Opinion ID: 218749
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Failure to Ask the Venire About All Government Witnesses

Text: Jury selection took place during two days. As part of its effort to streamline and effectively manage a trial involving so many defendants and attorneys, the district court decided that members of the jury venire would be asked about their familiarity with only the most important witnesses. To that end, the court directed both the prosecution and the defendants to submit lists of each side's 10 most important witnesses to be published to the venire instead of the names of the 185 or so potential witnesses on their lists. Perhaps as a result, the prospective jurors were not asked if they knew a government witness named Brenda Stewart. [12] Early in the trial Stewart testified that she and her brother had negotiated with Hill for her brother to buy one of the completed houses in the Cascade subdivision and for a new house to be built for herself and her mother on one of the empty lots. Before those negotiations could be completed, however, Stewart shifted to dealing with Alcindor and Graham who had purchased the Cascade subdivision from Hill through the Alcindor-Williams Group. Stewart testified that during the course of their dealings she and her brother paid $25,000 in earnest money to Hill and another $7,500 to the Alcindor-Williams Group, money which she was never able to recover after she learned that neither she nor her brother would receive the houses they had contracted to buy. Shortly after Stewart was called to testify, the court interrupted the government's examination to ask Stewart if she were acquainted with Rosemary Burton. Burton was one of the alternate jurors, and she had apparently alerted a court security officer that she knew Stewart. Defense counsel for Farmer and Brown complained that if Stewart's relationship with Burton had been revealed earlier during voir dire, the defendants could have used a peremptory strike to remove her. The court questioned Burton outside the presence of the other jurors, but in open court, regarding her relationship with Stewart. Burton stated that they worked in different departments and on different floors of the Social Security Administration, and that they were acquaintances who had interacted only on a limited basis. Burton assured the court that she would not give any additional weight to Stewart's testimony and that knowing Stewart would have no effect on her ability to serve as a fair and impartial juror. The court found that Burton could be fair and impartial, and no defendant asked that she be removed from the jury. Nevertheless, Van Mersbergen contends that the court empaneled a jury in violation of his constitutional right to a fair trial by seating Burton, who he argues should have been struck for cause and would have been if the court had permitted the venire to be asked about all of the names on the witness list. Van Mersbergen further contends that the district court abridged his right to exercise his peremptory challenges by failing to show the jury a complete list of witnesses. He says that if the district court had done so, the relationship between Burton and Stewart would have come to light, and Van Mersbergen would have used one of his peremptory challenges to strike Burton from the jury. Alternatively, he argues that even if the empaneled jury was fair and impartial, reversible error occurred when the government during its closing arguments mentioned Stewart, but not other investors, by name. Actually, what the government did in its closing was mention Stewart's name along with the names of all of those who were involved in the Cascade/Centrum fraud when it was discussing the details of that fraud. The method of conducting the voir dire is left to the sound discretion of the trial court and will be upheld unless an abuse of discretion is found. United States v. Vera, 701 F.2d 1349, 1355 (11th Cir.1983). It is well established that [t]he voir dire conducted by the trial court need only provide reasonable assurance that prejudice will be discovered if present. Id. (citation and quotation marks omitted). Any error involving Burton's service on the jury is subject to review only for plain error because no defendant objected to her continued service, asked that she be questioned further, or took issue with the court's finding that she could be fair and impartial. United States v. Raad, 406 F.3d 1322, 1323 (11th Cir.2005) (When a defendant fails to object to an error before the district court, we review the argument for plain error.). Burton's continued presence on the jury could not have been errormuch less plain errorbecause she did not sit on the final jury that rendered the verdict in this case. Even if Van Mersbergen could convince us that Burton was biased and should have been excluded from the jury, he cannot prove that he was prejudiced by the district court's failure to exclude her because Burton was an alternate juror who never participated in the jury's deliberations. [13] She could not have had any effect on the verdicts in the case. Furthermore, Van Mersbergen has failed to cite to any authority demonstrating that a district court abuses its discretion by failing to publish the government's complete list of witnesses to the venire. We are satisfied that the district court did not abuse its discretion by disclosing to the venire a list that included 41 corporate victims, 8 affected condominium complexes, and the government's 10 most important witnesses, but failed to include Burton. Van Mersbergen's contention that the court's failure to ask the venire about all of the witnesses, including Stewart, abridged his right to exercise a peremptory strike against Burton fails for similar reasons. Since Burton did not serve on the jury that convicted him, Van Mersbergen was not harmed by the fact that he did not strike her from the jury. Instead, he gained the opportunity to use that strike against another venire member.