Opinion ID: 1959465
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Voir Dire Issue

Text: We begin with the factual background for Doret's argument regarding the impairment of his right to exercise peremptory challenges. Approximately five months prior to trial, counsel for Doret submitted requested voir dire questions and procedures and a memorandum of points and authorities in support of his request. He asked for an opportunity to pose follow-up questions to potential jurors [i]n order to more accurately detect bias and to allow counsel to meaningfully exercise his peremptory challenges. Among the follow-up questions counsel included in his request were those designed for jurors, their family members or close friends, having a connection to law enforcement or the criminal justice system. Specifically, counsel proposed to ask: (a) If the individual is a close friend, how long the juror has known the individual and what is the nature of the relationship? (b) What relevant organizations the individual works or has worked for? (c) How many years has or did the individual spend with each organization? (d) What was the individual's job with each organization and whether those duties directly involved the apprehension of criminals? (e) To what extent did or does the individual discuss his work with the juror? (f) Whether the juror has a particular concern for the individual which could be affected by a decision to convict or acquit the defendant? (g) Whether the fact of the individual's employment would cause the juror to be swayed for or against either side? Instead of the specific questions requested by Doret, the trial judge posed the following question to the jury panel: Ladies and gentlemen, let me ask whether or not any of you, any members of your immediate family, or very close personal friends, are employed by law enforcement agencies or by any defense attorneys or as defense investigators. Any of you or members of your family employed by law enforcement agencies, by any defense attorneys or defense investigators. I would include within the ambit of law enforcement even security guards. Anyone who would have arrest powers; and I would include also prosecutor officers of any sort. Seventeen potential jurors responded to the inquiry, five of whom were excluded for cause; an additional four were not reached during the selection process; and the government used one of its peremptory strikes against yet another. Doret focuses on the remaining seven jurors in crafting his argument. The seven remaining jurors were numbers 876, a Drug Enforcement Agency employee; 920, a District police officer whose husband and brother also were police officers; 076, whose closest friend and business partner was a former District police officer; 121, whose business partners were defense attorneys; 772, a Secret Service employee with several federal agents as close friends; 817, who worked with Secret Service agents and whose cousin was an FBI agent; and 824, a research manager for a health care organization who stated: I have two close friends of mine that work for the Department of Justice and the Parole Commission. After the seventeen persons responded affirmatively to the general law enforcement question, the trial court asked: Ladies and gentlemen, just because of the occupation of those individuals, do you think that would have any impact upon your ability to listen to the evidence in this case and be fair to both sides just because you know someone who may have some law enforcement background? When none of the potential jurors replied, the trial judge said: I take it from your silence that the answer is no. The record reflects no audible response from the jurors. As a follow-up or precursor question to the entire jury panel, the judge inquired, in part, whether or not because of any publicity, general publicity about Washington, D.C. or general publicity about the crime problem in Washington, D.C . . . . any of you feel you could not listen to the evidence in this case and judge the guilt or innocence of the defendant based upon the evidence. None of the jurors answered affirmatively. The trial judge raised a few additional questions, including potential jurors' personal feelings about firearms, firearm-related offenses, and drug crimes; and whether the potential jurors or family members or their close personal friends had been a victim of or witness to a homicide, weapons, or assaultive offense. When the trial court had concluded most of its questions to the jury panel, defense counsel reminded the court that he had submitted requested voir dire questions and asked for the opportunity to pose follow-up questions to jurors who had close friends or family members in the law enforcement field, so that he might intelligently exercise [his] peremptory challenges. The trial judge replied: I think I have adequately covered the area and I think I will not allow any other followup [except in two other areas, the occupation of each juror; and in the event a juror knew another juror, the nature of the relationship]. Therefore, counsel for Doret was not permitted to make further inquiry of the seventeen jurors who responded affirmatively to the law enforcement inquiry. When it came time to exercise peremptory challenges, counsel for Doret used his ten as follows: one (his second) on a juror (number 112) who apparently manifested non-verbal clues of bias; six to strike six of seventeen jurors who responded affirmatively to the law enforcement question; two to eliminate two attorneys who asserted that they would experience hardship if selected for service; and one on a juror whose brother was killed in the same year as the decedent in Doret's case. Juror No. 824, one of the seventeen who replied affirmatively to the law enforcement question, was not struck. Doret contends that the trial judge improperly impaired [his] right to exercise peremptory challenges when he precluded any follow-up questioning of jurors who indicated that they, their family, or close friends had ties to law enforcement. The government argues that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by declining to ask follow-up questions regarding the law enforcement inquiry, and maintains that there was no substantial prejudice to Doret because the court posed other questions designed to weed out bias. In addition, the government contends that Doret could have used a peremptory challenge to strike Juror No. 824 instead of the juror who was struck on the ground of non-verbal clues of bias. The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States specifies that: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a . . . public trial, by an impartial jury . . . . The process of obtaining an impartial jury, in part by disqualifying biased jurors, unfolds during the fundamentally important voir dire examination of potential jurors, conducted by the trial judge. Thus, the impaneling of a fair and impartial jury is `the task of the trial judge.' Dingle v. State, 361 Md. 1, 759 A.2d 819, 825 (2000) (quoting Boyd v. State, 341 Md. 431, 671 A.2d 33, 35 (1996)). In that regard, the trial court [has] broad discretion in conducting voir dire examination; absent an abuse of discretion and substantial prejudice to the accused, the trial court will be upheld. Murray v. United States, 532 A.2d 120, 122 (D.C.1987) (citations omitted). The empaneling of a fair and impartial jury depends in large measure on how the voir dire examination is conducted. A potential juror's bias may be obvious when he or she admits actual bias; or implied or presumed as a matter of law, as in the case of a potential juror who is related to a party in the case; or inferred when a juror discloses a fact that be-speaks a risk of partiality sufficiently significant [such as a relationship with a prosecutor] to warrant granting the trial judge discretion to excuse the juror for cause, but not so great as to make mandatory a presumption of bias. United States v. Torres, 128 F.3d 38, 47 (2d Cir.1997). [T]he court is allowed to dismiss a juror on the ground of inferable bias only after having received responses from the juror that permit an inference that the juror in question would not be able to decide the matter objectively. In other words, the judge's determination must be grounded in facts developed at voir dire. Id. at 47. If, after proper questioning of a potential juror for bias, the trial judge, in his or her discretion, decides that there is an insufficient basis to disqualify that juror for cause, counsel for one of the parties still has an opportunity to strike that juror by using a peremptory challenge. We reiterated the significance of peremptory challenges in Lyons v. United States, 683 A.2d 1066 (1996) (en banc): More than a century ago, the Supreme Court said that the right to strike jurors without cause is one of the most important of the rights secured to the accused . . . . Any system for the empanelling of a jury that prevents or embarrasses the full, unrestricted exercise by the accused of that right, must be condemned. Id. at 1070 (quoting Pointer v. United States, 151 U.S. 396, 408, 14 S.Ct. 410, 38 L.Ed. 208 (1894)). Nonetheless, the relationship between the exercise of peremptory challenges and a fair and impartial trial is not a direct one. As the Supreme Court of the United States declared in United States v. Martinez-Salazar, 528 U.S. 304, 120 S.Ct. 774, 145 L.Ed.2d 792 (2000): The peremptory challenge is part of our common-law heritage. Its use in felony trials was already venerable in Blackstone's time. See 4 W. BLACKSTONE, COMMENTARIES 346-348 (1769). We have long recognized the role of the peremptory challenge in reinforcing a defendant's right to trial by an impartial jury. . . . But we have long recognized, as well, that such challenges are auxiliary; unlike the right to an impartial jury guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment, peremptory challenges are not of federal constitutional dimension. Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 88 [108 S.Ct. 2273, 101 L.Ed.2d 80] (1988); see Stilson v. United States, 250 U.S. 583, 586 [40 S.Ct. 28, 63 L.Ed. 1154] (1919) (There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States which requires the Congress to grant peremptory challenges.) Id. at 779. Earlier, in Rosales-Lopez v. United States, 451 U.S. 182, 101 S.Ct. 1629, 68 L.Ed.2d 22 (1981), the Supreme Court described the link between the voir dire and peremptory challenges: Voir dire plays a critical function in assuring the criminal defendant that his Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury will be honored. Without an adequate voir dire the trial judge's responsibility to remove prospective jurors who will not be able impartially to follow the court's instructions and evaluate the evidence cannot be fulfilled. See Connors v. United States, 158 U.S. 408, 413 [15 S.Ct. 951, 39 L.Ed. 1033] (1895). Similarly, lack of adequate voir dire impairs the defendant's right to exercise peremptory challenges where provided by statute or rule, as it is in the federal courts. Id. at 188 (footnote omitted); see also Jenkins v. United States, 541 A.2d 1269, 1272 (D.C.1988); Cordero v. United States, 456 A.2d 837, 841 (D.C.1983). In Doret's case, two inquiries are essential with respect to potential juror bias and the exercise of peremptory challenges. First, did the trial court ask, or permit the parties to pose, sufficient questions to determine whether seven jurors should have been struck for cause because bias was inferable due to their employment in the law enforcement field, or such work by relatives or close friends? Second, was Doret's right to exercise peremptory challenges prejudiced by the trial judge's failure to permit follow-up questioning of the seven jurors? In searching for answers to these two inquiries, we recognize that Doret's voir dire experience bears some resemblance to two of our past cases, Murray, supra, and Gibson v. United States, 700 A.2d 776, 777 (D.C.1997). In Murray, supra, we considered whether the defendant had enough information to make effective use of her peremptory challenges or, instead, her ability to do so was impaired by the court's denial of her request to ask follow-up questions of additional members of the jury venire. Id. at 123. We recognized there that defendants must . . . `be permitted sufficient inquiry into the background and attitudes of the jurors to enable them to exercise intelligently their peremptory challenges.' Id. (quoting United States v. Dellinger, 472 F.2d 340, 368 (7th Cir. 1972), cert. denied, 410 U.S. 970, 93 S.Ct. 1443, 35 L.Ed.2d 706 (1973)). We affirmed the conviction in Murray, supra, in part, because we concluded that the voir dire of the two jurors in question . . . was at least minimally sufficient and within the range of the trial court's discretion even though it would have been the better practice for the court . . . to delve further into the juror's relationship with [a prosecutor]. . . and any effect it had on him . . . . Id. at 123-24. Notably, the trial court's follow-up questioning of the two jurors in Murray, supra, was tailored to their responses to the law enforcement question. For example, a juror whose sister was a District police officer was asked: Is there anything about her work, maybe some story that she has told you of one of her experiences? Maybe she's been injured or maybe she has shared a view with you that has made a strong impression upon you that causes you to believe that you might be biased or prejudice[d] against either side in this case? Id. at 121. While the trial court did not permit counsel for the defendant to ask additional questions of four other jurors, it informed counsel that he could pick two of the four for further questioning. Gibson, supra, presented the issue as to whether the trial court committed reversible error by denying a request during voir dire for follow-up questioning of prospective jurors when one juror stated that his daughter was employed by the Metropolitan Police Department, and the government announce[d] its intent to rely almost exclusively on police officer witnesses to attempt to prove its case. . . . Id. at 778. We assumed error but concluded, after our decision in Lyons, supra, that reversal of the conviction was not required because the appellant suffered no prejudice. Id. at 779. [5] We said: The trial court's refusal to allow follow-up questioning during voir dire did not harm appellants because the ruling did not affect the composition of the jury that convicted them. Id. Unlike Doret's case, the juror in question in Gibson, supra, served only as an alternate and did not participate in jury deliberations. Consequently, we concluded that the juror's superficial involvement in the trial of appellants solely as an excused alternate juror ensures that the trial court's erroneous voir dire ruling was harmless error and not prejudicial. Id. In this case, the trial court refused defense counsel's request to ask follow-up questions of jurors who were or had immediate family members or very close personal friends who were employed by law enforcement agencies, or by defense attorneys or as defense investigators. When seventeen prospective jurors responded affirmatively to the question, the trial court asked, simply, whether the occupation of those individuals . . . would have any impact upon your ability to listen to the evidence in this case and be fair to both sides. . . . There was only silence in response to the court's follow-up question, and the court assumed, without determining, that silence meant a negative response. Furthermore, the court refused to allow follow-up questions, saying: I think I have adequately covered the area. The trial court's approach invokes our prohibition on asking a single conclusory question regarding a juror's prejudice. Murray, supra, 532 A.2d at 123 (referencing Dellinger, supra, 472 F.2d at 369). Given the importance of the voir dire to impartiality, silence of the jurors, or even a simple yes or no response, in the face of the court's question as to how the occupation of law enforcement family or close friends might impact on their role as jurors, cannot be regarded as reassuring. Failure of the trial judge to pose the follow-up inquiries requested by the defense left unanswered several critical questions with respect to Juror No. 824 and the others: (a) how long they had known the persons identified as in the law enforcement field; (b) how long the persons had been in law enforcement; (c) the nature of the persons' jobs in law enforcement; and (d) the extent to which the prospective juror had discussed with the persons his or her law enforcement work. The government points to other questions posed by the trial judge which were designed to weed out bias. None of these questions, however, explored the relationship between the identified law enforcement person and the prospective juror. [6] Although we require no particular script of questions, the follow-up inquiry must be adequate to develop the nature and extent of the relationship. We fully appreciate the fact that our trial judges often operate under enormous pressures to cope with very substantial caseloads, frequently finding themselves on circuit overload, and thus, pressed to move trials along. Nonetheless, the guarantees of the Sixth Amendment require assurances that jurors empaneled, under the watch of the trial judge, are without biases or prejudices that can foil a fair trial. On the record in this case, we conclude that the trial court erred by precluding defense counsel from directing follow-up law enforcement employment questions to the seven jurors at issue in this case, since the testimony of police officers and government experts was scheduled to be presented against Doret. See Dingle, supra, 759 A.2d at 826 ([V]oir dire, whether in a capital case or in the more usual situation, to be meaningful, must uncover more than `the jurors' bottom line conclusions [to broad questions], which do not in themselves reveal automatically disqualifying biases as to their ability fairly and accurately to decide the case, and indeed, which do not elucidate the bases for those conclusions . . . .) (citing Bowie v. State, 324 Md. 1, 595 A.2d 448, 459 (1991)). Consequently, we hold that where potential jurors remain silent during the voir dire examination, in response to a general question regarding their ability to be fair and impartial jurors despite their family or close relationships with persons in the law enforcement field, the trial judge has an obligation to probe further, and to elicit more than a nod of the head or a simple yes or no response, to ensure their impartiality and fairness as jurors. We turn now to the issue of reversible error. After Lyons, supra, it is clear that we apply a harmless error standard to cases challenging the voir dire due to the refusal of the trial court to permit follow-up questions designed to weed out juror bias. As we said in Sams v. United States, 721 A.2d 945, 951 (D.C.1998): In the years since [ Arizona v. ] Fulminante [, 499 U.S. 279, 111 S.Ct. 1246, 113 L.Ed.2d 302 (1991)], the Supreme Court has not ruled on the standard of review applicable to an error affecting the right of peremptory challenge when the defendant preserved his objection in the trial court. We recognize that several federal circuits have adhered to the view that the erroneous denial or impairment of the right of peremptory challenge is reversible per se even after Fulminante. See United States v. Annigoni, 96 F.3d 1132 (9th Cir.1996) (en banc) (holding that errors respecting peremptory challenges are structural and thus not amenable to harmless error review); Kirk v. Raymark Industries, Inc., 61 F.3d 147 (3d Cir.1995) (denial or impairment of a statutory right challenge is per se reversible error without a showing of prejudice), cert. denied, 516 U.S. 1145, 116 S.Ct. 1015, 134 L.Ed.2d 95[ ] (1996); United States v. Broussard, 987 F.2d 215 (5th Cir.1993) (denial of the right of peremptory challenge is reversible error without a showing of prejudice), superseded on other grounds by J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., 511 U.S. 127, 114 S.Ct. 1419, 128 L.Ed.2d 89[ ] (1994). Nevertheless, we are bound by, and adhere to our contrary holding in Lyons. Consistently with Lyons, we hold that because the denial or impairment of the peremptory challenge right is a trial error within the meaning of Fulminante, but not a structural error, it is subject to harmless error review when it has been properly preserved. Id. at 951 (footnotes omitted). [7] Furthermore, we said:  Lyons makes clear that even if there is a violation of a defendant's right of peremptory challenge, reversal is not required absent a showing of actual juror bias. Id. at 952. What is not as clear from Lyons, supra, is whether we apply the constitutional standard set forth in Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967), or the non-constitutional standard in Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 764-65, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557 (1946). See Gibson, supra, 700 A.2d at 779; Sams, 721 A.2d at 952 n. 12. In Gibson, supra, we stated: [W]e apply harmless error analysis to the trial court's erroneous voir dire ruling and assess whether it harmed appellants. Id. at 779. In addition, we said in a footnote in Sams that: Under Gibson, the test of harmlessness remains whether the error affected the verdict  not . . . whether it affected `the composition of the jury.' 721 A.2d at 952 n. 12. This test is difficult to meet. Id. at 952. Of course, if the potential juror in question is not seated as a member of the jury, it is plain that . . . [the] appellant[ ] cannot have suffered any degree of prejudice. Gibson, supra, 700 A.2d at 779. In this case, however, Juror No. 824 became a member of Doret's jury, and deliberated as to his guilt or innocence. Therefore, we must ask, assuming Juror No. 824's bias in favor of law enforcement officers, whether the government has shown that this law enforcement bias did not affect the jury deliberations in light of the evidence presented. When a case depends primarily on testimony from law enforcement officers, we examine the degree of impact which the testimony in question would be likely to have had on the jury and what part such testimony played in the case as a whole. Jenkins v. United States, 541 A.2d 1269, 1275 (D.C.1988) (quoting Brown v. United States, 119 U.S.App.D.C. 203, 205, 338 F.2d 543, 545 (1964)). The case against Doret depended heavily on the testimony of civilian witnesses, rather than that of law enforcement officers. With respect to the drug conspiracy, and drug possession with intent to distribute charges, [8] the testimony of others, in particular that of Eugene Frazier and Darren Hargrove, who participated in the drug operation with Doret and Lee, was pivotal. They stated that they routinely sold drugs together with Doret, and that he was the leader of the group. They described the use of the crack house on Center Street for the drug operation, and testified that Doret would place the money or the [drugs] kept at the end of the day . . . in the safe in the crack house. Although Doret did not concede that he was guilty of conspiracy, he stated in his main brief that: The government had a great deal of evidence to support the conspiracy count. Thus, Doret's case is unlike that of Gibson, supra, where the government's case rested almost exclusively on police witnesses. . . . Id. at 778. In summary, on the record before us, we are satisfied that, even assuming Juror No. 824 was biased in favor of law enforcement officers, that bias would not have affected jury deliberations and the verdict in light of the nature of the evidence presented. See Gibson, Jenkins, supra .