# State v. Carpenter

> Ohio Court of Appeals · December 13, 1996 · 116 Ohio App. 3d 615

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/3779303

## Case

- **Full name:** The STATE of Ohio, Appellee, v. CARPENTER, Appellant
- **Court:** Ohio Court of Appeals
- **Decided:** December 13, 1996
- **Citations:** 116 Ohio App. 3d 615; 688 N.E.2d 1090
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Grady
- **Judges:** Young, Wolff, Grady
- **Cited by:** 115 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/3779303

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- explaining that in reviewing remarks made by a prosecutor during summation, the closing argument must be reviewed in its entirety

## Opinion text

Grady, Judge,
concurring.
I am in complete agreement with Judge Young’s resolution of the issues presented by the fourth and fifth assignments of error. A practice seems to have
*629
grown among some prosecutors, who believe that they have nothing to lose, of compelling a conviction by so vilifying an accused that a jury would not dare to acquit. Prosecutors should strictly avoid the practice, and defense counsel should be vigilant in discharging their duty to protect their clients from its effects. Both should be mindful of the admonition delivered to federal prosecutors by the United States Supreme Court in
Berger v. United States
(1935), 295 U.S. 78, 88 , 55 S.Ct. 629, 633 , 79 L.Ed. 1314 , 1321:
“The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor — indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.”

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/3779303. Public record. Not legal advice.