JULNORD SAINT LOUIS

v.

STATE OF FLORIDA

DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF FLORIDA

FOURTH DISTRICT

JULNORD SAINT LOUIS, Appellant,

v.

STATE OF FLORIDA, Appellee.

No. 4D2025-2362

[September 30, 2026]

Appeal from the Circuit Court for the Nineteenth Judicial Circuit, St. Lucie County; Lawrence Michael Mirman, Judge; L.T. Case No. 562022CF000496AXXXXX.

Daniel Eisinger, Public Defender, and Austin C. Edwards, Assistant Public Defender, West Palm Beach, for appellant.

James Uthmeier, Attorney General, Tallahassee, and Melynda Melear, Senior Assistant Attorney General, West Palm Beach, for appellee.

GROSS, J.

Julnord Saint Louis (“the defendant”) appeals his conviction and sentence for first-degree premeditated murder of his wife (the “victim”). We affirm the conviction and primarily write to explain that the trial court did not err by allowing the victim's daughter to recount a Haitian superstition shedding light on why the defendant was discovered wearing his wife's clothes while lying atop her lifeless body.

The defendant, a Haitian citizen, married the victim in 2021. At 12:50 a.m. on a February night in 2022, the victim's adult daughter from a previous relationship received a voice message on WhatsApp from the defendant.

In the 36-minute message, the defendant described “the misery [the victim] put" him through, so that the daughter could “decide whether [the defendant was] right or wrong.”¹ The message described a deteriorating relationship between the defendant and the victim.

In the recording, the defendant said, “[Daughter]? It is with much sadness, with much sorrow, with many tears that you will hear this message. In fact, you'll be already crying – only later will you hear this because I will send it to you so that you can hear it anyway.” He continued, "[h]ere is what I'd like to explain to you, [daughter], so that you may understand the misery your mother put – is putting me through, so that you may decide whether I am right or wrong in what happened."

The defendant claimed that the victim had done many things to him and was cruel. He claimed that the victim “never told me to my face.” He also said, “that goes to show you everything that happened, everything that will happen, everything that went too far, [daughter], I'm not to blame for any of it.” He explained that he would not suffer anymore and stated, “[y]our mother and I should be together for life, as we promised, or die together. That is why all this has happened.” On the recording, the defendant told of an affair between “Fronzo” and the victim.

Ending his voice note, the defendant told the daughter: “I will not suffer any more. Your mother and I should be together for life, as we promised, or die together . . . We both go together. That is the promise we had made."

After listening, the daughter woke up her husband to go to her mother's house.

The daughter and her husband arrived at the victim's house around 3 a.m. The door to the victim's bedroom was locked. When no one answered the door, the daughter's husband kicked it in.

The victim was on the ground with the defendant on top of her. When the daughter pulled the defendant off her mother, a black knife fell out. The defendant was wearing the victim's medical scrubs.

A wine bottle was on the bed. The daughter testified that her mother did not store wine in her bedroom, and no glasses or corkscrew were present.

The daughter later found a wooden knife under the bed. Her cousin found a bent knife underneath the dresser. Investigators also located a

handleless knife between the victim and the wall. The handle was found under the duvet.

Investigators determined that the voice message was sent from the defendant's cellphone. The defendant also had posted four photographs of him and the victim on WhatsApp between 12:45 a.m. and 12:47 a.m.

The victim sustained 31 sharp force injuries. She also suffered blunt force trauma to her head with a fractured skull. The victim's death was caused by blunt force trauma and sharp force injuries.

The defendant had a small puncture wound in the fat tissue of his abdomen.

The victim's DNA was found on the blades of the handleless knife and the black knife, which tested positive for blood. The defendant was excluded. The victim and the defendant were included in the DNA mixture profile on the handleless knife, which tested positive for blood. The defendant's profile was one in 14 million times more likely to have originated from him than from two unknown individuals, while the victim's was one in 157 septillion times more likely to have originated from her than from unknown individuals. The black knife's blade tested positive for blood, with the defendant included at approximately 67 billion times more likely observed than from unknown individuals, and the victim included at 201 septillion times more likely than from unknown individuals.

At trial, the prosecutor questioned the daughter about why the defendant might have been wearing her mother's clothes when the daughter found the defendant. The daughter testified that a common superstitious belief in Haiti is that putting on a dead person's clothes confuses the spirit of the dead person so as to avoid being “haunted by the spirit." The daughter explained that a concern about a haunting might arise because of guilt from having done someone harm.

The daughter testified that the people of Haiti, like in other cultures, have certain beliefs that are passed on. She knew about the superstition based upon her upbringing in Haiti and from being raised by Haitians. She testified that she had lived in Haiti for fifteen years, half of her life. She was familiar with cultural norms in Haiti. After she left Haiti, she returned every other year for two weeks at a time until around 2019. Sometimes she would spend two to four weeks in Haiti. She stayed in Port-au-Prince and Bainet. All of her blood relatives were Haitian, and she spent much time with them.

The daughter's testimony provided a sufficient basis for her to testify as a lay witness about a common Haitian superstition.

A person's “superstition” is “properly admissible where probative of an issue in a criminal prosecution.” United States v. Beasley, 72 F. 3d 1518, 1527 (11th Cir. 1996). A lay witness may testify about a common superstition among a discrete group when the testimony is based on the witness's "personal knowledge of the matter” and the testimony does not require “scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge.”§§ 90.604, 90.702, Fla. Stat. (2025); see Greenwald Caterers, Inc. v. Lancaster Host, LLC, 2023 WL 11891460, at *1 (E.D. Pa. Dec. 29, 2023) (recognizing that lay witnesses could provide testimony about Jewish customs and religious practices consistent with Federal Rule of Evidence 701).

"[L]ay testimony results from a process of reasoning familiar in everyday life, while expert testimony results from a process of reasoning which can be mastered only by specialists in the field.” L.L. v. State, 189 So. 3d 252, 258 (Fla. 3d DCA 2016) (quoting Fed. R. Evid. 701, advisory committee's note to 2000 amendment) (internal quotation marks omitted) (emphasis omitted). "Lay witness opinion testimony is admissible if it is within the ken of an intelligent person with a degree of experience.” Sajiun v. Hernandez, 226 So. 3d 875, 879 (Fla. 4th DCA 2017) (quoting Floyd v. State, 569 So. 2d 1225, 1232 (Fla. 1990)).

Floyd, a murder case, demonstrates the propriety of lay witness opinion that arises when common sense is applied to the everyday experience of a witness. The defense in Floyd claimed that police officers had improperly given lay opinion testimony. 569 So. 2d at 1231. The Florida Supreme Court described the challenged testimony:

Officer Olsen stated that a Kleenex box lying on the bedroom floor where Anderson's body was found “appeared to have been knocked off the dresser,” that a tablecloth found lying on the bed "appeared like someone had taken some type of object that had blood on it and wiped it on there and left it on the bed," and that a laceration on her nose “appeared like she was probably smacked in the face.” In addition, Sergeant Gavin described the bruise and injury to Anderson's nose as a wound "that would have been consistent with being struck with the glasses on [and] . . . was indicative of a fight or a struggle." Finally, Detective Engelke testified that the murder was committed by a “creep-in burglar.”

Id.

Because “the officers' testimony [was] within the permissible range of lay observation and ordinary police experience,” the court concluded that "the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting this particular testimony." Id.; see also Reynolds v. State, 99 So. 3d 459, 478 (Fla. 2012) (holding that an officer's testimony about whether an aluminum frame had been cracked was a permissible lay opinion); L.L., 189 So. 3d at 258–59 (holding that the officer's description of a substance in juvenile's hand as marijuana was admissible as a lay opinion).

Here, the daughter's knowledge and familiarity about Haitian culture and beliefs provided an adequate foundation for her testimony about a tangential issue in the case—why the defendant might have been wearing her mother's clothes when she discovered him on top of her mother's body. The daughter could properly testify about a Haitian superstition, just as a modern American might describe the bad luck superstitions of breaking a mirror, walking under a ladder, opening an umbrella indoors, or Friday the Thirteenth.

The trial court's determination that the daughter was qualified to describe the Haitian superstition is subject to an abuse of discretion standard of review. See, e.g., Boggess v. State, 269 So. 3d 616, 619 (Fla. 4th DCA 2019). The trial court did not abuse its discretion in allowing the testimony.

Affirmed.

LEVINE, J., concurs.

FORST, J., concurs in result only with opinion.

FORST, J., concurring in result only.

I agree with my colleagues that the defendant's conviction and sentence for the horrific murder of his wife should be affirmed due to the overwhelming evidence that the defendant murdered the victim in a premeditated fashion. However, I disagree with the majority opinion's holding that the victim's daughter's testimony about a "Haitian superstition" was properly admissible at trial. The daughter's testimony as to why the defendant was found at the murder scene wearing the victim's clothing was speculative and of minimal probative value that was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice. Thus, I respectfully concur only in the result of affirming the defendant's firstdegree murder conviction.

Background

At trial, the daughter offered extensive testimony as a fact witness. She was the witness who received the defendant's voice note, which essentially confessed in advance to the murder and explained his motivations for the premeditated crime. The daughter and her husband were the witnesses who discovered her mother's body with a knife in it and the defendant standing over the body. The daughter provided the jury with numerous details of what she saw, heard, and found, all of which was probative of the defendant's guilt. The daughter testified that when she saw the defendant standing over the victim's body, he was wearing the victim's medical scrubs.

The State, near the end of its case-in-chief, recalled the daughter and asked her about her background. She testified that she is thirty years old and spent the first fifteen years of her life living in Haiti. She went back to Haiti "at least every other year” until 2019. She stated that she is familiar with “the cultures and norms” of Haiti. At this point, the State asked her: “Do you know is there any reason why someone would want to put on the clothes of a dead person using the beliefs that are commonly held in, you know, people from your home country of Haiti?” Defense counsel objected, “improper opinion,” and a sidebar ensued.

The prosecutor told the trial court, “I told her not to say the words (sic) voodoo,” because “I could see how that's inflammatory.” The prosecutor and the trial court agreed that voodoo is a religion. The trial court noted, “there are Haitian individuals [who] know nothing about it. Some of whom are in the courtroom here like the interpreters.” The trial court sent the jury out of the room to take an evidentiary proffer to determine whether the daughter had a sufficient basis for such knowledge.

The daughter proffered that all of her blood relatives are Haitian. She was born and raised in the capital, Port-au-Prince, but she has also visited a “small countryside” called Bainet. When she was on the island, she talked to people about their culture. She said, “the religious beliefs in Haiti, I mean religion is voodooism.” She agreed with the prosecutor that there are also Christians in Haiti. She further agreed that “based on [her] experiences of growing up there and visiting there,” “even people who consider themselves Christians on the island . . . tend to have knowledge and fall back on the voodoo beliefs."² She added that certain

“superstitions” are associated with “voodoo beliefs on the island” and generally talked about in Haiti. She agreed with the prosecutor that this was comparable to the supposed American superstition that breaking a mirror brings seven years of bad luck.

The prosecutor asked the daughter if she was aware of some “type of superstitious belief” “of what to do or why you put on someone's clothing of a dead person.” She answered “to confuse the spirit [s]o they don't get haunted by the spirit.” She said the spirit would want to haunt this person “because the person is the one that murdered them or killed them ... [o]r harmed them.”

On cross-examination, the daughter agreed that the defendant's hometown of Jacmel is at least a couple hours from Port-au-Prince. She rejected defense counsel's suggestion that “superstitions vary across the island," instead affirming that “they're all the same everywhere on the island." She testified that the scrubs were not the clothes which the victim had been wearing when she died. However, she clarified that the superstition does not require the clothes to be the clothes that were worn at the time of death. She said that she had known about this superstition before the incident, but she had “confirmed [the superstition] with [her] uncle after [her] mother's passing.” She agreed that her “uncle is the one who] kind of elaborated on it for” her. She testified that the defendant is a Christian who has gone to church as long as she has known him.

Defense counsel argued that the testimony was improper opinion, hearsay, and unfairly prejudicial. The prosecutor responded that the daughter's childhood and return visits gave her familiarity with Haitian superstitions which is comparable to how “all of us know that if you break a mirror, it's seven years of bad luck.” He acknowledged that the evidence is prejudicial, but “every evidence is prejudicial,” and this “explains why he would change his clothes,” which “negates [the] idea” of self-defense. Defense counsel responded that the daughter is not qualified to explain voodoo beliefs because she is not a voodoo scholar, and the State did not present any evidence that she had any expertise on the religion like a “professor” might. Defense counsel argued that voodoo, like any other religion, has different interpretations of different things, and the daughter's testimony that “it's the same superstition across all the island” is "not true of any superstition anywhere,” as beliefs always vary from person to person and place to place. Defense counsel argued the State had not presented any testimony or evidence that the daughter had practiced voodoo, had participated in a voodoo ceremony, or had “firsthand knowledge” of voodoo. Instead, defense counsel argued, the daughter had learned about this superstition from her uncle. Counsel said: “This isn't an expert witness and she should not be able to testify to this. It is hearsay without exception and the opinion would be improper at this point. And the probative value would be substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.”

The trial court ruled that the daughter qualified as an expert because her knowledge of the subject was superior to the jury's knowledge, and the testimony wasn't hearsay because her knowledge came from general life experience rather than one particular person. On the issue of unfair prejudice, the trial court said:

And with regard to whether it's overly prejudicial, as I mentioned at the bench, first of all, which religions are good and bad is all subject to subjective opinion. . . . it does explain the conduct in this case or at least it sheds light on it. Of course, there could be another argument. But I do think it's very probative and it's very slightly prejudicial. The prejudice, to be fair, I do think in all honesty there's -- there's to some degree a negative connotation to voodoo. But this is also similar, in my experience, to witchcraft. Witchcraft to some people connotes horrible, evil things and other people like that's their religion, there are actual witches and they will tell you that there are good witches and there in, you know, we live in a culture that accepts all of these beliefs. So I - I definitely don't think it falls into the situation where just the mention of it is is unfair. So I think it clearly passes that test as being very probative and not very unfairly prejudicial. So that [§ 90.403] test is passed there. So I will allow the testimony subject to cross-examination.

After the jury returned, the daughter gave substantially the proffered testimony without using the word “voodoo.” This time, the prosecutor framed the question as “I'm not saying everyone in Haiti believes this, but this is a common thing, is there a belief or a tradition or a superstition, whatever, you know, we just call it one of those, of why someone would want to put on clothing of a dead person?” The daughter said the purpose of wearing the clothes is to avoid “being haunted by someone you've harmed.” On cross-examination, the daughter again testified that the defendant has been a Christian as long as she has known him and that he regularly goes to church.

At no point did the daughter testify, or did the State present any other evidence to indicate, that the defendant believes in voodoo, has ever believed in any aspect of voodoo, or is even aware of the particular purported superstition at issue.

In closing, the prosecutor said: “Just changing clothes. Does anyone buy that for a moment that he just changed clothes? His clothes are bloody, he wants to get changed clothes, so he puts on his wife's clothes... Oh, but he goes to church, so he couldn't possibly believe in the superstition. And when he goes into the garage, he becomes an automobile. It's what I hear about religion.” (Emphasis added).

Following the defendant's first-degree murder conviction, this appeal follows. The daughter's “voodoo testimony” is the sole focus of the appeal.

Analysis

"The standard of review for admissibility of evidence is abuse of discretion, limited by the rules of evidence.” Tengbergen v. State, 9 So. 3d 729, 736 (Fla. 4th DCA 2009).

A. The challenged testimony was not permissible lay opinion

"[T]estimony consisting of guesses, conjectures or speculation (suppositions without a premise of fact) is clearly inadmissible.” Durrance v. Sanders, 329 So. 2d 26, 30 (Fla. 1st DCA 1976) (citing Drackett Prods. Co. v. Blue, 152 So. 2d 463, 465 (Fla. 1963)). “Opinion testimony of a lay witness is only permitted if it is based on what the witness has personally perceived." Stukins v. State, 418 So. 3d 168, 174 (Fla. 4th DCA 2025) (alteration omitted) (quoting Fino v. Nodine, 646 So. 2d 746, 748 (Fla. 4th DCA 1994)). “[T]he lay witness's testimony must be grounded in reliability and personal perception rather than speculation.” Id. at 174–75 (quoting Williams v. State, 300 So. 3d 202, 209 (Fla. 4th DCA 2020)).

In Stukins, we held the trial court reversibly erred by allowing a detective to opine that a shooting was “intentional” because that testimony was “based entirely on information conveyed to him, not from his personal perceptions. His lay opinion that the shooting was intentional was based on photographs of the gunshot wounds to Driver and Passenger, autopsy results, witness statements taken by other investigators, or crime scene evidence collected by other investigators.” Id. at 175. “[T]he kind of opinion testimony by lay witnesses admissible under section 90.701 is usually limited to things related to perception: e.g., ‘distance, time, size, weight, form and identity.” Kolp v. State, 932 So. 2d 1283, 1284 (Fla. 4th DCA 2006) (quoting Fino, 646 So. 2d at 748–49).

Here, the daughter's testimony did not meet this criterion. Her testimony lacked the mandatory predicate required by section 90.604, Florida Statutes (2025), which mandates that a witness may testify only to matters of which they have personal knowledge. She explicitly acknowledged during her testimony that she does not practice voodoo and had to consult her uncle after the murder occurred to verify this superstition's particulars. Because her information was second-hand hearsay and post-hoc research, her characterization of the belief as a uniform cultural practice across Haiti was speculative and legally insufficient. Her testimony did not comment on “distance, time, size, weight, form [or] identity.”

Nor was her “belief or a tradition or a superstition” testimony “grounded in reliability and personal perception rather than speculation.” As noted above, she acknowledged she had never practiced voodoo, engaged in a voodoo ceremony or tradition, or met a voodoo practitioner who identifies as such. Her testimony that the wearing of the deceased's clothing is a ritual (and, implicitly, an acknowledgment of guilt), known and followed by the average Haitian, was quite speculative with little objective support. I liken her voodoo testimony to a lay witness testifying in 2026 that nearly all Americans love “hot dogs, baseball, apple pie and Chevrolet”—it is questionable if most Americans today are even familiar with this iconic Chevrolet jingle that originated over fifty years ago. See CHEVROLET, Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie & Chevrolet, (YouTube, September 19, 2011), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYXfdnhh2Mo.

The majority opinion compares the instant case to Floyd v. Smith, 569 So. 2d 1225 (Fla. 1990). In Floyd, the challenged testimony was that of three veteran law enforcement officers and fell “within the permissible range of lay observation and ordinary police experience.” Id. at 1231–32. Similarly, the “lay opinions” at issue in Reynolds v. State, 99 So. 3d 459, 478 (Fla. 2012), and L.L. v. State, 189 So. 3d 252, 258–59 (Fla. 3d DCA 2016), also referenced by the majority opinion, were offered by law enforcement officers. Here, however, the daughter's knowledge of Haitian voodoo rituals relied on her observations as a casual and infrequent visitor to parts of the country. Her lay opinion is not comparable to that of the officers in the majority's cited cases. Her lay opinion is more akin, as suggested by the defendant's initial brief, to “deeming a skier who vacations annually in Park City, Utah, as an expert on Mormonism.”

B. The challenged testimony was of little probative value that was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice

“Relevant evidence is evidence tending to prove or disprove a material fact." § 90.401, Fla. Stat. (2025). “All relevant evidence is admissible, except as provided by law.” § 90.402, Fla. Stat. (2025). “Relevant evidence is inadmissible if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of issues, misleading the jury, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence.” § 90.403, Fla. Stat. (2025).

"In weighing the probative value against the unfair prejudice, it is proper for the court to consider the need for the evidence; the tendency of the evidence to suggest an improper basis to the jury for resolving the matter, e.g., an emotional basis; the chain of inference necessary to establish the material fact; and the effectiveness of a limiting instruction.” Steverson v. State, 695 So. 2d 687, 689 (Fla. 1997) (quoting 1 C. Ehrhardt, Florida Evidence § 403.1 at 100–03 (2d ed. 1984)).

The daughter's testimony could only be relevant if the State had presented evidence that the defendant adheres to the voodoo superstition at issue. The majority opinion cites United States v. Beasley, 72 F. 3d 1518 (11th Cir. 1996), for the argument that “[a] person's ‘superstition' is 'properly admissible where probative of an issue in a criminal prosecution.” Beasley, 72 F. 3d at 1527. In Beasley:

Id.

[E]vidence of the Yahweh religion “was relevant to show how Yahweh exerted influence and control over the members and how he used his preachings to justify heinous crimes. It is also important to our analysis that Yahweh himself sought to interject religion into his cross-examination by responding to numerous questions with a religious/Biblical response. On direct examination, defense counsel asked Yahweh about his practices and lifestyle, as well as about general Yahweh beliefs.

In another case upon which the majority relies, the “testimony or evidence regarding Jewish or Passover customs . . . play an obvious role in this case, because the contract at issue requires that the Hotel take certain steps specific for a Passover event.” Greenwald Caterers, Inc. v. Lancaster Host, LLC, No. 22-811, 2023 WL 11891460, at *1 (E.D. Pa. Dec. 29, 2023).

However, here, the State did not present any evidence that the defendant believed (or was even aware of) the religious superstition at issue. On the contrary, the daughter expressly testified that the defendant was a Christian who regularly went to church. The only supposed nexus between the defendant and this superstition is his ethno-national identity as a person from Haiti. The prosecutor crudely embraced this nexus, stating: “Oh, but he goes to church, so he couldn't possibly believe in the superstition. And when he goes into the garage, he becomes an automobile.” The apparent thrust of the prosecutor's argument was that, just like a person cannot become a car by walking into a garage, a Haitian person can never truly be a Christian and shed who he really is—to wit, a person in thrall to Haitian voodoo superstitions and the voodoo religion.

Nor can we treat the act of wearing the scrubs itself as sufficient proof of the motivations for the act itself. Such reasoning is unacceptably circular. The defendant's wearing the victim's medical scrubs is susceptible of other interpretations: perhaps he changed into the scrubs because he had planned a premeditated murder and figured that it is easier to clean blood off of scrubs than other clothing, or perhaps he changed clothes after the murder because he believed the scrubs would be easier to clean at that point. These explanations are not only possible, but in fact potentially more incriminating than the voodoo explanation. The daughter and the prosecutor essentially told the jury that they should reject these potential explanations in favor of the voodoo explanation based only on the defendant's national origin. The trial court should not have allowed them to do so.

In addition to having little if any probative value, the “voodoo testimony" also presented an unreasonable risk of unfair prejudice to the defendant and thus should have been excluded under section 90.403, because the testimony's probative value was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice and confusion of the issues. Under section 90.403, trial courts must exclude evidence that unfairly appeals to jury emotion, bias, or cultural stereotypes. See McDuffie v. State, 970 So. 2d 312, 327 (Fla. 2007) (“This rule of exclusion ‘is directed at evidence which inflames the jury or appeals improperly to the jury's emotions.” (quoting Steverson, 695 So. 2d at 688–89)).

Here, the trial court's statements reflect its acknowledgement of that possibility. The court stated: “[T]o be fair, I do think in all honesty there's there's to some degree a negative connotation to voodoo. But this is also similar, in my experience, to witchcraft. Witchcraft to some people connotes horrible, evil things. . . .” Similarly, the prosecutor said, “I could see how that's inflammatory.” Thus, an unreasonable risk of unfair prejudice occurred when the State (and the trial court) justified the testimony's admission by assuming “if the defendant comes from Haiti, he must practice voodoo.” In turn, any minimal probative value which the voodoo testimony may have had was substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice.

C. The judgment was affirmable as “harmless error"

Despite the trial court's error in admitting the daughter's “voodoo testimony," I would affirm the defendant's conviction and sentence because, “after evaluation of the impact of the error in light of the overall strength of the case and the defenses asserted,” we are “able to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt . . . that the verdict could not have been affected by the error.³ Heuss v. State, 687 So. 2d 823, 824 (Fla. 1996) (citing Ciccarelli v. State, 531 So. 2d 129, 131 (Fla.1988)). The defendant sent the daughter a WhatsApp voice note in which he confessed to the murder in advance, explaining both his intention to kill the victim, as well as his motivation for doing so. The victim was found shortly thereafter with thirty-one stab wounds, consistent with the voice note and the four knives found in the room. Accordingly, “there is no reasonable possibility that the [trial court's] error contributed to the conviction.” State v. DiGuilio, 491 So. 2d 1129, 1138 (Fla. 1986).4

Conclusion

The State's prosecution team, in my view, came close to grasping defeat from the jaws of victory by introducing the daughter's “voodoo testimony.” This evidence was hearsay, speculative, and of little probative value. This evidence also was prejudicial, injecting unfavorable stereotypes into a murder case. This is not a good look for the appearance of blind justice, nor is it consistent with the rule of law.

Accordingly, I respectfully do not join the majority opinion's analysis in holding no error occurred. I conclude error occurred but, only because this error was harmless, do I concur in affirming the defendant's conviction.

* * *

Not final until disposition of timely-filed motion for rehearing.