Court Opinion

ID: 9470521
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:08:02.1195+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:41:56.609031
License: Public Domain

CORNELIA G. KENNEDY, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in that portion of the majority’s opinion which holds that Kentucky does not violate due process by permitting privately retained counsel to assist the public prosecutor in the trial of criminal cases.
I dissent, however, from the holding of the majority that petitioner’s trial was so fundamentally unfair that he was denied due process of law. I cannot agree with the majority that the evidence in this case was *913weak. Only three' witnesses observed the actual shooting — petitioner, Joe Clark and Leonard “Lightning” Joseph. Clark testified that he saw petitioner come around the front of the car in which Clark was seated.
A. He had a gun kind of like this. It wasn’t down and it wasn’t up. He run up to Larry and Larry started backing up. * * * Larry [the deceased] was backing up and Stevie was in front of him going right back with him. And then I heard the gun go off. Larry fell and Willie [the driver of the car in which Clark was sitting] took off, said, “Let’s go to the house, and call an ambulance,” said he shot him.
Q.27. What, if anything, was the deceased Larry Johnson doing to this young lad; Stevie Stumbo, at the time the shot went off?
A. Nothing as I could see.
Q.28. Did you — What, if anything, as he backed up, as Larry backed up, what if anything was he doing to this defendant as he was backing up?
A. Nothing that I seen.
App. 116.
Joseph testified that petitioner put the gun which he had in his hand in the deceased’s stomach. He showed the jury how this was done. “He just walked up and punched it up in his belly.” (App. 114).
■ Petitioner was unable in his testimony to explain why the gun fired or how the bullet entered deceased’s stomach. He denied pulling the trigger asserting that it must have fired accidentally.
The description of acts of prosecutorial misconduct attributed in the majority’s opinion to the Kentucky Supreme Court is a list of instances cited by petitioner. It is not a list found by the Kentucky Supreme Court to have occurred. That court, after listing Stumbo’s claimed instances of misconduct, discussed the last two, dealing with the conduct of the prosecutor while cross-examining petitioner’s cousin, the owner of the gun. The Kentucky Supreme Court held that although the prosecutor assumed facts not in evidence in asking a question of the witness and asked a question as to which an objection had been sustained, that there was an admonition to the jury and, that when considered against the background of the entire case, these items of misconduct did not rise to a level of prejudice that required reversal.
The record does not permit us to find one of petitioner’s most vigorously argued complaints — “repeatedly shouting at the witnesses.” The state trial court made a finding that in all but two instances the “shouting” complained of was the prosecutor’s normal loud way of talking. On one of the remaining two occasions the prosecutor apologized for raising his voice and on the other the court directed him to keep his voice down. The state trial court’s finding that the prosecutor was not shouting is binding on us. Sumner v. Mata, 449 U.S. 539, 101 S.Ct. 764, 66 L.Ed.2d 722 (1981) (Sumner I); Sumner v. Mata, 455 U.S. 591, 102 S.Ct. 1303, 71 L.Ed.2d 480 (1982) (Sumner II).
When, during examination of appellant, the prosecutor was repeatedly snapping the trigger on the gun and an objection was made, the court admonished the prosecutor not to snap the gun. He did not do so thereafter. If his conduct were so outrageous as to require a new trial one would expect the objection to have been made earlier.
Calling the victim the “dead boy” and appellant “young man” and on one occasion “young lad” (App. 115), although improper, is not so prejudicial that it deprived respondent of a constitutionally fair trial.
Although I agree with the majority that there was no factual basis for the argument that petitioner and his cousin conspired or agreed to murder the deceased, there was no objection to this argument. It should be noted that counsel for petitioner had previously argued that there was no evidence that petitioner and his cousin had planned to kill the deceased. (App. 357).
Using the phrase “Johnny Murder Boy” on one occasion and the statement that if the jury believed petitioner’s “cock-and-bull story” murder cases, would be “stacked up” *914in Floyd County, was improper. But it is unlikely that they influenced the outcome of the trial. They are only arguments. In short, after having read the entire transcript of the trial I am not persuaded that the prosecutor’s conduct “so infected the trial with unfairness as to make the resulting conviction a denial of due process.” Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 643, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 1871, 40 L.Ed.2d 431 (1973).