Opinion ID: 399524
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Selection of the Jury

Text: 17 Appellants' final argument is that the trial court's procedure for selecting the jury denied them their due process right to a fair trial. The trial court allowed defendants ten peremptory challenges which they could exercise as a group or apportion by agreement. The court explained that the prosecution would exercise its challenges first, then tender the jury to the defendants who would exercise their challenges and tender the jury back to the government. This process of challenge-and-tender would continue until each side was satisfied with the jury or had exhausted its challenges. The defendants, citing the Fifth Circuit's statement in Gafford v. Star Fish & Oyster Co., 475 F.2d 767 (5th Cir. 1973) that simultaneous or alternating exercise of challenges would be better practice, contend that the trial court should have required alternating or simultaneous challenges, and that the procedure used denied them a fair trial. 18 This argument is without merit. The trial court has wide discretion in supervising the selection of jurors and regulating the exercise of peremptory challenges. See United States v. Franklin, 471 F.2d 1299, 1300 (5th Cir. 1973); United States v. Williams, 447 F.2d 894, 896-97 (5th Cir. 1971). Fed.R.Crim.P. 24(b), moreover, expressly provides that in multi-defendant cases the trial court may require peremptory challenges to be exercised jointly. 19 We find no basis for appellants' claims of prejudice. Counsel were informed prior to the beginning of voir dire of the procedure to be used and voiced no objection. This case, therefore, is totally unlike United States v. Sams, 470 F.2d 751 (5th Cir. 1972) in which the Fifth Circuit held that where the court had failed to explain the challenge procedures and defense counsel's misunderstanding of the procedure resulted in his being allowed to exercise only two challenges, reversible error had occurred. Here the record not only showed that defense counsel were permitted to fully exercise their challenges, 7 but that the defense accepted the jury with one challenge unused. While we agree with the Star Fish court that simultaneous or alternating challenges would be better practice, under the circumstances we conclude that no error occurred. Accordingly, the convictions are AFFIRMED.