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Perritt v. State9/23/2005
tionalize her subjective interpretation of the forms she completed, in order that she could obtain a certificate to operate a day care and to qualify for DFS day care funding programs. Her conduct most certainly justified the revocation of her license, perhaps she violated some criminal law, and it is possible that she may be subject to some civil suit. Nonetheless, to the extent Perritt obtained property from the State in these circumstances, she "did it the old-fashioned way, she earned it."
[ ] Although this disposes of the appeal we will, nonetheless, make brief comment on other issues Perritt raises in the event there are further proceedings on remand to the district court.
Prosecutorial Misconduct in Opening and Closing
[ ] Although Perritt correctly identifies significant portions of the prosecutor's argument as misconduct, we decline to discuss these matters in detail because the conclusions we reached above are dispositive of this appeal. However, we would be remiss if we did not note that significant portions of the prosecutor's argument were improper and may well have constituted reversible error in their own right. The prosecutor exhorted the jury to convict Perritt because her conduct constituted "welfare fraud" when that simply was not the case. The prosecutor pandered to the jury's passions by encouraging the jury to convict Perritt because her husband was a "child molester." He incited the jury to view Perritt as a person who had a "criminal mind" and to convict her on that basis, when there was no foundation in the evidence for such an argument. He vouched for his own expertise and experience in identifying persons who have "criminal minds" and beseeched the jury to convict Perritt on that basis. See People v. Seifke, 195 Ill.App. 3d 135, 141 Ill.Dec. 833, 551 N.E.2d 1361, 1369-70 (Ill.App. 2 Dist. 1990). He counseled the jury to convict Perritt because she had endangered young children, although that was not an element of the offense with which she was charged. Misconduct by the prosecutor of this magnitude often requires reversal of a defendant's conviction because it deprives the defendant of a fair trial. See Strickland v. State, 2004 WY 91, -52, 94 P.3d 1034, 1053-54 (Wyo. 2004); and Wilde v. State, 2003 WY 93 -27, 74 P.3d 699, 710-11 (Wyo. 2003).
Error in Admission of Irrelevant and Highly Prejudicial Evidence Concerning Perritt's Husband
[ ] The central feature of Perritt's alleged wrongdoing was her failure to reveal that her husband, a convicted felon, was in her household where she was going to conduct a day care business. As the gravamen of the offense at issue here, the prosecution needed to prove that Perritt's husband had been convicted of a felony and that he was in the home and had access to the children.
[ ] Throughout his argument to the jury and in the presentation of the evidence, the prosecutor managed to present to the jury, on dozens of occasions, that not only had Kris Perritt been convicted of a felony, but that he was a convicted "child molester." Although, identifying his crime with specificity may have been proper in that the judgment and sentence was admitted as an exhibit, we conclude that the repetitive use of the phrase "child molester" was improper and likely prejudicial to Perritt's right to a fair trial. We also are comfortable in concluding that the prosecutor's tactics in this regard were deliberate and repetitive, and not fleeting and inadvertent.
[ ] Through the testimony of witness Sherri Rollins, the prosecution sought to prove that Kris Perritt was in the household and that he had access to children. In the course of that testimony, the prosecution also revealed, ov
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