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Delacruz v. State9/1/2000
s both credible and believable, not your typical drug user. I say that because she had an interesting background. She had an impressive educational background and an extensive work history, which included law enforcement. But she had a lot of things go wrong in her life. She doesn't make any excuses. She doesn't blame anyone. She just sat up on that witness stand and told you exactly what she had done.
She had four family members die in approximately a year's time. She was depressed, and then she made a real serious attempt to kill herself. The wheels truly had fallen off for Ms. Hampton. After the suicide attempt, she tells you that she turned to methamphetamine in a significant way. She told you why she turned to methamphetamine. She had learned about it. She was depressed. After the suicide, she had 30 days to give herself some way to get herself back on her feet. Should she have done this? Of course not. Was it illegal? You bet it was. But she did.
She wants out. She's getting pressure from those in the drug world. It was difficult for her to get out. She didn't want to live that way anymore. She wanted to be accepted by her family again. She knew she couldn't go cold turkey, so she began to drink alcohol. And then the DUI came.
She then contacted - as believable as it may be, she contacted Agent Graham and wanted to assist. She had trained with him. And because she had done so much wrong, she now wanted to do so much right. And even after Agent Graham said, "Go to treatment, we'll see what happens," she still came back from treatment and wanted to rid the area of methamphetamine users and sever her ties to those people that she had significantly been associating with in the drug world. And that's what she did.
In our judgment, the prosecuting attorney was properly offering the jury a way of viewing the significance of the evidence heard by the jury. To be sure, the record reveals that Ms. Hampton's testimony was just as the prosecuting attorney summarized it for the jury in the passage just quoted. That is the purpose of closing argument. Harper, 970 P.2d at 403.
About the last statement, we agree with the State that the prosecuting attorney is simply asking the jury to apply common sense to the evidence it had heard. Immediately before this particular passage, the prosecuting attorney had reminded the jury that the evidence revealed that Ms. Hampton was working with law enforcement with her goal being to get drugs from Delacruz and she had no interests other than that. The prosecuting attorney's remarks were proper.
We affirm the judgment and sentence entered against Delacruz.
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