Opinion ID: 2604573
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Status of Peremptory Challenges

Text: The court of appeals declined to adopt the cure-or-waive rule. Whether this rule should be adopted is a question of law which this court must decide de novo. State v. Pena, 869 P.2d 932, 936 (Utah 1994). The peremptory challenge was created by rule and is designed to facilitate the seating of a jury that will listen without bias to the evidence and do justice to both parties. Utah Rule of Criminal Procedure 18(d) provides in pertinent part: A peremptory challenge is an objection to a juror for which no reason need be given. In capital cases, each side is entitled to 10 peremptory challenges. In other felony cases each side is entitled to four peremptory challenges. The State contends that defendant should have used one of his four available peremptory challenges to remove juror 19 after the trial court failed to excuse that juror for cause. Defendant responds that such a requirement would force him to accept a less favorable jury because he then could not have removed all four of the women against whom he subsequently exercised his peremptory challenges. Neither the United States Constitution nor the Utah Constitution provides a right to a certain number of peremptory challenges, or indeed to any at all. Likewise, neither constitution guarantees a defendant the most favorable jury. The trial rights that these constitutions do provide are clearly stated in their texts. Amendment VI of the United States Constitution guarantees the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed. Article I, section 12 of the Utah Constitution provides the accused the right to have a speedy public trial by an impartial jury of the county or district in which the offense is alleged to have been committed. Neither constitution specifies peremptory challenges as the mechanism for obtaining the promised impartial jury. We recognized the nonconstitutional status of the peremptory challenge in Menzies, 889 P.2d at 398, when we overruled Crawford v. Manning, 542 P.2d 1091 (Utah 1975), which held that reversal is required whenever a party is compelled `to exercise a peremptory challenge to remove a panel member who should have been stricken for cause.' 889 P.2d at 398. The trial court in Menzies denied the defendant's for-cause challenge of several prospective jurors. Menzies responded by peremptorily removing them. After the jury returned a guilty verdict, Menzies appealed, arguing that the trial court committed error under Crawford's rule. We overturned Crawford's automatic reversal rule in favor of the approach utilized by a majority of the states and upheld by the federal courts, id., which the United States Supreme Court employed to reject the notion that the loss of a peremptory challenge constitutes a violation of the constitutional right to an impartial jury. Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 88, 108 S.Ct. 2273, 2278, 101 L.Ed.2d 80 (1988). Because Menzies exercised his peremptory strikes to remove the prospective jurors he found objectionable and did not assert that any of the jurors who ultimately sat were prejudiced, we held that any error of the trial court in failing to remove the jurors for cause was harmless. 889 P.2d at 400. Thus Menzies rejects the notion that peremptory strikes are constitutionally unfettered and holds that a defendant waives error by exercising peremptories to achieve an impartial jury. As the authorities embraced in Menzies explain, So long as the jury that sits is impartial, the fact that the defendant had to use a peremptory challenge to achieve that result does not mean the [Constitution] was violated. Ross, 487 U.S. at 88, 108 S.Ct. at 2278 (citing Hopt v. Utah, 120 U.S. 430, 7 S.Ct. 614, 30 L.Ed. 708 (1887)). After Menzies, [t]o prevail on a claim of error based on the failure to remove a juror for cause, a defendant must demonstrate prejudice, viz., show that a member of the jury was partial or incompetent. 889 P.2d at 398. Baker argues that the jury which convicted him was not impartial. Nonetheless, he had a fair opportunity to cure this bias through the use of one of his peremptory challenges. Unlike the defendant in Menzies, however, Baker did not use a peremptory strike to remove the biased juror when the trial court denied his for-cause challenge. Instead, Baker's counsel subsequently chose to use his peremptories to remove from the panel four women whom he had not challenged for cause. Baker states that this decision was a strategy designed to assemble the best jury he could but that through no fault of his own and as a result of the trial court's error, that jury was unconstitutionally biased. The United States Supreme Court has observed, however, that the Constitution entitles a criminal defendant to a fair trial, not a perfect one. Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 681, 106 S.Ct. 1431, 1436, 89 L.Ed.2d 674 (1986). Under Menzies and Ross, the peremptory is not constitutionally guaranteed. It is an important tool designed to foster an impartial jury. However, Baker failed to use this tool. Consequently, his own inaction waived his objection to the empaneling of juror 19, just as it would have  pursuant to Menzies  if he had chosen to remove the juror and was unable to show on appeal that the use of his peremptory challenge compelled him to accept a biased juror. In short, after our decision in Menzies, the privilege of unfettered peremptory challenges must remain subordinate to a party's best efforts to seat an impartial jury.