Court Opinion

ID: 9668806
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:27:10.106981+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:48.462246
License: Public Domain

OPINION
ON APPELLANT’S MOTION FOR REHEARING
ODOM, Judge.
On rehearing, appellant relies upon his last ground of error which was not considered in the original opinion because of noncompliance with Article 40.09, Sec. 9, Vernon’s Ann.C.C.P. He now strenuously argues this ground of error and urges that his case should be reversed for prosecutorial misconduct just as Stein v. State, Tex.Cr.App., 492 S.W.2d 548, was reversed for prosecutorial misconduct of the same prosecutor. We agree.
Without going into the repeated improper questions and arguments of the prosecutor during the trial, suffice it to say that the record is replete with such remarks as: “hippy”; “anti-Christ”; “Swastika”; and, “Communist”. It is noted that the court correctly sustained at least twenty-six objections to such remarks. Motions for mistrial were overruled.
The prosecutor’s venture outside the record is even more alarming in the instant case than in Stein v. State, supra. And, this is another of those “ . . . numerous cases where improper arguments and sidebar remarks by the prosecutor have forced us to reassert the critical importance of convicting an accused only upon that evidence presented, without attempting to inflame or prejudice the minds of the jurors.” 492 S.W.2d at page 551.
The motion for rehearing is granted, the judgment of affirmance is set aside and the judgment is reversed and the cause remanded.
MORRISON and DOUGLAS, JJ., dissent.