Opinion ID: 852854
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Failure to Exclude Jurors for Cause

Text: The defendant contends that the trial court committed reversible error in allowing two jurors who were depositors in the bank to serve as jurors. During jury selection, when two jurors stated that they had accounts at the bank, the defendant challenged them for cause, alleging they had a personal interest. The trial court denied her challenges, and the defendant thereafter exhausted her peremptory challenges. She argues that these two jurors should have been excused because they each had a personal interest in the victim of her alleged victim crimes. When the defendant challenged these jurors for cause, the trial court questioned each about their status as account holders and the possible impact of the bank's loss upon them. Each juror assured the court that this would neither influence them as jurors nor affect their personal business with the bank. The defendant acknowledges that whether to excuse a juror for cause rests within the sound discretion of the trial court. [9] She urges, however, that the financial interests of these jurors as bank depositors raised a presumption of implied bias, citing Woolston v. State. [10] Woolston involved a juror who had a close relationship to the State Police due to his wife's employment. The juror was familiar with three of the officers who were to testify for the State and knew that his wife had worked on some of the evidence in the case. Noting that a challenge for cause had been held to exist in cases where a juror's spouse had been hired for future employment by the prosecutor and in another where the juror's wife was a second cousin to a member of the prosecutor's staff, Woolston found that, based on the juror's relationship to the State, it was error for the trial court to deny the challenge for cause. [11] In the present case, the jurors were challenged not for their relationship with the State but for their status as depositors in the bank where the alleged crimes occurred. The trial court considered the challenge, questioned the jurors, and then denied the challenge. We decline to find any abuse of discretion in this ruling.