Court Opinion

ID: 9524724
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:56:32.108613+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:11:39.850419
License: Public Domain

STRINGER, Justice
(concurring in part, dissenting in part).
I agree with the court’s ruling with respect to appellant’s various claims of error and its conclusion that the prosecution engaged in misconduct in closing argument. However, I disagree with the court’s conclusion to dismiss the misconduct with the facile conclusion that it was harmless error. I therefore respectfully dissent as to the court’s ruling in this respect.
Justice is not only an end result; it is also the process that leads to the result, and even though the result may be justified, we cannot say that justice is served when the process is flawed. That is what happened here. It is true, as the court concludes, that the evidence of appellant’s guilt of this heinous crime was substantial, and I do not challenge the court’s conclusion that the verdict was surely unattributable to the error injected by the prosecutor’s misconduct. What I do challenge is the court’s disposition of this issue.
A short time ago, in State v. Buggs, 581 N.W.2d 329 (Minn.1998), we reviewed a criminal conviction for the first-degree murder of a victim who had long been the subject of abuse by the appellant, not unlike the situation here. Id. at 332-33. In Buggs we engaged in an extensive review of numerous allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, among them, the prosecutor’s reference to appellant as a “coward” with a “twisted” thought process. Id. at 340-43. We concluded that the “references were prosecutorial misconduct but harmless under the circumstances.” See id. at 342. We also reviewed two other charges of misconduct that we considered “of far more serious nature.” Id. The first related to one prosecutor whispering to another, in a manner that could be heard by the jury, that a witness was lying. See id. We observed that extensive voir dire by the court and trial counsel to determine whether the jury was influenced by the remark may well have prevented a mistrial. See id. at 343. The second act of serious misconduct was called to the attention of the trial court by jurors who were alienated by the prosecutor’s offensive use of body language to display disgust with various aspects of the trial, including the court’s rulings. See id. Because of the jury’s adverse reaction to what we characterized as “amateur displays,” we concluded that the conduct did not prejudice the defendant, but we expressed concern that the prosecutor’s conduct demeaned the participants in the trial and the court. Id. Indeed, we were so concerned that we took *802the unusual step of calling the matter to the attention of the Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board because of the potential that the prosecutor’s misconduct would distract “the jury from its proper role, undermin[e] the integrity of the legal profession and offend[ ] the dignity of the court* * Id.
Less than a year passed from the filing of our opinion in Buggs to the commencement of trial in this case and the same prosecutor again represented the state. With this court’s admonition about her misconduct in Buggs so freshly in mind, it is difficult to comprehend why she would engage in precisely the same misconduct we identified in Buggs even to the point of again referring to the defendant as “twisted.” But with even greater recklessness and disregard for the time honored principle that prosecutorial advocacy must be limited to facts in evidence and not speculation, see, e.g., State v. Salitros, 499 N.W.2d 815, 817 (Minn.1993) (requiring that in closing argument a prosecutor refrain from misstating evidence, misleading the jury as to inferences that may be drawn from the evidence, and using argument calculated to inflame the passions of the jury), in her closing argument she engaged in a rampant dissertation of fantasy as to what might have been the events leading up to the shooting, escalating tension referring to rage and terror, where the children might have been in the victim’s final moments, whether the victim pleaded with defendant, and more — all with the obvious and deliberate intention of appealing to the passion of the jury, and all unquestionably serious and prejudicial misconduct.
The prosecutorial misconduct here clearly represents a flagrant disregard for the judicial process and the prosecutor’s obligation as an officer of the court to refrain from conduct that would deny a defendant a fair trial. See id. (noting that a prosecutor is obligated to “guard the rights of the accused as well as to enforce the rights of the public”). It is no less flagrant than her misconduct in Buggs, but here we have the added factor of this court’s admonition to her just a few months before the trial of this case. In my view, at the very least, the court should again refer the matter of her misconduct to the attention of the Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board in light of the repetition of her previous misconduct and ignoring her responsibilities as an officer of the court. But I would go further. I believe the prosecutor’s misconduct in her closing argument so seriously flawed the judicial process that sufficient doubt is raised as to whether appellant received a fair trial. See State v. Ashby, 567 N.W.2d 21, 27-28 (Minn.1997) (stating that a defendant is entitled to a new trial for prosecutorial misconduct unless it is harmless beyond a reasonable doubt); State v. Jones, 277 Minn. 174, 189, 152 N.W.2d 67, 78 (1967) (granting a defendant a new trial based on several instances of prosecutorial misconduct, including an improper closing argument). Therefore, I would reverse and remand for a new trial in the interest of justice.