Opinion ID: 2334097
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Ineffective Assistance/Voir Dire

Text: Appellant first contends that counsel was ineffective in failing to conduct adequate voir dire relating to potential bias based on the nature of the charges. Appellant argues that counsel was ineffective in failing to question jurors individually on voir dire as to whether they, or their friends, or relatives had been victims of similar abuse, and whether they had viewed any movies or other media presentations relating to incest. We cannot agree. Counsel is presumed competent. In order to establish ineffectiveness, appellant must establish that: an act or omission was arguably ineffective; no objectively reasonable basis designed to effectuate appellant's interests could exist for the act or omission; and, but for the act or omission challenged there is a reasonable probability that the result would have been more favorable to appellant. See Commonwealth v. Davis, 381 Pa.Super. 483, 554 A.2d 104 (1989); Commonwealth v. Carelli, 377 Pa.Super. 117, 546 A.2d 1185 (1988) (allocatur denied). In assessing appellant's claim that counsel was ineffective during the conduct of voir dire we must consider the limited role counsel plays in voir dire in non-capital trials in Pennsylvania. The sole legitimate purpose of voir dire is to ensure selection of a competent, fair, and impartial jury. Commonwealth v. Drew, 500 Pa. 585, 588-89, 459 A.2d 318, 320 (1983); Commonwealth v. Hathaway, 347 Pa.Super. 134, 142-43, 500 A.2d 443, 447 (1985); Commonwealth v. Bullock, 384 Pa.Super. 269, 273-274, 558 A.2d 535, 537 (1989); Commonwealth v. Newman, 382 Pa.Super 220, 237, 555 A.2d 151, 159 (1989). While the trial court must provide reasonable latitude for counsel to discover and expose grounds to challenge members of the venire for cause, the court must also consider the countervailing privacy interests of the members of the venire. The United States Supreme Court explained in Press Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court, 464 U.S. 501, 104 S.Ct. 819, 78 L.Ed.2d 629 (1984), that: The jury selection process may, in some circumstances, give rise to a compelling interest of a prospective juror when interrogation touches on deeply personal matters that person has legitimate reasons for keeping out of the public domain. The trial involved testimony concerning an alleged rape of a teenage girl. Such questions may have been appropriate to prospective jurors that would give rise to legitimate privacy interests of those persons. For example a prospective juror might privately inform the judge that she, or a member of her family, had been raped but had declined to seek prosecution because of the embarrassment and emotional trauma from the very disclosure of the episode. The privacy interests of such a prospective juror must be balanced against the historic values we have discussed and the need for openness of the process. To preserve fairness and at the same time protect legitimate privacy, a trial judge must at all times maintain control of the process of jury selection and should inform the array of prospective jurors, once the general nature of sensitive questions is made known to them, that those individuals believing public questioning will prove damaging because of embarrassment, may properly request an opportunity to present the problem to the judge in camera but with counsel present and on the record. 464 U.S. at 511-12, 104 S.Ct. at 825, 78 L.Ed.2d at 639-40 (emphasis added); see generally Note, The Right to Privacy of Prospective Jurors During Voir Dire, 70 Cal.L.Rev. 708, 712-23 (1982); Comment, Voir Dire Limitations as a Means of Protecting Juror's Safety and Privacy, 93 Harv. L.Rev. 782, 782-92 (1980); Note, The Defendant's Right to an Impartial Jury and the Rights of Prospective Jurors, 48 U.Cin.L.R. 985, 985-98 (1979). The appropriate scope of voir dire will consequently depend upon the peculiar facts of particular cases. Commonwealth v. DeHart, 512 Pa. 235, 247, 516 A.2d 656, 662 (1986); Commonwealth v. Richardson, 504 Pa. 358, 362, 473 A.2d 1361, 1363 (1984). While voir dire related to the discovery of grounds for challenges for cause will certainly aid counsel in exercising peremptory challenges, counsel is not entitled under Pennsylvania law to ask questions intended solely to aid the exercise of peremptory challenges. Commonwealth v. England, 474 Pa. 1, 6-7, 375 A.2d 1292, 1295 (1977); Commonwealth v. Hathaway, supra, 500 A.2d at 447; Commonwealth v. DeMarco, 332 Pa.Super. 315, 331, 481 A.2d 632, 640 (1984); see also Gaskins, Jury Selection in Pennsylvania, in How to Pick a Jury, at 36 (PBI 1986). [3] Moreover, it is well settled that the scope and manner of voir dire is left to the sound discretion of the trial court, and the trial court's decisions relating to the scope of voir dire will only be reversed in exceptional cases when an abuse of that broad discretion occurs. Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal, 521 Pa. 188, ___, 555 A.2d 846, 852 (1989); Commonwealth v. Richardson, supra, 504 Pa. at 362, 473 A.2d at 1363; Commonwealth v. Drew, supra, 500 Pa. at 589, 459 A.2d at 321; Pa.R.Crim.P. 1106(d). Appellant contends that trial counsel erred in failing to seek more extensive individual voir dire designed to uncover possible bias based on the nature of the charges. The transcript of voir dire proceedings reveals that the following question by defense counsel was the only question related to such potential bias asked on voir dire : The charges are rape, indecent assault, indecent exposure, and another count of indecent assault. Does anybody because of the nature of these offenses have an inability to serve as a member of this jury because they would be prejudiced against the Defendant by these charges? (N.T. 8/5/85 at 10). At a post-verdict evidentiary hearing on appellant's claim of ineffective assistance of counsel following appellant's retention of new counsel for post-verdict proceedings and appeal, appellant's prior counsel testified that he felt that voir dire in this area was a delicate matter and that the question he asked during voir dire was adequate to elicit a response, if there had been any potential for prejudice in that regard. The trial court agreed, and we concur as well. In support of his contention that voir dire was inadequate appellant notes the following: the estimated incidence of sexual abuse of females in America is as high as one in three women; men have also endured significant incidence of sexual abuse; and, the proportion of that abuse which goes unreported is also estimated to be quite high. [4] Appellant reasons from those facts that there is a significant likelihood that one or more of the members of a given venire may have been the victim of some form of sexual abuse. This is a quite tenable suggestion. Indeed, it might also be noted that it is also likely that one or more perpetrators of some form of sexual abuse may also be members of the venire. Appellant then collects various authorities for the general propositions that: people tend to minimize their prejudices; people tend to conform to perceived group norms; people are reluctant to disclose embarrassing or demeaning facts in front of large groups; highly offensive crimes like rape or incest tend to elicit emotional responses from victims of similar abuse; [5] direct specific questioning of a particular individual is more likely to result in the disclosure of embarrassing or demeaning facts than general group questioning. [6] On the basis of these propositions, appellant concludes that counsel's tactics on voir dire were unreasonable. Though the avowed purpose of voir dire is to select an impartial jury, it can hardly be questioned that both defense and prosecution generally seek this end by attempting to identify anyone perceived to be likely to be unfavorable. The immediate goal for counsel during voir dire has generally been the selection of a favorable rather than a fair jury. Moreover, it has long been assumed that the more information counsel had regarding the prospective jurors the more effectively counsel could exercise peremptory challenges to secure a favorable jury. The venerable trial advocate Clarence Darrow explained: Choosing jurors is always a delicate task. The more a lawyer knows of life, human nature, psychology, and the reactions of the human emotions, the better he is equipped for the subtle selection of his so-called `twelve men, good and true.' In this undertaking, everything, pertaining to the prospective juror needs to be questioned and weighed: his nationality, his business, religion, politics, social standing, family ties, friends, habits of life and thought; the books and newspapers he likes and reads, and many more matters that combine to make a man; all of these qualities and experiences have left their effect on ideas, beliefs and fancies that inhabit his mind. Darrow, Attorney for the Defense: How to Pick a Jury, Esquire Magazine (May 1936), reprinted in Darrow, Verdicts Out of Court, at 311-24 (1963). (Emphasis added). Darrow found virtually every aspect of a juror's life relevant to the intelligent exercise of peremptory challenges and challenges for cause. Jury selection techniques have progressed in recent years from reliance on the stereotype driven conventional wisdom of experienced members of the bar, to increased reliance upon the expert assistance of social scientists aided by computer analysis of characteristic based statistical probabilities. Compare Darrow, supra, at 13-24 (providing stereotype driven jury selection pointers) and Schwartz & Fleming, To Know Your Jurors, Know Their Community, 1 Crim. Justice 21, 21-3 & 47-8 (1988) (discussing the use of sophisticated studies and surveys in jury selection); Roberts, Is This a Case That Warrants a Jury and Trial Consultant, 10 Trial Dipl.J. 15, 15-23 (1987) (same); Winston & Winston, The Use of Sociological Techniques in the Jury Selection Process, 6 J.Crim.Def. 79, 79-97 (1980) (same). Social scientists aided by computer analysis, manage to find meaning in facts even Clarence Darrow would have rejected as irrelevant. For example, a recent study suggested that significant statistical probabilities regarding jurors' views toward capital punishment could be gauged by such seemingly innocuous factors as how much television jurors watched, or how well they liked their neighbors. See Winston & Winston, supra, 6 J.Crim.Def. at 81. [7] Voir dire as intrusive and protracted as a social scientist aided by computer analysis might desire in order to assist counsel to intelligently exercise peremptory challenges and to effectively elicit disclosures necessary to make challenges for cause, would be likely to leave the venire without a stitch of privacy or a shred of dignity. However, in Pennsylvania, neither the prosecution nor the defense have a right to voir dire on matters addressed solely to the intelligent or tactical use of peremptory challenges. See Commonwealth v. England, supra ; Commonwealth v. Hathaway, supra . Rather, voir dire may properly be limited to questions reasonably designed to uncover bias or prejudice harbored by individual members of the venire. Moreover, appellant's argument to the contrary notwithstanding, we find that general questioning regarding the potential of personal prejudices arising from the nature of the charges in cases involving sexual abuse in general, or intrafamilial sexual abuse in particular, has a strong tactical basis. Any member of this venire could have easily answered affirmatively to the general question asked by defense counsel on voir dire in this case, without any sense of shame or embarrassment, as no personal disclosure would necessarily be implied by such a response. If further examination was then deemed necessary to determine whether a valid basis for a challenge for cause actually existed, that examination could then have been made by the court, with counsel present, out of the view or hearing of the full venire. See Press Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court, supra . Thus, any shame or embarrassment experienced by the prospective juror could be effectively limited. In a group, and even in a more limited setting, members of a venire who have been victims of sexual abuse may be unwilling or unable to bring themselves to disclose the fact of their prior victimization by similar abuse. General questions, especially in an initial group voir dire, provide a degree of insulation which may permit disclosures otherwise not forthcoming. In that manner the likelihood of the disclosure of potential bias is enhanced. Some members of a venire may never disclose their prejudices fully. For some, their own denial of the past events may be so strong as to prevent conscious awareness of the events, or of their potential prejudice. Whether the general questioning employed here, or the specific questioning appellant claims ought to have been employed, would actually have been more effective in eliciting disclosures from those who might eventually make disclosures of their potential prejudices is wholly a matter of conjecture at this late date. Regardless of the precise balance struck between the merits of the different tactical approaches to voir dire discussed above, however, it is enough for us to say that the course chosen by trial counsel was reasonable. Like cross-examination, the conduct of voir dire is primarily a matter of individual style and highly subjective tactics; counsel's decisions regarding either will rarely give rise to a legitimate claim of ineffective assistance. Cf. Commonwealth v. Petras, 368 Pa.Super. 372, 534 A.2d 483 (1987). No legitimate claim exists here.