PEOPLE v. HIGGINS Part-I
A jury convicted defendant Raymond Higgins of burglary of an inhabited dwelling, assault with a deadly weapon or by means likely to cause great bodily injury, and assault with a firearm. Higgins's convictions stem from an incident in which Higgins broke into a neighbor's home with two guns in his possession.
On appeal, Higgins challenges his convictions on a number of grounds, including: (1) that he was not provided with sufficient notice that the prosecutor was going to rely on false imprisonment as a predicate crime for the burglary charge; (2) that the trial court committed reversible error in failing to instruct the jury, sua sponte, on the defense of mistake of fact; (3) that the trial court committed reversible error in failing to instruct the jury, sua sponte, on a number of offenses that Higgins maintains are lesser included offenses to the charged crimes, including simple assault, misdemeanor false imprisonment, and brandishing a weapon; (4) that the prosecutor engaged in a number of instances of improper conduct, any one of which, he contends, requires reversal; and (5) that the prosecutor's pattern of improper conduct resulted in cumulative prejudice that requires reversal.
We conclude that Higgins's convictions must be reversed on the ground that the prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Christopher M. Lawson, engaged in a pervasive pattern of misconduct that rendered the trial fundamentally unfair.
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