Robert J. Carter v. United States

On October 1, 1966, appellant fired a single shot from his pistol, killing one Louis McKenzie. Indicted and tried for second-degree murder,1 his sole defense at trial was that he acted in response to McKenzie’s assaulting him with an eleven-inch butcher knife.2 Appellant was convicted by a jury of second-degree murder and sentenced to a mandatory minimum term of twenty years in prison. On this appeal, he raises numerous points, only two of which require extended discussion.

I

The government’s prosecutor devoted much of his rebuttal argument to sarcastic attacks upon defense counsel, as well as…