Clayton v. State

The issues in this appeal are (1) whether the prosecutor improperly commented on the credibility of witnesses during the State’s rebuttal closing argument and (2) whether the allegedly improper comments constituted plain error and undermined the reliability of the outcome of Clayton’s trial. We find that, although the prosecutor impermissibly commented on the truthfulness of witnesses, the prosecutor’s comments were not so clearly improper that they constituted plain error. As we observed in Trump v. State, 1 “we cannot expect trial judges to act sua sponte unless the vouching is clear.”…