Court Opinion

ID: 9643445
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 20:29:17.689579+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:11:00.564523
License: Public Domain

CONKLING, J.
(dissenting). — I respectfully dissent from the principal opinion.
My reading of this transcript and a study of the argument made by the two state’s counsel, and here contended by appellant to constitute separate references to the failure of the defendant to testify, have led me to the conclusion that the jury could have and did understand each of them as a reference to the failure of the defendant to personally testify for himself upon his trial.
Under the record before us of what occurred during the argument to the jury, it is my opinion that we cannot rule that by what the prosecuting attorney said, in the instance last mentioned in the principal opinion, “the prosecutor referred to the failure of the defense as a whole to combat the fact that appellant shot and killed officer Scott.” I think that does not appear and that it is not inferable from the-record. And following this latter reference the trial court said nothing to attempt to cure what had been argued by the prosecuting attorney. The court merely said, “The jury has heard the testimony and they will have to determine the issues.”
Assuming, as ruled in the principal opinion, that no cited case “convicts the trial court of error in the instant ease”, yet, I think that is not the whole of the matter. I believe we yet have before us *848the record of what occurred and that we have also the prohibition found in Sec. 546.270 of our statutes that “if the accused shall not avail himself * * * of his * * :!f right to testify * * * on the trial of the ease, it shall not be * * * referred to by any attorney in the case. ’ ’
I think that every instance of claimed reference to the failure of an accused to testify must be tested in the light (among others) of the language used, the context, the circumstances (retaliatory or otherwise), the inferences a jury could fairly draw or the clear and fair intendment of what was said, and all the pertinent background circumstances of the argument. And I further think it is neither material nor determinative that no cited case (or no adjudicated case) “convicts the trial court of error”.
With the very highest regard for th'e erudition and the views of my brothers who have reached a contrary conclusion, I feel constrained to record my dissent. The facts of this case place it far beyond the borderline of extenuation. But 1 am of the view that the argument of the two state’s counsel in these two instances were in clear violation of the right accorded the defendant under the above statute.