# State v. D'Ippolito

> Supreme Court of New Jersey · October 31, 1955 · 19 N.J. 540

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9648511

## Case

- **Full name:** State of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. S. Grill D'ippolito, Defendant-Appellant
- **Court:** Supreme Court of New Jersey
- **Decided:** October 31, 1955
- **Citations:** 19 N.J. 540; 117 A.2d 592; 1955 N.J. LEXIS 223
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Heher
- **Judges:** Vanderbilt, Heher
- **Cited by:** 29 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/9648511

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- reversing conviction for perjury

## Opinion text

Heher, J.
(dissenting). I am not persuaded that the prosecutor’s unfinished statement engendered prejudice utterly *552 immune to the remediable process of an appropriate instruction. The trial judge acted promptly and decisively and in peremptory terms expunged the remark and the issue from the case and the jury’s consideration. Counsel did not ask for a supplemental instruction; indeed, he did not want it; he deemed a mistrial the only means of doing justice.
A motion for a mistrial is addressed to the sound discretion of the court; it is a power exercised with the greatest caution, in the furtherance of justice between the accused and the State, and not allowable of right unless the vice is plainly ineradicable. And, absent a specific request by counsel, a curative instruction is not ordinarily the duty of the trial judge, where a mistrial is refused. Stale v. Witte, 13 N. J. 598, 612 (1953).
I would affirm the judgment.
For reversal—Chief Justice Yandebbilt, and Justices Oliphant, 'Waoheneeld, Burling, Jacobs and Brennan— 6.
For affirmance—Justice Heher—1.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9648511. Public record. Not legal advice.