official, was made in the argument before the jury.
In that this case embraces the charge that defendant unlawfully and feloniously had sexual intercourse with his daughter, who, at the time of the trial, was under fourteen years of age, the defendant was tried for a crime which, to use the language of this Court in State v. Gill, 101 W. Va. 242, 132 S. E. 490, and State v. Graham, 119 W. Va. 85, 91, 191 S. E. 884, is “so revolting that it is difficult for the average jury to give the one accused the benefit of a reasonable doubt.” With evident earnestness the assistant prosecuting attorney argued: “I’ll put his record [the record of the justice of the peace] up against the testimony of that man [the defendant] sitting in the witness stand. If any of you knew Squire Meador in his lifetime, he was a justice of the peace and I knew him a long time — you men who knew him knew that he conducted his office in a fair and impartial manner and his docket showed what happened.” These remarks, in my opinion, were highly prejudicial to the defendant in that they bear *547directly on defendant’s credibility as a witness in this own behalf, and constitute an attack upon defendant as a witness, which in the circumstances could not be met by the defendant’s counsel. I am well aware of the salutary rule stated in point 3 of the syllabus in the case of State v. Boggs, 103 W. Va. 641, 138 S. E. 321, and adopted in point 5 of the syllabus of this case that: “The discretion of the trial court in ruling on the propriety of argument by counsel before the jury will not be interfered with by the appellate court, unless it appears that- the rights of the complaining party have been prejudiced, or that manifest injustice resulted therefrom.” In no circumstances, however, should this rule be invoked and applied so as to prevent an accused from having a fair and impartial trial, and thus relieve the assistant prosecuting attorney of the duty which rests upon every prosecuting attorney and assistant prosecuting attorney in the trial of criminal cases to conduct criminal trials so as to prevent, as stated by this Court in the Graham case, “any suspicion of any effort to incite prejudice in the minds of the jury.”
In deference to the members of this Court who have concurred in the majority opinion, I simply say that the opinion of the Court is a departure from the rule well established in the criminal practice and procedure of this State through the course of many years that a criminal case, especially one involving a crime so revolting that it is apt of itself to create a prejudice in the minds of the jury, and prevent the accused from having the benefit of a reasonable doubt, should be conducted with great care and decorum. See State v. Gill, supra; State v. Vineyard, 108 W. Va. 5, 150 S. E. 144; State v. Hively, 103 W. Va. 237, 136 S. E. 862; State v. Taylor, 105 W. Va. 298, pt. 5 syl., 142 S. E. 254; and State v. Summerville, 112 W. Va. 398, 164 S. E. 508.
In this regard the several cases cited in the majority opinion in support of the Court’s position that the prosecuting attorney’s remarks made in the final argument to the jury were not prejudicial are, in my opinion, not in *548point. In State v. Boggs, supra, the defendant was charged with a crime which was simply malum prohibitum, that is, transporting intoxicating liquors in contravention of Section 31, Chapter 32A, Barnes’, 1923, Code; in State v. Simon, 132 W. Va. 322, 52 S. E. 2d 725, the defendant, James Edward Simon, was convicted of tampering with ballots cast in a general election held in Raleigh County; in State v. Reppert, 132 W. Va. 675, 52 S. E. 2d 820, in which this Court reversed a judgment of conviction for voluntary manslaughter, the remarks of the prosecuting attorney were not abusive or vituperative in any sense, and did not, as in the instant case, bear on defendant’s credibility as a witness in his own defense. In the Reppert case upon objection of counsel for the defendant, the court directed the jury not to consider the statement of the prosecuting attorney as evidence, and this Court held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to exclude entirely the statement. In State v. Allen, 45 W. Va. 65, 30 S. E. 209, in which the defendant was charged with murder and found guilty of murder of the first degree and sentenced to be hanged, the judgment of conviction was reversed by this Court on other grounds, the remarks made by the prosecuting attorney in final argument to the jury which were objected to by counsel for the defense, having been provoked by and being in answer to remarks made by defendant’s own counsel early in. the final arguments to the jury; and in the more recent case of State v. Lewis, 133 W. Va. 584, 57 S. E. 2d 513, the alleged prejudicial remarks of the prosecuting attorney were likewise provoked.
In addition to the reasons set forth in the opinion of the Court in support of the Court’s decision reversing the judgment of the trial court, I would reverse the judgment of the trial court for the additional reason stated in this note.