State v. Bizzell

BECTON, Judge.

I

The defendant first takes exception to the pretrial comments of the trial judge made to the jury pool. In those comments, the trial judge said:

It would be the duty of the jury selected to hear this case and to find the defendant guilty of one of the charges set forth in the bill of indictment or possibly some lesser included charge.

The judge never told the prospective jurors at that time that they could also find the defendant not guilty. Defendant contends that this omission was so highly prejudicial that the jury, once empaneled, was predisposed to find him guilty even before…