Court Opinion

ID: 9616993
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:51:16.823099+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:04.493908
License: Public Domain

ROSE, Justice,
dissenting.
I would have reversed this conviction and remanded for a new trial because of the remark made by the prosecutor in his closing statement to the jury:
“. . Let’s, I submit that the defendant Randy Mayer had a license to kill anybody who could have driven by at that time that night, it could have been you, could have been me, could have been anybody. Think about it.”
As the majority points out, the trial court denied the appellant’s requests for both a mistrial and an instruction to disregard this remark.
I am unpersuaded that the context in which this part of the argument was made blunts the stark impropriety of the remark when considered in isolation. As the majority points out, the comment was made to rebut the defendant’s claim of self-defense. But the issue is whether or not it constituted a proper and nonprejudicial argument to rebut appellant’s claim of self-defense.
In Jones v. State, Wyo., 580 P.2d 1150, 1154 (1978), we discussed prosecutorial misconduct and quoted with approval § 5.8(d) of the ABA Standards relating to the Administration of Criminal Justice (Approved Draft 1971), which says:
*139“ ‘(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 prosecuting attorney’s comment was a patent attempt to inject an issue broader than the guilt or innocence of the defendant under the controlling law. The import of the prosecutor’s remark-which focuses on the innocence of the victim-was clearly calculated to attack the validity of a claim of reasonable but mistaken self-defense. Nothing the majority says about understanding the context of the comment alters this.
The statement of the State’s attorney was also an appeal to prejudice and passion. The, “It could have been [might be next time] you [your daughter]” statement is well recognized as reversible error. In Commonwealth v. Harvell, 458 Pa. 406, 327 A.2d 17 (1934), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, citing, inter alia, the ABA Standards we approved in Jones, supra, held reversible error a prosecutor’s closing comment in which he said: “But it might be one of you next time.” The Pennsylvania Supreme Court noted that such a statement is an “ill-concealed [attempt] to divert the inquiry from the pursuit of truth and an invitation to give vent to visceral and unreasoned responses.” 327 A.2d at 30. In State v. Vickroy, Iowa, 205 N.W.2d 748, 751 (1973), the Supreme Court of Iowa said, “The prosecutor undertook to inflame the fears, passion and prejudices of the jury . by inferentially urging the jurors to place themselves and members of their families in a hypothetical position of peril created by a drunken, car operating defendant.” In State v. Groves, Mo., 295 S.W.2d 169, 174 (1956), the Supreme Court of Missouri said, “The argument made in the instant case was a direct effort to bring home to each juror (who had a daughter or granddaughter-and we may safely presume some did) the fear that if defendant be permitted to remain at large he might rape the daughter or granddaughter of that juror. Once such a fear entered the mind of a juror, he would find it difficult to consider this verdict with the objectivity required of an impartial juror. . . . ”
Although the prosecutor’s comment in our case is clearly erroneous-and proper objection was made-we also said in Jones, supra, at p. 1154:
“There remains for consideration whether by virtue of this misstatement, a substantial right of the defendant was adversely affected. The right with which we are concerned is the fundamental right to a fair trial, free from tainted argument. [Citation.] A reversal and remand for a new trial-because of prose-cutorial misconduct-will not be ordered as punishment for a prosecutor’s misdeeds, but only because such misdeeds denied the accused a fair trial. [Citation.] . .
It seems to me that a defendant who kills an innocent bystander and then pleads that he killed the victim under a mistaken but reasonable belief that he was acting in self-defense is placed in a uniquely tenuous position. This is so because we are all appalled at a mistake-however honestly made-which has, as its consequence, the wrongful taking of life. I view the prosecutor’s remark as an improper, but devastatingly effective, attempt to exacerbate the precarious self-defense position that the defendant did adopt, and one which he had a legal right to adopt.
I would have reversed and remanded for a new trial.