Court Opinion

ID: 9452540
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:43:43.112786+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:15.461681
License: Public Domain

FREEDMAN, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I would add two comments regarding the prosecutor’s remark in ihe presence of the jury.
1. The remark of the prosecutor related to a defense which the defendant later abandoned, and unlike the situation presented in Griffin v. State of California, 380 U.S. 609, 85 S.Ct. 1229, 14 L. Ed.2d 106 (1965), no attempt was made to draw an inference of guilt from the defendant’s failure to take the stand.
2. In joining in the opinion of the court, I think that in our supervisory role we should make clear our condemnation of the comment and the lack of any justification for it. Regardless of the provocation in the heat of the trial, there is no excuse for the violation by a government prosecutor of so fundamental a right as the right of a defendant not to take the stand in his own behalf.
Despite what I consider the inexcusable nature of the prosecutor’s comment, I am not prepared to subscribe to the contention that in every case, under all circumstances and no matter how emphatically the error is corrected by the trial judge, a mistrial must necessarily be declared! See United States v. Knox Coal Co., 347 F.2d 33, 44 (3 Cir. 1965). I am satisfied that in the circumstances of the present case, which the opinion of the court has *390fully pictured, and in view of the emphatic manner in which the trial judge dealt with the defendant’s privilege in his charge to the jury, a new trial is not required.