Court Opinion

ID: 9649494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 14:56:12.36286+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:53:30.634018
License: Public Domain

SAYLOR, Justice,
concurring.
I concur in the result reached by the majority, but write separately to address two aspects of the prosecutor’s closing argument at sentencing which, in my view, warrant further discussion.
First, I am not as confident as my colleagues that comments made by the prosecutor were both intended and understood to refer to Douglas’s past, rather than future, conduct. Such comments include the following:
Remember Dr. Camiel said ... that the prognosis for the defendant was poor, in fact [it] doesn’t matter whether on the street or in jail he is going to act the same way, assaulting people.
If he is not going to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law, if he is going to be assaultive and violent *438on the streets as well as in jail, why should he be allowed to live? Why shouldn’t he die just like Donald Knight did?
He will do what he wants to do when he wants to do it and his conduct is not going to change. Whether he is up in Holmesburg Prison, Dallas, Huntingdon, or on the streets of Philadelphia walking the Raymond Rosen Projects he will always be Robert Douglas.
Robert Douglas should just be plain put to death as we put mad dogs out of their misery ... because there is nothing else you can do for them. He will always be what he is now.
Although Douglas has specifically challenged only the second of these comments as referring to future conduct, it is axiomatic that the propriety of a prosecutor’s remarks must be evaluated by looking at those remarks in context. Commonwealth v. Morales, 549 Pa. 400, 424, 701 A.2d 516, 528 (1997). In my view, the overall thrust of the prosecutor’s remarks, which included such unambiguously predictive comments as “the prognosis for the defendant was poor” and “his conduct is not going to change,” was to suggest that Douglas would pose a danger to society in the future.
In a procedurally appropriate context, such remarks would entitle a defendant to a “life means life” instruction pursuant to Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U.S. 154, 114 S.Ct. 2187, 129 L.Ed.2d 133 (1994). See Commonwealth v. Chandler, 554 Pa. 401, 414-15, 721 A.2d 1040, 1046 (1998) (noting that a Simmons instruction was warranted even though the prosecutor did not use the precise phrase “future dangerousness”). However, because Douglas’s trial took place in January of 1983, some 11 years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Simmons, trial counsel cannot be held ineffective for failing to request a Simmons instruction. Nor did the quoted remarks, in and of themselves, constitute prosecutorial misconduct. Where, as here, defense counsel broaches the issue of *439future dangerousness, it is fair comment for the prosecutor to respond. Commonwealth v. Griffin, 537 Pa. 447, 463, 644 A.2d 1167, 1175 (1994). Accordingly, I agree with the majority that this claim does not entitle Douglas to relief.
My second concern is with the prosecutor’s comment that Douglas should be put to death like a “mad dog.” I realize that there is jurisprudence of this Court affirming a judgment of sentence despite statements by the prosecutor likening the defendant to an animal. Nevertheless, it is my view that such rhetoric has no place in the closing argument in a capital case. Hence, I would prospectively hold that it is per se reversible error for the Commonwealth to employ such language. Because, however, I am unable to conclude that the sentence in this case was the product of bias or hostility toward the defendant, I join the majority in affirming the judgment of sentence.
Justice ZAPPALA joins this concurring opinion.