State v. Long

396 P.2d 990, 65 Wash. 2d 303, 1964 Wash. LEXIS 481
CourtWashington Supreme Court
DecidedDecember 3, 1964
Docket35829
StatusPublished
Cited by16 cases

This text of 396 P.2d 990 (State v. Long) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Washington Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Long, 396 P.2d 990, 65 Wash. 2d 303, 1964 Wash. LEXIS 481 (Wash. 1964).

Opinion

Donworth, J.

The three appellants named in the caption were convicted September 13, 1960, on each of two counts charging them with the armed robbery of two motels in Spokane, at approximately 2 a.m., July 5, 1960. Their motion for a new trial was heard and denied. Each was sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in the state penitentiary, the sentences to be served consecutively. They appealed to this court from their respective judgments and sentences.

The delay in the hearing in this court on the merits of their assignments of error is due to the intervening review *305 in this court and in the Supreme Court of the United States of the trial court’s denial of their application for a free statement of facts for use in prosecuting their appeal in forma pauperis.

In State v. Long, 58 Wn. (2d) 830, 365 P. (2d) 31 (1961), this court affirmed the trial court’s order denying their application for the reason that their assignments of error were frivolous. The Supreme Court granted their petition for a writ of certiorari and, after a hearing on the merits, reversed this court’s judgment and remanded the cause for further proceedings. The Supreme Court’s decision was delivered by a vote of five to four, two opinions being written. See Draper v. Washington, 372 U. S. 487, 9 L. Ed. (2d) 899, 83 S. Ct. 774 (1963).

In accordance with the mandate of the Supreme Court, appellants have been furnished with a full statement of facts and the case is now before us on appeal upon the merits.

Since the substance of the state’s evidence is fully set forth in our previous decision and in the majority and minority opinions of the Supreme Court, we do not deem it necessary to include in this opinion a narrative statement thereof. 1 Appellants did not present any evidence at their trial.

It should be noted that on this appeal appellants are represented by counsel other than their trial counsel.

We now turn to a consideration of appellants’ eight assignments of error, the first of which reads as follows:

“Misconduct and prejudicial, reversible error committed by the deputy prosecutor in his opening and closing arguments in which he repeatedly referred to the alleged facts of the case in narrative form as being established facts without explaining that these were only allegations which the state hoped to establish or had established by the evidence.”

*306 Appellants, in their brief, quote from the deputy prosecutor’s opening statement to the jury and complain that he went beyond the bounds of propriety in expressing his own opinion as to their guilt. They cite and particularly rely upon State v. Case, 49 Wn. (2d) 66, 298 P. (2d) 500 (1956) (in which the defendant was charged with carnal knowledge of his daughter), where the deputy prosecutor expressly stated in his closing argument to the jury that he doubted in his own mind that anyone had any question in his mind about the guilt or innocence of the defendant, and expressly stated, at p. 68:

“ ‘. . . I mean, that is my opinion about what this evidence shows and how clearly this evidence indicates that this girl has been violated. . . . ’”

This court commented on this language, at p. 68:

“If presented as a summation of the evidence, such language, prefaced with at least an implied ‘The evidence establishes that,’ would be excused if not approved. State v. Brown (1949), 35 Wn. (2d) 379, 213 P. (2d) 305, and cases therein cited. But that is not the situation here. We cannot interpret the quoted statement, taken in context, as anything other than an attempt to impress upon the jury the deputy prosecuting attorney’s personal belief in the defendant’s guilt. As such, it was not only unethical but extremely prejudicial.”

After referring to other similar misconduct of the deputy prosecutor, we said, at p. 73:

“We are satisfied that the cumulative effect of the deputy prosecuting attorney’s repeated improprieties in argument, together with his branding of the defendant’s character witnesses as ‘his entire herd,’ constitutes such flagrant misconduct that no instruction or series of instructions to disregard what he had said could have cured the prejudicial error.
“Lest this case be cited as authority for the proposition that a breach of one of the canons of ethics by a prosecuting attorney or his deputy warrants a new trial, we hasten to point out that such a breach is not necessarily a ground for reversal of a judgment and may not even constitute an error in law (as distinguished from a breach of ethics). However, such a breach can, under certain circumstances, *307 constitute prejudicial error preventing a fair trial. Ryan v. Ryan (1956), 48 Wn. (2d) 593, 600, 295 P. (2d) 1111.”

Accordingly, the defendant in that case was granted a new trial.

In the present case, the deputy prosecutor began his opening statement as follows:

“After we have probably taxed your patience for some hours this morning, this afternoon you have been selected to be the judges of the facts in this case, and we are now in the opening moments of it, and I have an opportunity to make what is known as an opening statement.
“The purpose of that is simply to give those of you who have little or no knowledge of this case, the general facts of the case, to outline what type of testimony you will hear, and what testimony will be introduced by the State in support of the two counts of the information, and to enable you to get a general idea of this testimony, so that it will fit in place for you a little better as it is developed here.”

He then described the substance of the two counts of robbery charged in the information and followed that by a description of the manner in which these crimes were committed (which takes up 13 pages of the statement of facts) and concluded by saying:

“Now, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I think, in substance, that is our case. I have tried to give you a birds-eye view of the evidence so that the testimony will fall in a recognizable pattern, and I think, in substance, that is the nature of the case, and the type of evidence that will be introduced here. Thank you.”

Appellants’ trial counsel interposed no objection to any part of the opening statement of the deputy prosecutor. We have read it in its entirety and cannot conceive of any possibility of the jury’s being misled as to the purpose of the opening statement. In fact, the first and last paragraphs thereof are sufficiently definite to show to the jury that the deputy prosecutor was outlining what the state expected to prove by the several witnesses it intended to call. Read as a whole, it could only be reasonably interpreted in that light. We do not find any such expressions *308

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Bluebook (online)
396 P.2d 990, 65 Wash. 2d 303, 1964 Wash. LEXIS 481, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-long-wash-1964.