Court Opinion

ID: 9772398
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:16:47.525928+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:44.047010
License: Public Domain

DIXON, Judge,
concurring in result.
I concur in the result of the principal opinion because I do not believe that any manifest injustice occurred in the trial of this case because of the prosecutor’s comments. I do not agree with the statement in the majority opinion that the comment of *523the prosecutor was not an indirect comment on the defendant’s failure to testify. I believe that it was.
In 1981, we certified the case of State of Missouri v. Ricky Zagorski to the supreme court, see State v. Zagorski, 632 S.W.2d 475 (Mo. banc 1982), to settle the vexing problems arising from the prosecutorial use of comments designed to call the jurors’ attention to the defendant’s failure to testify. The uncertainty and confusion has not been dispelled — subsequent cases make it plain that determinations of error in such cases are made on an ad hoc basis without any consistent principle governing review. The state of the law simply encourages prosecutors to chance reversal by skirting direct comment as closely as possible. The following cases demonstrate the continuing confusion.
In State v. Farris, 649 S.W.2d 554, 555 (Mo.App.1983), citing State v. Robinson, 641 S.W.2d 423, 426 (Mo. banc 1982); State v. Zagorski, 632 S.W.2d at 478-479; and State v. Frankoviglia, 514 S.W.2d 536, 541 (Mo.1974), the court stated that regarding the defendant’s right not to incriminate himself, the line between proper and improper prosecutorial argument has now been firmly drawn and held that “prosecu-torial arguments do not incur the wrath of the respective constitutional provisions unless they contain ‘direct’ and ‘certain’ references to an accused’s failure to testify.” State v. Chunn, 657 S.W.2d 292, 294 (Mo.App.1983), on the other hand, held that both direct and indirect references to the defendant’s failure to testify are impermissible. To be an indirect reference to the accused’s failure to testify, the comment must be one that, when viewed in context, would cause the jury to infer that the remark referred to the accused’s failure to testify. Id.
Although the case was reversed on other grounds, the court in State v. Williams, 673 S.W.2d 32, 35 (Mo. banc 1984), a murder case, had “no hesitation” in finding that the prosecutor’s argument that “only two people” knew “what happened” contained an improper reference to the defendant’s failure to testify. Compare State v. Farmer, 699 S.W.2d 86, 87 (Mo.App.1985), in which a sodomy victim testified at trial and the defendant did not. When the prosecutor argued that the victim told the jury the truth and that the victim was the only one other than the defendant who knew what happened, the trial court sustained an objection but denied a mistrial. Id. On appeal the court found that the comment did not constitute an indirect reference to the failure of the defendant to testify which would render the conviction “voidable.” Id. Deferring to the discretion of the trial judge, defendant’s conviction was affirmed. Id.
State v. Horne, 691 S.W.2d 402, 405 (Mo.App.1985), held that the prosecutor’s statement to the jurors, that they should not give the defendant’s written statement the same consideration as they should the sworn testimony of another witness, was merely a comment on the evidence and not an improper indirect reference to defendant’s failure to testify. Likewise in State v. Hill, 678 S.W.2d 848, 850 (Mo.App.1984), the court found that the prosecutor’s statement, “[W]e cannot get inside of the defendant’s mind to know what his thoughts were,” while less than proper, was not an indirect reference to defendant’s failure to testify in the context in which it was made because the prosecutor was focusing on the verdict director when he said it.
As the law presently exists, it appears that almost any indirect comment about the defendant’s failure to testify can be rationalized away by some circumstance of the case. As Judge Seiler stated in his dissent in Zagorski, 632 S.W.2d at 480:
By what we are doing, we are again encouraging the use of devious and slick argument by prosecutors, this time on the ground it was only a response to an attack by cross examination. Such an excuse will always be present in a contested criminal trial.