Court Opinion

ID: 9528033
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:36:31.249696+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:24.721850
License: Public Domain

Liacos, C.J.
(concurring). I write separately to emphasize the impropriety of the prosecutor’s reference in his closing argument to excluded evidence and to expand on the court’s harmless error analysis regarding this reference. In his argument, the prosecutor stated that “[Roland Tetreault] told you about that incident in November, didn’t deny [the victim] broke in. Use your common sense to draw the inference. He indicated the two of them were on the couch, what that fight must have been about. Use your common sense.” As the court’s opinion correctly points out, the statements were improper because the trial judge had upheld the defendant’s objection to questions regarding any such sexual activity. Additionally, the statements were improper because the prosecutor, during direct examination of Tetreault, specifically assured both the judge and defense counsel at side bar that he did not “intend to get into [the defendant’s sexual activity with Tetreault].” In light of this comment, the prosecutor’s subsequent attempt to raise the sexual activity issue in his closing argument borders on deception. Finally, the prosecutor’s statements were improper because they do not *514conform to the testimony at trial. Contrary to the prosecutor’s statement to the jury, Tetreault’s testimony does not indicate in any way that the defendant or Tetreault was “on the couch.” Tetreault’s testimony reveals only that the defendant and Tetreault were in the defendant’s apartment at the time of the attack.1 The prosecutor’s unfounded reference to a traditionally compromising situation served only to encourage the jury to draw an inference of sexual activity that was not warranted by the evidence presented at trial.
It is clear that the prosecutor’s statements invited the jury to infer that the victim’s November 21, 1984, attack was caused not by the victim’s abusive nature toward his wife but by the defendant’s extramarital sexual activity with Roland Tetreault. In my view, such an argument creates a dangerous risk of insinuating to jurors that they properly can conclude that the victim was justified in beating his wife for her infidelity. In order to avoid this risk, this type of evidence should be admitted rarely and only in limited circumstances, (e.g., pertaining to the defendant’s state of mind), and only when accompanied by stringent limiting instructions from the trial judge. Unfortunately, the prosecutor’s improper introduction of this issue during his closing argument to the jury effectively prevented the trial judge from exercising these controls.
Notwithstanding the absence of appropriate cautionary measures in the present case, I concur with the court that the prosecutor’s statements constituted harmless error. The harmless error analysis provided in the court’s opinion, however, does not consider the full range of potential error created by the prosecutor’s statements. The court concludes that the error was harmless because evidence was admitted at trial from which the jury could conclude that the defendant had had sexual relations with Tetreault and two other men near the time of the homicide. However, the impact of the *515prosecutor’s statements extends beyond the defendant’s history of extramarital sexual activity.
A central pillar of the defendant’s case was that at the time of the homicide she suffered from battered woman syndrome, a posttraumatic stress disorder allegedly caused by the victim’s constant and habitual abuse. Evidence of the victim’s attack on November 21, 1984, played a crucial role in the defendant’s attempts to establish that the victim regularly abused her, thereby causing her to suffer from battered woman syndrome. In the words of the defendant’s expert witness on battered woman syndrome, this attack was “the significant incident, one of the worse [j/c] incidents that occurred in November of 1984 that pushed [the defendant’s relationship with the victim] over the danger level” (emphasis added).
The prosecutor’s improper and unfounded statements allowed the jury to infer that the November 21 attack was not an example of the victim’s ongoing abuse, as was suggested by the defendant, but was merely an isolated incident caused by the victim’s rage at witnessing his wife’s infidelity. Such an inference certainly would have harmed the defendant’s attempts to establish that she suffered from battered woman syndrome due to chronic abuse. Accordingly, the potential impact of this inference should have been considered by the court in assessing the harm caused by the prosecutor’s error. In the circumstances of the present case, however, it appears that the error was rendered harmless because the jury’s verdict of manslaughter suggests that the jury accepted the defendant’s claim that she suffered from battered woman syndrome at the time of the homicide. In short, the good sense of the jurors saved a prosecutor from the consequences of his own folly. Accordingly, I concur.

Similarly, the defendant’s testimony regarding the November 21, 1984, attack does not describe either herself or Tetreault as being “on the couch.”