Court Opinion

ID: 9764408
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:20:58.613754+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:56.285464
License: Public Domain

MANDERINO, Justice,
dissenting.
My examination of this case compels me to agree with appellant that the assistant district attorney’s remarks during closing argument impermissibly implied to the jury that Larry Mapp identified appellant to the investigating detective and Larry Mapp’s neighbor, but that the hearsay rule *220precluded the assistant district attorney from eliciting that fact from the detective or Larry Mapp’s neighbor.
In fact, Larry Mapp never identified appellant until the time of trial, and although he testified at trial that he recognized appellant as a youth who had hung out clothes in the backyard of the house behind his own, he never related this fact to anyone until appellant’s trial. Defense counsel thus attacked the credibility of Larry Mapp’s testimony, to which the assistant district attorney responded:
“Now something is made of the fact that Larry didn’t stand on top of City Hall and tell everybody in the whole world as to what he saw . . . . Of course if I asked Detective Miller what Larry Mapp told [Detective Miller], that would be hearsay and he wouldn’t be able to testify to that, because Larry Mapp already testified to that. Jacqueline Mack was asked whether Larry Mapp had said things to her and she indicated, but that also would be hearsay and it would be improper to allow that in because Larry Mapp already testified to that.”
I think the only fair inference from this excerpt, which begins with a reference to what Larry Mapp witnessed, that Larry Mapp identified, or at least inculpated appellant, is that the hearsay rule prevented the jury from hearing what Larry Mapp told Detective Miller or the neighbor. In my view, the fact that Larry Mapp previously testified he did not tell either of the two who committed the assault did not negate the prejudice that flowed from this inference. This is especially so in view of appellant’s defense that had Larry Mapp recognized appellant at the time of the assault, he surely would have communicated that fact to someone before the trial.
Because the jury could infer from the prosecution’s statement that Larry Mapp had inculpated appellant prior to trial, and Larry Mapp’s credibility was crucial to appellant’s defense, I cannot say the error was harmless and does not warrant the grant of a new trial. . See Commonwealth v. Settles, 442 Pa. 159, 162, 275 A.2d 61, 63 (1969) (error not *221harmless unless it “could [not] possibly have affected the jury in reaching its verdict”). I therefore dissent.