People v. Wood

I cannot agree with my colleagues in the majority that defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial was not impinged when the prosecution was permitted to deluge the jury with a barrage of 44 horrid and gruesome photographs and slides of the battered and unclothed body of the homicide victim, including a number graphically depicting her in the postmortem examination room prior to her autopsy. The virtual wholesale introduction of this highly inflammatory evidence could only have served, under the circumstances of this case, to have aroused the passions and the resentment of the jury…