Title: The People v. Steve Johnson

State: new-york

Issuer: New York Appellate Court

Document:

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This memorandum is uncorrected and subject to revision before
publication in the New York Reports.
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No. 106  
The People &c.,
            Respondent,
        v.
Steve Johnson,
            Appellant.
Allen L. Fallek, for appellant.
Susan Axelrod, for respondent.
MEMORANDUM:
The order of the Appellate Division should be reversed
and a new trial ordered.
In this complex case involving multiple attempted
murder, kidnaping and other charges, defendant did not dispute
his involvement in the criminal transaction but pursued an
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No. 106
insanity defense.  During voir dire, a prospective juror who had
written a college research paper on the insanity defense stated
that she would be able to set aside her personal views on that
topic and apply the law as instructed by the court.  However, in
response to subsequent questioning by counsel, she indicated that
she had a "strong bias" in connection with the defense, "might be
biased in the way that [she] interpret[ed] the evidence" in that
regard, and was not certain that she would be able to give both
sides a fair trial.  Despite these troubling statements, the
trial court did not undertake further inquiry of the juror and
denied defendant's "for cause" challenge.  Defendant therefore
used a peremptory challenge to excuse the juror, subsequently
exhausting all peremptory challenges.  
As we have stressed in the past, "[w]hen potential
jurors themselves say they question or doubt they can be fair in
the case, Trial Judges should either elicit some unequivocal
assurance of their ability to be impartial when that is
appropriate, or excuse the juror when that is appropriate.  The
worst the court will have done in most cases is to have replaced
one impartial juror with another impartial juror" (see People v
Johnson, 94 NY2d 600, 616 [2000] [internal quotation marks and
citation omitted]).  Here, given the absence of follow-up
questioning by the court after the juror expressed uncertainty
concerning her ability to fairly consider a major issue in this
case, the conviction must be reversed and the matter remitted for
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No. 106
a new trial. 
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Order reversed and a new trial ordered, in a memorandum.  Chief
Judge Lippman and Judges Ciparick, Graffeo, Read, Smith, Pigott
and Jones concur.
Decided June 9, 2011
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