Court Opinion

ID: 9634164
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 12:51:14.923146+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:55.126568
License: Public Domain

ALICE M. BATCHELDER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The majority deems the prosecutor’s comments inherently prejudicial and concludes that Girts is entitled to a new trial. I must respectfully disagree.
In a habeas proceeding, a claim of pros-ecutorial misconduct must be reviewed for harmless error, Spisak v. Mitchell, 465 F.3d 684, 713 (6th Cir.2006) (citations omitted); it “is not enough that the prosecutors’ remarks were undesirable or even universally condemned.” Darden v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 168, 181, 106 S.Ct. 2464, 91 L.Ed.2d 144 (1986). “The relevant question is whether the prosecutors’ comments ‘so infected the trial with unfairness as to make the resulting conviction a denial of due process.’ ” Id. (quoting Donnelly v. DeChristoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 642, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 40 L.Ed.2d 431 (1974)); accord Angel v. Overberg, 682 F.2d 605, 608 (6th Cir.1982) (en banc). And this question must be answered on the totality of the circumstances; “taken as a whole and within the context of the entire record.” Lundy v. Campbell, 888 F.2d 467, 472-73 (6th Cir.1989). The majority’s supposition that the prosecutor’s comments were inherently prejudicial, without demonstrable proof of prejudice, is patently wrong.
Prosecutorial misconduct claims are analyzed under a two-step approach, in which the court first determines whether the challenged statements were improper, and if so, determines “whether the impropriety was flagrant and thus warrants reversal.” United States v. Carter, 286 F.3d 777, 783 (6th Cir.2001). Even assuming all three statements were improper — a proposition with which I do not agree — I cannot agree they were flagrant. Flagrancy is measured by four factors: (1) whether the statements tended to mislead the jury or prejudice the defendant; (2) whether the statements were isolated or among a series of improper statements; (3) whether the statements were deliberately or accidentally before the jury; and (4) the total strength of evidence against the accused. Id.
The most powerful of these factors in this case is the fourth factor: whether the evidence against Girts was strong — the evidence against Girts was overwhelming. Moreover, the prosecutor’s comments had no bearing on the theory of the case. Diane Girts died suddenly and unexpectedly from a lethal dose of cyanide, without leaving any evidence of accident or suicide, thus creating a reasonable inference that she had been murdered. Girts had ob*762tained a lethal dose of cyanide prior to Diane’s death and had hidden this fact from the police. He had motive for killing her. And, he had offered certain witnesses’ inconsistent, contradictory, and incriminating stories, all of which created a reasonable (and powerful) inference that Girts was the murderer.
The prosecution’s statement regarding Girts’s pre-arrest secrecy in not telling the police about his purchasing cyanide is not even a Fifth Amendment issue, it is part of the prosecution’s theory of the case, insomuch as Girts — prior to any arrest or Miranda warning — withheld information critical to the police investigation. The statement regarding the government-witness-testimony’s being unrefuted is not improper either, it is merely a summary of the evidence. The statement that only Girts could explain how the cyanide got into Diane’s system, however, could be interpreted as a comment on Girts’s decision not to testify at trial. But if this statement had any effect on the jury at all— and I do not believe that it did — then the only reasonable conclusion from the totality of the evidence is that the effect was minimal. There is no basis to conclude that, but for this statement, the jury’s decision would have been different.
The district court should be affirmed.