Spisak

Consider the following excerpts from a penalty phase closing argument in a capital case: "[D]on’t look to [the defendant] for sympathy, because he demands none. And, ladies and gentlemen, when you turn and look at [the defendant], don’t look for good deeds, because he has done none. Don’t look for good thoughts, because he has none." “[Y]ou can smell almost the blood. You can smell, if you will, the urine. You are in a bathroom [where one of the victims was killed], and it is death, and you can smell the death . . . and you can feel, the loneliness of that railroad platform . . . and we can all know the terror that [the victim] felt when he turned and looked into those thick glasses and looked into the muzzle of a gun that kept spitting out bullets . . . And we can see a relatively young man cut down with so many years to live, and we could re-member his widow, and we certainly can remember looking at his children . . . There are too many family albums. There are too many family portraits . . . that have too many empty spaces." "[D]on't look to [the defendant] with the hope that he can be rehabilitated, because he can't be. . . . [H]e is never going to be any different." The case has "all the aggravating circumstances you [could] ever want." You might wonder whether such a closing argument is proper, and particularly, whether [...]