Com. v. Lark

• Decision Date: 18 March 1975
• Citation: 333 A.2d 786,460 Pa. 399
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Jimmie Lee LARK, Appellant (two cases).
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Page 786

333 A.2d 786

460 Pa. 399

COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania v. Jimmie Lee LARK, Appellant (two cases).

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

March 18, 1975.

[460 Pa. 401] Ronald J. Brockington, Philadelphia, for appellant.

F. Emmett Fitzpatrick, Jr., Dist. Atty., Richard A. Sprague, First Asst. Dist. Atty., Steven H. Goldblatt, Asst. Dist. Atty., Chief, Appeals Div., Benjamin H. Levintow, Asst. Dist. Atty., Mark Sendrow, Asst. Dist. Atty., Asst. Chief, Appeals, Div., Abraham J. Gafni, Deputy Dist. Atty. for Law, Philadelphia, for appellee.

Before JONES, C.J., and EAGEN, O'BRIEN, ROBERTS, POMEROY, NIX and MANDERINO, JJ.

OPINION

JONES, Chief Justice.

Appellant, Jimmie Lee Lark, was convicted of murder in the second degree and aggravated robbery in the robbery-murder of Irving Rotfarb on September 3, 1970. Timely motions for a new trial and in arrest of judgment were denied and appellant was sentenced. This appeal followed. ¹

The evidence adduced at trial disclosed that on the morning of September 3, 1970, the appellant, seventeen years old, and his adult brother, Nathaniel, observed the victim's automobile pull up to the residence of a neighbor, Gary Taylor, also known as Gary Bloch. Appellant asked Gary Taylor why the victim was at the residence and was told that the man cashed checks for Gary's mother. Appellant's brother, Nathaniel, said that they were going to 'get' the victim. Appellant agreed to participate. He ran to the corner to act as a lookout for his brother. Nathaniel Lark approached the victim, shot and robbed him. The two boys ran home; on the way, appellant told a neighbor, Joseph Beard, that appellant and his brother robbed a man and that his brother had shot him. Inside the house Nathaniel gave the appellant thirty-five dollars out of an undetermined amount of money taken from the victim.

Appellant assigns as error several matters, including the contention that the remarks of the prosecutor during his summation to the jury were so prejudicial as to require a new trial. ² We agree.

The prosecutor in his closing made the following remarks to the jury after each of which defense counsel interposed his objection and was overruled.

'. . . Remember we didn't come in here and wave any bloody shirts in front of your faces. We didn't bring in grieving widows or grandchildren. I mean, there was a man that died here. He had a family. He had people that loved him. He was 57 and working, maybe he was going to retire in a few years. I think there are other voices in this room. He may have said to you, I wanted to go on living. All right, I was 57, I had a family, grandchildren, but I wanted to live. I wanted to live with my family.

'And that's how it all happens. That's right, he wasn't taken to the University of Pennsylvania, to the law library, and sat down there for tea. He wasn't taken to the home of the Bishop of Boston for a conference. It doesn't work that way, because the citizens have a right to be protected and they have a right to have these homicides that are occurring more and more solved.

'Because it's eleven-thirty in the morning . . . can't you picture it, eleven-thirty in the morning on that street, there's all sorts of people there. Irving Rotfarb got killed. Could have been anybody. Could have been the next-door neighbors, anyone; people on the other side, next door. You never know what's going to happen in a felony murder and that's why the law makes good sense what it says if you believe it was a felony murder, or the defendant was the lookout, or they split the money afterwards, or he was part of the planning--and here's someone that fits into all three. And I think in terms of evilness Jimmie Lark is more evil than Nate Lark because when you blend it all together, I think he's actually the planner behind this, so that's why I say he's clever. That's for you to decide.

I'll say for you there's one way that you could find this defendant not guilty, there's only one way, and that's if Irving Rotfarb walked through those courtroom doors, then you could find the defendant not guilty . . ..'

On numerous occasions this Court has made explicitly clear its criticism of improper and prejudicial remarks on the part of a prosecutor. See Commonwealth v. Harvell, --- Pa. ---, 327 A.2d 27 (1974); Commonwealth v. Russell, 456 Pa. 559, 322 A.2d 127 (1974); Commonwealth v. Lipscomb, 455 Pa. 525, 317 A.2d 205 (1974); Commonwealth v. Brooks, 454 Pa. 75, 309 A.2d 732 (1973); Commonwealth v. Revty, 448 Pa. 512, 295 A.2d 300 (1972); Commonwealth v. Potter, 445 Pa. 284, 285 A.2d 492 (1971); Commonwealth v. Clark, 322 Pa. 321, 185 A. 764 (1936). We believe that the prosecutor's remarks in this case clearly exceeded the limits set forth in the cases above. ³

References by the prosecutor such as those to bloody shirts, homicides that are occurring more and more and that it 'could have been anybody' were no more than ill-concealed attempts to divert the inquiry from the pursuit of truth and an invitation to give vent to visceral and unreasoned responses. See Commonwealth v. Harvell, --- Pa. at ---, 327 A.2d 27. We have said in regard to similar comment as to what the victim might say if he were alive, ⁴ 'in testifying as if . . . Mr. Sweeney, was in the courtroom, that which followed amounted to the giving of testimony by an unsworn witness.' Commonwealth v. Lipscomb, 455 Pa. at 528, 317 A.2d at 207. See also Commonwealth v. Clark, Supra. Emphatically condemned in Lipscomb is yet another comment ⁵ similar to that of the prosecutor when he argued here, 'there's one way that you could find this defendant not guilty, there's only one way, and that's if Irving Rotfarb walked through those courtroom doors, then you could find the defendant not guilty.' As we said in Lipscomb, 455 Pa. at 528--529, 317 A.2d at 207, this amounted to a statement by the prosecutor that he was personally convinced that the appellant was guilty, and his innocence was as unlikely as the deceased's resurrection. We held such Personal assertions by the prosecutor on the guilt of the accused were beyond the scope of fair play and were reversible error.

Yet an even stronger assertion was made by the prosecutor in this case when he expressed his Personal belief, after numerous references to the appellant's clever and cunning nature, that he thought Jimmie Lark to be clever, more evil than his brother and the actual planner of the crime committed by the two brothers. Not only did the prosecutor impermissibly express his Personal conviction that appellant was guilty but he also characterized appellant as evil, clever and calculating. As was said in Commonwealth v. Capalla, 322 Pa. 200, 204, 185 A. 203 (1936), it is no part of the district attorney's duty nor right to stigmatize the defendant. The Capalla Court went on to say that the characterization of the defendant there as a coldblooded killer was supported by no facts in the record which could warrant such a belief by anyone, and even if they were, the jury must be the first permitted to express such a belief. Here, appellant, a juvenile who had never been in trouble before, agreed to run to the corner to be a lookout for a twenty-year old brother who had previously procured shooting and robbing of the victim and the murder weapon without any collaboration on the part of appellant, did the actual paid appellant afterwards for assisting him. The...