State v. Anderson

• Decision Date: 22 November 1989
• Docket Number: No. 88-547,88-547
• Citation: 448 N.W.2d 32
• Parties: STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Lewis Eugene ANDERSON III, Appellant.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

Page 32

448 N.W.2d 32

STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Lewis Eugene ANDERSON III, Appellant.

No. 88-547.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Nov. 22, 1989.

Ann Fitzgibbons of Scalise, Scism, Sandre & Uhl, Des Moines, for appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Atty. Gen., Christie J. Scase and Thomas H. Miller, Asst. Attys. Gen., and Gerald N. Partridge, County Atty., for appellee.

Considered by McGIVERIN, C.J., and HARRIS, LARSON, CARTER and NEUMAN, JJ.

HARRIS, Justice.

Defendant Lewis Eugene Anderson III was convicted of first-degree burglary and first-degree murder for the fatal beating and stabbing of Ruth Patterson, and for stealing a small safe which belonged to her. We granted further review from a court of appeals decision reversing the convictions. The court of appeals majority based its reversal on two grounds: prosecutorial misconduct and juror misconduct. Because we find no reversible error we vacate the decision of the court of appeals and affirm the judgment of the trial court.

Violence and cruelty are hallmarks of murder cases. Nevertheless the facts here are uncommonly brutal. The victim, a seventy-three-year-old woman, was repeatedly beaten and stabbed while in an office she maintained in her home in rural Washington County. A safe, used in connection with a family seed business, was taken at the time. It was later found on a rural dirt road in Washington County.

Overwhelming evidence pointed to Anderson. Several weeks before the murder he had been hired by the victim to supervise a bean-picking crew. He was later fired. A key evidentiary item was a .45 caliber Llama pistol which a prosecution witness identified as the weapon discharged at the scene. This pistol was obtained from Anderson's home after issuance of a search warrant. It was missing a safety plunger spring. A safety plunger spring for such a weapon was found at the murder site.

I. Anderson's strongest ground for reversal is associated with the pistol. Anderson elected to testify in his own defense. While cross-examining him the county attorney handed Anderson the pistol with the barrel pointed at the county attorney. The county attorney then said, "Don't point it at me." This prompted a motion for mistrial, the overruling of which is an assignment of error on appeal.

To engage in such a gesture and couple it with this comment by the prosecutor is to flirt recklessly with reversible error. The court of appeals majority did reverse on this ground, summing up the record this way:

Before handing the gun to Anderson the gun was inspected a final time to be sure it was not loaded. In addition, Anderson was holding the gun in the exact manner which the prosecutor had handed it to him. The sophomoric ploy by the prosecutor was designed, at the very least, to transmit the prosecutor's concocted fear of the defendant to the jury or, at its worse, to attempt to put the jury into the victim's shoes by re-enacting the fears she may have felt when the defendant allegedly entered her home with the gun. In either case, the prosecutor's actions were disgraceful, and will not be tolerated in the courts of this state.

We join the court of appeals in strongly condemning the tactic of handing a witness a weapon and then portraying fear by reason of the witness's possession of it. Assuming it to be misconduct, the question becomes whether it deprived the defendant of a fair trial.

A prosecutor's misconduct will not warrant a new trial unless the conduct was "so prejudicial as to deprive the defendant of a fair trial." State v. Lyons, 210 N.W.2d 543, 549 (Iowa 1973); State v. Harless, 249 Iowa 530, 536, 86 N.W.2d 210, 213-14 (1957), cert. denied, 357 U.S. 908, 78 S.Ct. 1154, 2 L.Ed.2d 1158 (1958). The party claiming prejudice bears the burden of establishing it. State v. Bishop, 387 N.W.2d 554, 561 (Iowa 1986). It is not the prosecutor's misconduct which entitles a defendant to a new trial, but rather any resulting prejudice which prevents the trial from being a fair one. State v. Webb, 244 N.W.2d 332, 333 (Iowa 1976). Trial courts are vested with broad authority to determine whether prejudice actually results from misconduct. State v. Ruble, 372 N.W.2d 216, 218 (Iowa 1985). Appellate courts will overturn a trial court's ruling only upon finding an abuse of discretion. Id. An abuse of discretion appears only when it was "exercised on grounds or for reasons clearly untenable or to an extent clearly unreasonable." Id. In State v. Vickroy, 205 N.W.2d 748, 751 (Iowa 1973), we noted:

The discretion is not, however, without limitations. It must be utilized fairly and impartially, not arbitrarily, by application of relevant, legal and equitable principles to all known or readily available facts of a given issue or cause to the end that justice may more nearly be effectuated.

We cannot find an abuse in denying Anderson's motion for a mistrial. We do not overlook the prosecutor's conduct, but must also consider the whole trial, including the court's admonition to the jury.

In denying Anderson's motion for mistrial the trial court warned the prosecutor that any further similar conduct would not be tolerated. The jury was then given this admonition:

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I now admonish you to disregard the prosecution attorney's remark in connection with the pointing of the gun and the handling of the gun. It has gone out, it has been stricken from this record, and you will remove it and completely and entirely disregard it in this record. Thank you.

It is of significance that the incident was isolated. In Webb, we said "... [P]rejudice results from persistent efforts to inject prejudicial matter before the jury." Webb at 333. (Emphasis in original.) Prejudice can, but usually does not, result from isolated prosecutorial misconduct. Id. It is also significant that the evidence against the accused is strong. Id. We have already suggested that the evidence of Anderson's guilt was ironclad. We are convinced that the prosecutor's inappropriate comment in no way contributed to the convictions.

It is axiomatic that a trial court is better equipped than appellate courts can be to determine whether prejudice occurs. This is because the trial court is a firsthand observer of both the alleged misconduct and any jury reaction to it. See e.g. State v. Bishop, ...