Title: State v. Echineque

State: hawaii

Issuer: Hawaii Supreme Court

Document:

828 P.2d 276 (1992) STATE of Hawaii, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Arwin R. ECHINEQUE, Defendant-Appellant. No. 15310. Supreme Court of Hawaii. March 25, 1992. Reconsideration Denied April 13, 1992. Seth T. Thompson, Shigetomi and Thompson, Honolulu, for defendant-appellant. Caroline M. Mee, Dept. of Pros. Atty., Honolulu, for plaintiff-appellee. Before LUM, C.J., and PADGETT, HAYASHI, WAKATSUKI and MOON, JJ. PADGETT, Justice. Appellant Arwin R. Echineque (appellant) appeals from a judgment and sentence entered by the First Circuit Court after a jury had found him guilty of assault in the first degree in violation of HRS § 707-710. Appellant contends that the conviction should be reversed because the trial judge, over objection, employed a method of impaneling the jury which does not comply with the provisions of HRS § 635-26(a). We agree, vacate the judgment, and remand the case for a new trial. HRS § 635-26 provides as follows: Prior to the voir dire of the prospective jurors in this case, appellant's counsel objected to the method of jury selection to be implemented by the trial court. He stated: Tr. 2/11/91 at 2-4. The court overruled appellant's objection stating that it would continue to follow its intended custom of jury selection. The court outlined this process for the record: Id. at 6-8 (emphasis added). Moreover, in support of the "struck jury" method, the court noted four advantages: Id. at 8-10. It is, of course, the prerogative of the legislature to set forth, by statute, the methods by which jurors are selected, challenged, impaneled and seated. Those provisions are found in HRS Chapters 612 and 635. HRS § 635-26(a), with which we are here concerned, was, with the exception of the last sentence thereof, originally enacted as § 12 of Act 38 of the Session Laws of 1903, the first really productive session of the legislature following the adoption of *279 the Organic Act organizing the Territory of Hawaii. The provisions in question here have remained unchanged as a part of Hawaii statutory law for the 89 years that have followed since that enactment. The statute says, in plain English, that the clerk of the court shall draw by lot 12 names from the box and that if any of the 12 is excused, the clerk shall continue to draw by lot from the box until 12 impartial jurors are obtained. Thus, each replacement juror is to be drawn by lot after a preceding juror is excused. The method employed by the judge below, over objection, did not comply with that provision. Instead, all 40 names on the panel were drawn before any voir dire was conducted. Then, as each juror was excused for cause, a new name was drawn and placed at the bottom of the list of 40, to move up one notch as each succeeding juror was excused. When the voir dire was finished in this particular case, there remained 38 jurors, 14 seated in the box including 2 alternates, and 24 in the jury room. Then, in the absence of the jury, the peremptory challenges were exercised and as each juror was excused, the next juror in line came into the box in the excused slot, and all of the remaining jurors moved up one notch. There was no drawing by lot to fill the seat made vacant as the jurors were excused. The method of impaneling a jury employed by the judge below has sometimes been called the "struck jury" method, while the method required by the statute has sometimes been called the "strike and replace jury" method. The judge below in his remarks and the prosecution in its brief urge that the "struck jury" method of impanelment is superior to the "strike and replace jury" method of impanelment. Appellant, of course, argues the other way. Such arguments should be addressed to the legislature and not to the courts. Trial judges are not free to disregard the statute and institute their own methods of impaneling juries, no matter how superior they may think their chosen method is. State v. Batson, 71 Haw. 300, 788 P.2d 841 (1990), and State v. Levinson, 71 Haw. 492, 795 P.2d 845 (1990), do not invalidate HRS § 635-26(a). The prohibition against ethnic and gender biased peremptory challenges can still be complied with using the statutory jury impanelment procedures even though it might be easier to comply with them by using the "struck jury" method. The State argues that appellant has shown no prejudice as a result of the lower court's refusal to follow the statute. There are two obvious answers to that argument. First, appellant has a right to exercise his peremptory challenges, and to have the juror who replaces the challenged juror selected by lot after the challenge as the statute provides, and that right was taken away from him in this case. He was prejudiced in the sense that a right which the statute gave to him was taken away by the judge below. If a trial judge chose to deprive a defendant of all of his peremptory challenges, the defendant would have great difficulty in showing actual prejudice since the jurors would have all been passed for cause, but no court would uphold, as being nonprejudicial, the deprivation of the statutory right to exercise peremptory challenges, even though that right is solely dependent on statute, and not on a constitutional right. Secondly, to accept the prosecution's position would be to say that each trial judge in this State, in conducting trials, can impanel juries, as he or she will, without following the statute, and defendants can only obtain relief where they establish that, as a result of the impanelment method, a prejudicial juror sat on the case and affected the verdict. The statute, by its express terms applies to any cause requiring a jury in any circuit court, and that means that there is one method of impaneling a jury to be used in all circuit courts and before all judges sitting in those courts. For the reasons expressed above, the judgment below is vacated and the case is remanded for a new trial.