Court Opinion

ID: 9499403
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 17:47:43.949598+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:59:29.213493
License: Public Domain

BOGGS, Chief Judge,
concurring in denial of rehearing en banc.
Because dissents from our court’s denial of rehearings en banc are quite rare, the lack of any countering views at the time of such a dissent may be taken to mean that the contrary views presented are unanswerable. ,
Instead, it is usually the case that the original opinion has carefully considered and answered any substantive points made in the dissent from denial of rehearing en banc.1
So it is in this' case. Judge Rogers’s excellent opinion carefully applied existing law with respect to analyzing statements, made during the course of a long and contentious trial, that may be characterized as improper statements- by a prosecutor. The law never has been, in a capital case or otherwise, that every or even multiple prosecutorial errors, objected to or not, cured or not, can bring a grant of habeas corpus in federal court, years or decades down the road. Instead, the law prescribes a method for analyzing the import, motive, frequency, and prejudice from any such remarks, which is exactly what Judge Rogers’s opinion did, and that opinion fully answers the substantive portion of the dissents. See Slagle v. Bagley 457 F.3d 501, 514-28 (6th Cir.2006).

. See, e.g., the dissent from denial of rehearing en banc in Slaughter v. Parker, which focuses wholly on a characterization of the defendant's mental condition that goes far beyond argument made by the dissenting panel member when the issue was considered in the panel opinion. Compare the panel dissent’s focusing, correctly, only on tentative evidence of- possible mental effects - of past physical skull injury, ("may have suffered from brain damage”; "if [hematoma existed] ... could have resulted in brain damage”) 450 F.3d 224, 249, 250 (6th Cir.2006) with dissent from denial of rehearing en banc ("likely brain-damaged"; “likely suffered brain damage").
467 F.3d 511, 513, 514 (6th Cir.2006).