STATE OF NEW JERSEY v. KARL LESTER MURPHY A-3693-08T4
We held that the trial judge's rulings, authorizing the
State to use a seventeen-year-old prior conviction to impeach
defendant's credibility and permitting the prosecutor to argue
that a testifying police officer had no incentive to lie,
deprived defendant of his right to a fair trial. We agreed with
defendant's contention that the prosecutor's summation exceeded
the boundaries of legitimate advocacy when she vouched for the
credibility of her witness. We likewise agreed with defendant's
claim that because he had no intervening convictions, this
seventeen-year-old conviction was so stale that its probative
value was vastly outweighed by its prejudicial effect, and the
judge therefore erred by permitting the State to use it to
impeach his credibility. In this trial, where the State's
proofs were far from overwheerrors harmless.
