Opinion ID: 757051
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Sixth Amendment Right to Impartial Jury

Text: 102 In Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 108 S.Ct. 2273, 101 L.Ed.2d 80 (1988), a direct criminal appeal from the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, the petitioner claimed that the trial court violated his Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury, made applicable to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause, by forcing him to expend one of his peremptory challenges to remove a venireperson who properly should have been removed for cause. Id. at 88, 108 S.Ct. 2273. The Supreme Court rejected this argument because, although the trial court erroneously failed to strike the challenged venireperson for cause, he was in fact removed and did not sit. Id. The Court acknowledged that the petitioner was undoubtedly required to exercise a peremptory challenge to cure the trial court's error, id., but nonetheless concluded that this fact of itself did not establish a constitutional violation: 103 [W]e reject the notion that the loss of a peremptory challenge constitutes a violation of the constitutional right to an impartial jury. We have long recognized that peremptory challenges are not of constitutional dimension. They are a means to achieve the end of an impartial jury. 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 Sixth Amendment was violated. We conclude that no violation of petitioner's right to an impartial jury occurred. 104 Id. (citations omitted); see also Herman v. Johnson, 98 F.3d 171, 174 (5th Cir.1996), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 117 S.Ct. 1262, 137 L.Ed.2d 341 (1997); United States v. Prati, 861 F.2d 82, 87 (5th Cir.1988). 105 Ross makes clear that, in disposing of Hall's Sixth Amendment claim, our inquiry is limited to an evaluation of the impartiality of the venirepersons who actually served on Hall's jury. Hall has claimed that only one of his jurors, Stacey Leigh Donaldson, was not impartial. Therefore, our determination of whether Hall was denied his Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury begins and ends with a determination of whether the district court abused its discretion in determining that Donaldson did not possess views [that] would prevent or substantially impair the performance of [her] duties as a juror in accordance with [her] instructions and [her] oath. Witt, 469 U.S. at 424, 105 S.Ct. 844 (internal quotation marks omitted). We conclude that it did not. 106 Hall claims that the district court should have struck Donaldson for cause solely because, when asked whether she could consider the fact that a defendant grew up in a dysfunctional, abusive family as a mitigating factor, she responded as follows: 107 I don't know if I could or not. I would say my family was not exactly perfect, you know, and might to a degree be dysfunctional, but that doesn't give me the right to go out and commit violent acts. 108 This statement, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of Donaldson's voir dire indicates nothing more than that the degree of weight that Donaldson would afford family background as a mitigator depended upon the level of abuse the defendant was forced to endure during childhood. Specifically, Donaldson stated, I think upbringing does, you know, to a degree have a factor, but it[§ mitigating effect] would just depend upon what was brought to light as to what ... happened to the person. Clearly, the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that Donaldson lacked any bias that would substantially impair her ability to fulfill her oath as a juror and follow the court's instructions. Because the district court did not abuse its discretion in finding that Donaldson was impartial and because Hall has not alleged partiality on the part of any of the other individuals who served on his jury, he has failed to establish a violation of his Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury. 109