A prosecutor “crossed the bounds of permissible rhetoric” by suggesting to jurors that the tattoos on a man charged with weapons possession reflected his violent criminal past, an appellate court ruled in reversing the defendant’s conviction.
“Specifically, it was improper for the prosecutor to, in completing his analogy that if it ‘walks like a duck’ and ‘looks like a duck,’ then ‘it’s a duck,’ argue that the violent nature of the defendant’s tatoos established his identity as the person seen in possession of the gun,” an Appellate Division, Second Department, panel ruled in an unsigned opinion in People v. Spence, 2010-11495.
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