Court Opinion

ID: 9465267
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:40:59.230862+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:39:04.461175
License: Public Domain

ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the result:
Although I concur in the result, and I respect fully the sincerity of my brethren and the experience on which they base their view of the prosecutor’s conduct, I think that we should not condone it. In addition to the remarks referred to in the majority opinion, which I do not consider either warranted or proper, the prosecutor in closing argument made several other intemperate remarks.
First, he suggested that, if set free, Cron-non would kill again: “Well, you turn him loose and whose little girl will be next? Who will be next?” Several times during the argument, the prosecutor commented vehemently on Cronnon’s testimony, for example: “I don’t blame him because if I had committed such an atrocious, ugly, brutal, murderous thing as that, I would lie about it from here on, as anybody would if they had done so.” Finally, in referring to the pictures taken of the victim’s body, the prosecutor asked the jurors to imagine how *252the parents of the victim feel: “ . if we can ever put ourselves in the shoes of the loved ones of those victims, justice will shine through, then truth comes through, after all, what we are seeking is truth and justice. I’m sure you will all look at these pictures of how this child was found down by the side of 1-59 on the road.”
Neither the fact that the crime was vile nor the amount of evidence against the defendant justifies vituperative argument by the prosecutor. Indeed the greater the weight of the evidence and the more reprehensible the crime, the less necessity or justification is there for the prosecutor to inflame the jury.
In Houston v. Estelle, 5 Cir. 1978, 569 F.2d 372, we found that a state prosecutor’s conduct so exceeded the bounds of fundamental fairness as to deny the defendant due process. Earlier, in Alvarez v. Estelle, 5 Cir. 1976, 531 F.2d 1319, cert. denied, 1977, 429 U.S. 1044, 97 S.Ct. 748, 50 L.Ed.2d 757, we declined to find a constitutional violation in the state prosecutor’s argument because it included only a single improper remark in an otherwise fair trial.
The prosecutor’s conduct here falls somewhere between these two bounds. He did not go so far afield as the prosecutor in Houston. Moreover, no objection was made to the closing argument and the issue of its impropriety was raised only in a motion for a new trial. Thus the trial judge was never asked to assert his authority to warn the prosecutor to temper his remarks and abate his zeal, or to instruct the jury to disregard him. Finally, it is likely that the spleen was unnecessarily spent; the proof against the defendant was overwhelming.
For these reasons, I join in the affirmance of a result obtained by means that I disapprove.