Court Opinion

ID: 9746695
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 14:34:04.58405+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:16.022018
License: Public Domain

SPAETH, Judge,
dissenting:
I believe that reversible error was committed in this case when the trial judge, over appellant’s counsel’s objection and without any cautionary instruction, permitted the prosecutor to wave appellant’s knife in front of the jury during closing argument, despite the fact that the knife had never been admitted into evidence.
Officer William Sammons testified that when he arrested appellant, five weeks after the rape, he found a “silver handled knife, with [a] blade approximately three and a half inches long,” in appellant’s right rear pocket. N.T. 1.166. The blade was a folding blade, and the overall length of the knife when open was eight inches. N.T. 1.167. While the officer was testifying, the prosecutor showed him the knife and had it marked for identification as Commonwealth’s Exhibit No. 2. Later, the complaining witness testified that a sharp object was placed at her neck during the attack, but darkness prevented her from observing what it was. N.T. 2.85-2.86. She also testified that a sharp object felt like a *15knife, N.T. 2.86, but when appellant’s counsel objected that a sharp object was not necessarily a knife, the trial judge struck from the record her remark about the object against her neck having felt like a knife. N.T. 2.86. After the complaining witness’s testimony was completed, the prosecutor moved for the admission of the knife into evidence. After a sidebar conference, N.T. 2.134, appellant’s counsel renewed his objection to the admission of the knife and made a motion for a mistrial, N.T. 2.135. The trial judge denied the motion for a mistrial, and when counsel then requested the judge to give a cautionary instruction to the effect that the knife had no relevance to the case, the judge refused the request, N.T. 2.135-2.136. At this point, however, the prosecutor did not renew his motion for the admission of the knife, but instead only introduced one unrelated exhibit, N.T. 2.137;1 nor did the prosecutor at any later point move for the admission of the knife, and it was never admitted into evidence.
Before closing arguments commenced, appellant’s counsel in colloquy pointed out that
none of the exhibits [including the knife] were admitted into evidence. I don’t think the exhibits should be used any more as far as closing arguments and as far as being shown to the jury or anything else because they are not admitted into evidence.
N.T. 4.15.
When the trial judge asked the prosecutor, “[W]hy did you not offer everything into evidence?” the prosecutor replied, “Well, the reason I just didn’t move everything into evidence was that I thought it was just not necessary. There was no reason.” N.T. 4.17. When appellant’s counsel then went on to object specifically to the prosecutor “holding up the knife” during closing argument, N.T. 4.19, the prosecutor replied, “I can hold up a knife if I have marked the knife *16for identification,” id., and the trial judge stated, “I think he may do it, and you may do it too,” id., to which appellant's counsel responded, “Note my objection, please,” id.
Consistent with this colloquy, during closing argument the prosecutor did indeed display the knife to the jury. The following then occurred at sidebar:
MR. SOSNOV [appellant’s counsel]: I am objecting to-I am objecting to his waiving [sic] it in front of the jury-the knife-and I would object-
THE COURT: Okay, okay.
MR. SOSNOV: I will ask-
THE COURT: I will overrule the objection.
N.T. 4.71.
The foregoing discloses the most flagrant violation-or ignorance-of what I should have supposed to be the fundamental principle of our law, namely, that an accused is to be tried only on the basis of testimony and exhibits properly admitted into evidence. McCormick bn Evidence, § 51 (2nd ed. 1972); 1 Wigmore, Evidence § 21 (Chadbourn rev. 1972). If an exhibit has been admitted into evidence, of course the prosecutor may refer to it in his closing argument, and, so long as he does so in a proper manner, may exhibit it to the jury, see, e. g., Commonwealth v. Mika, 317 Pa. 487, 177 A. 3 (1935); but until the majority’s decision today, I have never read a case, and I do not believe there is one, upholding the opinion of the prosecutor, and the trial judge, that “I can hold up a knife if I have marked the knife for identification.”2
*17The egregiousness of the error here may be illustrated by contrasting this case with Commonwealth v. Gardner, 246 Pa.Super. 582, 371 A.2d 986 (1977), where we considered whether reversible error had occurred when a handgun allegedly used in a robbery was displayed to a witness, but not subsequently admitted into evidence. Judge PRICE, writing for the majority, held that the prosecutor had not acted unprofessionally because the record showed that at the time he displayed the handgun, “he was making a good faith offer of the evidence with a reasonable chance of success.” 246 Pa.Super. at 593, 371 A.2d at 991. Furthermore, Judge PRICE went on to say, the display of the gun was only minimally prejudicial because it was exhibited only once in the course of a two day trial; the prosecutor “did not flaunt the gun before the jury or comment on it in his closing argument,” id.; four witnesses linked appellant with the gun; and the trial judge cautioned the jury that it was only to consider the one exhibit admitted into evidence, and was not to consider the exhibits not admitted into evidence. 246 Pa.Super. at 592-594, 371 A.2d at 991-992.
Here, it cannot be said that the prosecutor’s display of the knife to the jury was incident to a “good faith offer of the evidence with a reasonable chance of success.” The display was during closing argument, nor was it marked by any good faith; it rather occurred because of the prosecutor’s entirely unwarranted opinion that he had the right to display and argue on the basis of an exhibit that he knew he had not offered into evidence. Furthermore, here the display was not minimally prejudicial. In Gardner, four witnesses had linked the defendant with the item displayed. There was no comparable linking here. The knife was found in appellant’s possession five weeks after the rape occurred; the complaining witness was not able to testify positively that any knife was used in the attack; and the trial judge had stricken from the record her testimony that the object placed at her neck during the attack felt like a knife.
*18In Gardner, given the prosecutor’s good faith offer of the handgun, and the minimal prejudice, we found no prosecutorial misconduct. No such finding is possible here. Section 5.8 of the American Bar Association Standards Relating to The Prosecution Function and The Defense Function (Approved Draft 1971) states:
5.8 Argument to the jury.
(a) The prosecutor may argue all reasonable inferences from evidence in the record. It is unprofessional conduct for the prosecutor intentionally to misstate the evidence or mislead the jury as to the inferences it may draw.
(b) It is unprofessional conduct for the prosecutor to express his personal belief or opinion as to the truth or falsity of any testimony or evidence or the guilt of the defendant.
(c) The prosecutor should not use arguments calculated to inflame the passions or prejudices of the jury.
(d) The prosecutor should refrain from argument which would divert the jury from its duty to decide the case on the evidence, by injecting issues broader than the guilt or innocence of the accused under the controlling law, or by making predictions of the consequences of the jury’s verdict.
The prosecutor’s display of the knife contravened both section 5.8(a) and (c). The prosecutor did not “argue . . . from evidence in the record”; he argued from evidence that he knew was not in the record. Further, given that the complaining witness’s testimony regarding a knife had been stricken from the record, by displaying the knife to the jury the prosecutor both misstated the evidence and misled the jury. Still further, the display of the knife could only have been designed to appeal to the jury’s prejudices. As Wig-more has pointed out, the display of weapons used in a crime is often objected to because
there is a natural tendency to infer from the mere production of any material object, and without further evidence, *19the truth of all that is predicated of it. Secondly, the sight of deadly weapons or of cruel injuries tends to overwhelm reason and to associate the accused with the atrocity without sufficient evidence.
4 Wigmore, Evidence § 1157 (Chadbourn rev. 1972).
Accord State v. Mayfield, Mo., 506 S.W.2d 363 (1974). Wig-more points out that these dangers can be lessened by the proper authentication of the evidence and careful instructions by the court. No such protective measures were taken here. Indeed, the absence of any such protective measures is perhaps the most striking feature of this case as compared to Gardner. In Gardner, the trial judge cautioned the jury:
“[TJhere will go with you to the jury room one exhibit, which is the only exhibit I admitted into evidence .... The other exhibits were not admitted into . . . and are not for your consideration in your deliberations in this case.”
246 Pa.Super. at 594, 371 A.2d at 992.
As Judge PRICE, observed:
[PJrejudice resulting from erroneously admitted evidence may be rectified by cautionary instructions. Commonwealth v. Stolzfus, 462 Pa. 43, 337 A.2d 873 (1975); Commonwealth v. Murray, 437 Pa. 326, 263 A.2d 886 (1970). The same should be true where the evidence is never admitted.
Here, the trial judge not only refused to give any precautionary instruction regarding the knife, when appellant’s counsel requested such an instruction during the complaining witness’s testimony, but, in colloquy before closing argument, he expressly agreed with the prosecutor, over counsel’s objection, that the prosecutor could display the knife even though it had never been admitted into evidence.
The judgment of sentence should be reversed and the case remanded for new trial.

. The unrelated exhibit was Exhibit No. 6. Although the prosecutor said that he would “move that in,” the trial judge did not acknowledge the motion, and so far as appears, the exhibit was in fact not admitted into evidence.

. Sometimes it is claimed that the prosecutor argued on the basis of an exhibit not admitted into evidence, but the record does not support the claim. See, e. g., Commonwealth v. Hadok, 313 Pa. 110, 169 A. 111 (1933). Also, counsel “[may] employ toys, miniatures, duplicates, and apparatus to illustrate and illuminate their arguments, even though such articles may not have been introduced into evidence during the trial.” Laub, Pennsylvania Trial Guide § 154 (1959); Hoffman v. Railroad Co., 143 Pa. 503, 22 A. 823 (1891). The use of toy automobiles in an accident case is a common illustration of this practice.