Opinion ID: 688565
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Impairment of the Use of Peremptories

Text: 42 Quinones argues that his right to exercise his peremptories was impaired because he only had one strike left to challenge the six new jurors remaining in the jury box after three were excused for cause. Quinones contends that he wasted two or possibly three peremptory challenges on jurors who were seated outside the jury box in seats 15 through 28 because he expected the court to move those jurors into the jury box as vacancies occurred. Instead, over Quinones' objection, the court filled the empty spots in the box with new jurors who were not part of the original twenty-eight. In other words, Quinones was led to believe that jurors who survived challenges for cause and peremptory challenges would be seated in the order that they were initially called. It was with that procedure in mind that Quinones exercised two or possibly three of his strikes. Had Quinones known that the court intended to by-pass jurors 15 through 28 and place ahead of them nine new jurors, he would have exercised his strikes only on jurors 1 through 14 and not on jurors 15 through 28 because to do otherwise would have been a waste of a peremptory challenge. 43 In United States v. Christoffel, 952 F.2d 1086 (9th Cir. 1991), cert. denied, 112 S. Ct. 1700 (1992), we explicitly approved the Arizona method of exercising peremptories. Quinones does not challenge the Arizona method, but cites United States v. Turner, 558 F.2d 535, to support his argument that in his particular case the court placed an undue restriction on the exercise of his peremptories. 44 In Turner, we found an impermissible impairment of the appellant's peremptories under a very different set of facts. In that case, Turner was on trial with two other co-defendants. The three defendants decided that each defendant was to have three challenges, with the tenth peremptory to be exercised jointly. Turner, 558 F.2d at 536-37. The government and each of Turner's two co-defendants exercised one peremptory each. Turner three times accepted the panel as constituted. After a co-defendant exercised a second peremptory and a new juror was called, Turner tried for the first time to exercise a peremptory. The district court refused, stating that Turner had already used all three of his peremptories by three times accepting the panel as constituted. On appeal, we found that the district court's denial of Turner's peremptories to be reversible error. 45 The court in Turner noted the specificity of its ruling, when it stated the issue as [whether] the defendant [can] be forced to forego a peremptory challenge each time he accepts a panel as then constituted. Id. at 538. We do not find the ruling in Turner to be relevant to the issue in the present case, which is whether the defendant's exercise of his peremptory challenges was impaired when the court failed to tell counsel that it would replace jurors struck from the jury box with jurors from the pool who had not yet been voir dired. Further, unlike the situation in Turner, Quinones was allowed to use all four of his assigned peremptories. 46 Instead, the present case is similar to United States v. Christoffel, supra, a case where we found the district court's practices did not amount to reversible error. In Christoffel, a district court, using the Arizona method, neglected to replace a juror who had been excused for cause. After the government and defense counsel exercised all their peremptories, only eleven jurors remained. At that point, the district court ordered another name drawn and a member of the pool was seated on the jury. The defendant did not attempt to strike the twelfth juror. 47 On appeal, the defendant in Christoffel argued that the district court should have sua sponte granted him another peremptory when it seated the twelfth juror. We disagreed, and found that because Christoffel exercised all ten of his peremptories and exhibited no desire to strike the extra juror, his right to exercise his peremptory challenges had not been unduly restricted. Christoffel, 952 F.2d at 1088. 48 In the present case, Quinones objected only generally to the procedure used by the district court; he did not request additional peremptory challenges. After the court put the additional nine jurors into the jury box, and excused three for cause, Quinones and the government each used their remaining strike to remove two jurors. This left four of the newly called jurors on the jury, none of whom Quinones attempted to challenge by asking for additional peremptories or by even expressing on the record which of the four he wished to strike. In short, Quinones made no record to support a finding that his exercise of peremptory challenges was impaired. 49 We find that Quinones has not shown that the procedure employed by the district court in the present case unduly impaired his right to exercise his peremptory challenges in the circumstances of this case. While the court's actions may have surprised Quinones, we do not believe that the confusion caused by the district court's procedure amounted to an abuse of discretion.