Court Opinion

ID: 9485789
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:29:54.124437+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:21.384439
License: Public Domain

WELLFORD, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring.
This is a close and difficult case on the merits of these convictions at issue. I am in full agreement with parts I, II, and III of the opinion. I concur in part IV, but emphasize that I am satisfied that defendant’s counsel did open the door to a searching cross-examination of witness Hobart, who testified on direct examination for Payne, that he was “subject to different policies.”1 I believe it was appropriate for the prosecutor to question Hobart about his familiarity with complaints made by patrons against Payne. The prosecutor, however, went too far in posing certain cross-examination questions, but it was defendant who sought to raise the specter of race in this case in order to justify his questionable conduct as a mail carrier in dealing with numbers of black patrons on his route. The prosecutor’s excessive zeal in this area, in my view, would not constitute reversible error except for his other misconduct described fully in the court’s opinion.
“The touchstone of due process analysis ... is the fairness of the trial, not the culpability of the prosecutor.” Smith v. Phillips, 455 U.S. 209, 219, 102 S.Ct. 940, 947, 71 L.Ed.2d 78 (1982). We look to see whether the prosecutor’s conduct was “so egregious so as to render the entire trial fundamentally unfair.” Cook v. Bordenkircher, 602 F.2d 117, 119 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 936, 100 S.Ct. 286, 62 L.Ed.2d 196 (1979). Under all the circumstances, the prosecutor’s conduct did render the trial and conviction fundamentally unfair.

. The district judge described Hobart’s claim that "policies were being applied unevenly" as to Payne. When a defendant charges, in effect, selective prosecution because of race, this presents sensitive problems for the prosecutor.