Opinion ID: 1610587
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Was the impartiality of the venire questioned because of the number of venire members with ties to law enforcement?

Text: Our criminal justice system is geared toward providing a defendant a fair trial. Among the constitutional guarantees aimed at securing a fair trial is the requirement of Article 3, Section 26, Mississippi Constitution, that a defendant is entitled to a trial by an impartial jury. Thus the challenge of this assignment of error is whether an impartial jury was provided whose attitudes were uninfluenced with a number of law enforcement connections of the venire members. When questioned whether they had ties to law enforcement, sixteen members of the remaining sixty member venire responded affirmatively. Of those sixteen, four were struck for cause. Of the remaining twelve, three found their way onto the jury and one became an alternate juror. The ties the jurors had with law enforcement varied. Juror Hemphill was part owner of an air-conditioner company that worked on highway patrol cars. Juror Jones had a nephew who was a law enforcement officer in Franklin County. Juror Hester was friends with a constable. The alternate, Juror Eaton, had a deceased cousin who was once sheriff of Chickasaw County. Based on those ties, Nixon contends the jury that tried him was so improbably replete with associates of law enforcement as to `adulterate its neutral and impartial decision.' As authority, Nixon cites Mhoon v. State, 464 So.2d 77 (Miss. 1985), which is factually distinguishable from the instant case. In Mhoon, twelve of thirty-nine potential jurors were either police officers or related by blood or marriage to current or former police officers. Id. at 80. Six of the twelve jurors were chosen for the jury with a uniformed police officer acting as foreman. After exhausting all his peremptory challenges, Mhoon requested the trial judge excuse the law enforcement-related jurors for cause, but that request was rejected. Id. Referring to the makeup of the Mhoon venire as a statistical aberration, this Court reversed and remanded for a new sentencing hearing. Id. at 85. Commenting on its line of reasoning, the Court held, [T]he sheer number of law enforcement-connected persons in the jury pool, as well as persons selected as jurors, has worked a great hardship on Mhoon. Id. at 81. In the instant case, there is simply no showing of hardship suffered by Nixon. There are only bare assertions. None of the three law enforcement-related jurors had a particularly close tie to law enforcement and none of the three served as jury foreman. In addition, Nixon used only ten of his twelve peremptory challenges and was informed by the trial judge that more peremptory challenges would be considered if needed. For those reasons, this Court holds this assignment of error is without merit.