Prosecutors in a Georgia murder trial produced a birthday cake and proceeded to sing “Happy Birthday” to the deceased child victim for the benefit of the jury as well as a national Court TV audience. The defense lawyer failed to object, and the Georgia Supreme Court declined to order a new trial. [A Public Defender, Balko]
Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
Cato Institute
Individual liberty, free markets, and peace: the world's premier libertarian think tank. Publishes Cato at Liberty, where I blog on contemporary policy issues.
Schools for Misrule
Get your copy today! My new book tackles the question of why so many bad ideas come from the law schools. "Cutting-edge commentary, hard-hitting, witty, astute." -- Publisher's Weekly. "Excellent... A fine dissection of these strangely powerful institutions" -- Wall Street Journal.
{ 5 comments }
Singing “Happy Birthday” on TV requires paying royalties. Maybe the prosecutors will soon be defendants.
Good catch, captnhal
” The defense lawyer failed to object”: Legal malpractice.
Not sure how many commenters/readers are lawyers, but it is routine and good practice for lawyers not to object at times to evidence whose consideration by the jury should be inadmissible. The reason given is that the act of objecting can make the jury focus more on the inadmissible evidence on the one hand and make the jury believe the defense is trying to keep out key evidence on the other. In closing arguments, as this was, traditionally more leeway is given to lawyers.
Here, the proper move seems to me to have been to move for a mistrial. The prosecutorial action was so extreme that it could not have been cured by a limiting instruction to the jury.
On the facts reported, I cannot understand why the verdict was upheld or why there was no move for a mistrial, if there was not.
It could have been that the defense figured the case was a dog, so why prolong the agony?
Comments on this entry are closed.