Opinion ID: 1829968
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 14

Heading: Failure to Use All Peremptory Challenges

Text: Hansen complains that the Circuit Court erred when it denied his challenges for cause to four jurors, Harold Woodward, Polly Adams, Maxine Conduit and Anley McClean. The circumstances of each are somewhat individual, but the answers to each claim have a common origin. The law afforded Hansen twelve peremptory challenges. Miss. Code Ann. § 99-17-3 (1972). He exercised but seven  three being used on jurors Woodward, Adams and Conduit. Our settled rule requires that, before an appellant may challenge a trial court's refusal to excuse a juror for cause, he must show that he utilized all of his peremptory challenges. See, e.g., Berry v. State, 575 So.2d 1, 9 (Miss. 1990); Chisolm v. State, 529 So.2d 635, 639 (Miss. 1988); Johnson v. State, 512 So.2d 1246, 1255 (Miss. 1987); Billiot v. State, 454 So.2d, 445, 457 (Miss. 1984). The reason for the rule is that the appellant has the power to cure substantially any error so long as he has remaining unused peremptory challenges. We would put the integrity of the trial process at risk were we to allow a litigant to refrain from using his peremptory challenges and, suffering an adverse verdict at trial, secure reversal on appeal on grounds that the Circuit Court did not do what appellant wholly had power to do. Hansen merits no relief on this issue.