A trial judge was right to give a murder defendant a new trial because his lawyer should have objected to a prosecutor’s comments to jurors that the defendant failed to call police to report that he’d shot a man, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled on Monday.
Justice Robert Benham’s opinion for a unanimous court was based on a prior decision of the court that banned prosecutors from making comments about a defendant’s silence before being arrested or failure to come forward voluntarily. But Benham left open the possibility that the rule may no longer be valid under the new state evidence code.
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