State v. Jones

Summary

The dissent would uphold the intermediate appellate court’s conclusion that the prosecutor’s repeated questions asking the defendant to characterize other witnesses as liars, together with a related closing-argument statement, deprived him of a fair trial. It reasons that the improprieties improperly attacked the defendant’s credibility, distorted the state’s burden of proof, and infected the entire trial, which was otherwise a credibility contest with no physical or eyewitness evidence. The dissent would require a new trial.