The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned a first-degree murder conviction in a ruling that emphasizes the presumption of innocence. The Court reversed the district court’s denial of Keith Ford's habeas corpus petition and remanded with instructions that the lower court conditionally grant the writ in a case in which the prosecutor, at the end of his closing-argument rebuttal, told the jury that the presumption of innocence no longer applied.
The Court held that the prosecutor’s repeated statements, endorsed by the trial judge, that the presumption of innocence no longer applied violated due process. “The jury clearly had trouble with the evidence,” wrote the Court. “The ‘prominence’ of the prosecutor’s statements,” the Court continued, “could hardly have been greater.” Moreover, that misstatement of law was “the last thing the jury heard from either of the attorneys.” “Although the prosecutor did not ‘misstate[] the evidence,’” wrote the Court, “he misstated the law. He did so three times, in the space of a few moments.”
Calling this a “thin, circumstantial case,” the Court concluded that there was “a reasonable probability of a different outcome in this had the prosecutor not misstated the law.” Therefore, the prosecutor’s comments violated Ford’s due process rights.