¶100  Even the plain paper pages by which this Court obtains its limited view of this scene cannot fully silence or obscure the emotional crescendo with which this proceeding concluded.  Neither the prosecutor nor the trial court questioned defense counsel's assertions that the prosecutor was standing immediately in front of the defendant, yelling and pointing at him, as he addressed him directly.  And this Court has little doubt that these theatrics continued, perhaps increasing in intensity, each time the trial court refused to limit or prevent them.  Despite the bench conferences, the jury could not have missed the fact that defense counsel was objecting to the confrontational and disrespectful way the prosecutor was addressing the defendant, or the fact that the trial court was adamantly allowing, if not condoning, this behavior.

¶101  We conclude that the manner in which the prosecutor presented his closing argument--yelling and pointing at the defendant as he addressed him directly--was highly improper and potentially prejudicial. There can be little doubt that the content and presentation of this closing argument was carefully calculated to inflame the passions and prejudices of Mitchell's jury.  The prosecutor's conduct allowed him--perhaps more forcefully than words alone could do--to express the utter contempt and disdain that he personally felt toward the defendant and his crime.  This Court concludes that prosecutors should not be allowed to do through their actions and demeanor what we have expressly forbidden them to do with their words, namely, assert their personal opinion about the defendant or the crime.  While we continue to recognize the "liberal freedom of speech" that is appropriate to closing argument, we also recognize that this freedom, like most, remains constrained by the rights of others, including the right to due process and to a reliable capital sentencing.

¶102  Perhaps even more disturbing than the behavior of the prosecutor is the trial court's repeated refusal to in any way constrain or condemn this behavior.  The trial court's stance was, essentially, that the court would allow the State to do as it willed unless defense counsel could produce a case, on the spot, specifically forbidding the challenged action.  This is not the proper role for a trial court judge.  Trial judges are responsible for protecting and upholding the honor, dignity, and integrity of the proceedings held before them.  They are not powerless to control the bad behavior of the parties and attorneys who come before them; nor must they await a specific ruling from an appellate court in order to find a particular behavior improper.  The total failure to constrain this prosecutor, combined with the obvious annoyance displayed by the court that defense counsel was "interrupting the flow" of the State's argument, suggests that the trial judge may have forgotten, at least momentarily, where she was sitting and what she was wearing.

The emphasis above is mine.  I do not recall such strong condemnation from the Court of Criminal Appeals.  The Court not only granted relief by vacating the death penalty and remanding for a new sentencing hearing, it directed specifically that the new hearing must be conducted before a different trial judge(!)  Amazing opinion and result.

NOTE:  I have second-chaired two jury trials with J.W. Coyle in front of Judge Caswell and in my opinion there is an air of oppression of defense counsel from the bench that I have not encountered anywhere else.  COCA exposed her favorite tactic, which is this:  if the defense requests something, she demands a case directly on point immediately or else the defense does not get it; if the State requests somethings, she inquires of the defense if it has a case directly on point holding that the State can not have what it seeks.  The State never has to justify anything it wants, while the defense must justify and show entitlement to everything it wants.  It is disconcerting to be placed on the hot seat all the time by the trial court, not to mention that facial gestures she makes during trial in front of the jury denigrating the defense.  These things are difficult to quantify in the record but they are powerful in their effect.  Last but not least, it should never be forgotten that Judge Chapel, a sitting judge on the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, has stated in a written opinion that she should recuse herself from all criminal cases because of the appearance of bias.