Opinion ID: 2512108
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Prospective Juror A.S.-P.

Text: On her juror questionnaire, A.S.-P., who identified herself as African-American, indicated she had done graduate work in international and multicultural education at the University of San Francisco (USF), and had received a Doctor of Education degree in 1992. On October 6, 1992, court and counsel conducted the sequestered voir dire of A.S.-P. In response to questioning during the death qualification procedure, she stated that she had no feelings about the death penalty that might prevent her from selecting the appropriate penalty in a capital case, and that after hearing all the relevant evidence, she could choose between life and death. She indicated she had reservations concerning the time lapse between the commission of a crime, conviction, and execution, and also about the method of execution. However, she asserted, she accepted these circumstances as part of the process, and they would neither affect her ability to apply the law nor influence her penalty decision. In her general voir dire, which followed immediately, A.S.-P. stated that, while she thought it was impossible to be completely free of bias, she believed she could put any bias aside and be objective. Defense counsel asked A.S.-P. about her experience as the victim of a burglary, and about an assault on her niece by the niece's domestic partner. A.S.-P. again indicated that, despite these events, she could be objective in the instant case. Neither party challenged A.S.-P. for cause at the conclusion of her voir dire. The court advised her she had qualified herself to sit on a capital jury, and it directed her to return at a subsequent time for peremptory challenges. On October 27, 1992, while the voir dire process was still ongoing, the prosecutor challenged A.S.-P. for cause. Asked by defense counsel to explain the belated challenge, the prosecutor said that A.S.-P. had claimed she had a doctoral degree in her juror questionnaire, and had asked the court bailiff to call her doctor, but the prosecutor had had a funny feeling about that, so he checked with USF and discovered that A.S.-P. has lied to us and is not a doctor in education. The prosecutor stated he had spoken by telephone to Sunny Kidd, an administrative aide at USF who, after looking at A.S.-P.'s file, reported that A.S.-P. was currently in USF's doctoral program, but has not submitted her dissertation yet and had not been awarded a doctoral degree. When defense counsel inquired whether the basis for the challenge for cause is perjury, the prosecutor confirmed that [i]t's perjury. However, the court indicated it was not a question of perjury; rather, the court remarked, It's a question of [A.S.-P.'s] credibility in how she answered her other questions. If she purports to be something she isn't, how can we lend any credence to the way she answered her other questions? The court briefly took the matter under submission to allow defense counsel to obtain a copy of A.S.-P.'s questionnaire. When the court took up the matter again later the same day, defense counsel asserted that the prosecutor had singled out A.S.-P., an African-American woman with a high education, for investigation, and that the Penal Code did not allow a challenge under these circumstances. In any event, counsel urged, A.S.-P. should be called back to explain her questionnaire answers, because she might have misinterpreted the question about her academic credentials, and because hearsay information the prosecutor had obtained on the telephone should not be a sufficient basis for challenge. The court responded that it believed the Penal Code allows the Court to take into consideration the veracity of the particular juror if the Court's of the opinion that there may be some question about the credibility of that particular juror and it's brought into question. I think the Court has a right toto weigh and assess that credibility, number one. Moreover, the court stated that it seemed unlikely A.S.-P. was confused, and that there appeared no reason to disbelieve the prosecutor, an officer of the court. Counsel insisted she did not disbelieve the prosecutor, but was concerned that the person he spoke to at USFa person who, unlike A.S.-P., was not under oathmight have made a mistake. In response, the prosecutor provided further information about his inquiries at USF. The prosecutor stated the following: He wanted to read A.S-P.'s dissertation before deciding whether to retain her as a juror. For that purpose, sometime before October 20, 1992, he called the USF library and spoke to librarian Vickie Rosen, who said the dissertation was not on file and not catalogued. He asked Rosen to look for the dissertation, and she spent several days doing so. On October 20, Rosen called him back and said there is, in fact, no dissertation presented by [A.S.-P.] He asked Rosen if this meant A.S.-P. had no doctorate in education. Rosen said she assumed so, but she advised him to call the administrative office for confirmation. The following day, he telephoned USF's postgraduate division and spoke to Kidd, an administrative assistant. After pull[ing] [A.S.-P.'s] file, Kidd reported that no, there is no dissertation on file ..., [A.S.-P.] has not finished her dissertation, and she has not received a doctorate degree. The prosecutor purposely refrained from speaking to A.S.-P.'s department chair, or asking USF for a confirmatory letter, because he was afraid such matters would go into [A.S.-P.'s] file and would actually compromise her efforts to achieve her doctorate. The prosecutor argued that the willfulness of A.S.-P.'s misrepresentation was shown by the fact that she had insisted the court bailiff introduce her as doctor. Moreover, the prosecutor observed, the court had addressed A.S.-P. by that title some 26 times during voir dire without being corrected by her. The prosecutor also indicated he had called USF on the very day he heard commentator Charles Osgood speak on the radio about people who misrepresent their degrees and awards to obtain employment. Defense counsel seemed to concede the possibility that, for whatever reason, A.S.-P. had padded her resumé, perhaps to maintain a certain consistency after exaggerating her credentials on an employment application, as Charles Osgood had suggested people do. Counsel nonetheless pressed her contention that A.S.-P. should be allowed to appear personally and provide any information that might rebut or explain such concerns. The court refused, suggesting again that A.S.-P. was an educated person, could not have been confused, and had had numerous opportunities to advise the court she did not have a doctorate. [T]he problem with what's happened here, said the court, is she's been caught misrepresenting her credentials pure and simple.... [¶] She's telling us that she is something she isn't. This casts some question on her veracity in my mind. How can you believe her answers to her other questions? She is playing games with the Court. The court asserted that the prosecutor had presented pretty good, solid evidence, and that the court would accept his representation. The court declared that [t]here is no question in my mind, based upon the representations from [USF], from the people who are running the program, that [A.S.-P.] doesn't have a Ph.D. degree or doctor of education. Moreover, the court suggested, it did not wish to subject A.S.-P. to the embarrassment of coming to court and being called on the fact that she misrepresented her credentials. Alluding to defense counsel's speculation that A.S.-P. might have overstated her credentials on a job application, the court asked, Wouldn't that be more grounds to question her credibility and question her character if you're telling me she's padded her credentials in order to gain employment? The court continued, She has not been forthright with us in telling us what her credentials are. Maybe that's one little white lie, and how many others are there in that particular questionnaire. Now she's been caught in perpetratingI'm not going to say a fraud, but a misconception on this Court and on everybody in this courtroom. [¶] How can you trust the rest of her answers? How do I know? Stating again its view that the error could not have been inadvertent, and that the misrepresentation raised questions about the veracity of all A.S.-P.'s voir dire answers, the court granted the challenge for cause. The court made clear that it was taking this action because, based upon her representation and her answers, the Court has some question about the veracity of the rest of her answers, because apparently she has not been forthcoming with the Court in answering these questions truthfully. The next day, the court placed on the record that the excusal of A.S.-P. was based on Wainwright versus Witt, because the impression is that it's under [Code of Civil Procedure section] 229, and that's not correct. [20] When defense counsel objected that A.S.-P.'s voir dire answers had made her a death-qualified juror, the court reiterated that [i]t's a Wainwright versus Witt challenge. That is the basis for the challenge as far as I'm concerned. On appeal, defendant insists the record was inadequate to justify a Witt excusal. He asserts that all A.S.-P.'s questionnaire and voir dire answers concerning her death penalty views indicated that they would not prevent or substantially impair her ability to serve as a capital juror. Indeed, the People do not suggest otherwise. This being so, defendant contends, the court, faced with claims that A.S.-P. had misrepresented or concealed material information on voir dire tending to show disqualifying bias regarding the death penalty, was obliged to make a sufficient inquiry to determine the truth of such allegations. At a minimum, he asserts, this required the court to recall A.S.-P. herself, and to hear her explanation, before concluding that she had committed misconduct warranting excusal under Witt. Finally, defendant insists, the excusal of A.S.-P. under Witt was error, requiring at least a penalty reversal, even if there was a proper showing that she lied on her questionnaire about holding a doctoral degree. Any such falsehood, defendant urges, bore no reasonable relationship to a conclusion that her death penalty views would prevent or substantially impair her ability to judge the issue of capital punishment fairly. However, we need not determine whether A.S.-P.'s excusal would have been proper under Witt. This is because we are persuaded that, despite the trial court's single contrary statement, the prosecutor did not challenge A.S.-P. on the basis of capital penalty bias, and the excusal of this prospective juror cannot properly be characterized as premised on such a ground. Our reasons for this conclusion are several. First, neither A.S.-P.'s questionnaire, nor her voir dire, was confined to examination of her death penalty attitudes. The juror questionnaire asked about views on the death penalty, but it also broadly explored how the prospective juror's background might relate to general bias for or against a party. Similarly, as indicated above, the voir dire of each prospective juror began with death qualification but, if no Witt challenge was interposed and granted at this stage, the examination then immediately proceeded to noncapital issues. So it was with A.S.-P. Indeed, as noted above, A.S.-P. stated on her questionnaire, and confirmed during general voir dire, that she had been the victim of a burglary, and that her niece had suffered an assault. In response to voir dire questions, A.S.-P. stated that whatever biases she might have as the result of these life experiences, she believed she could set them aside and be objective in the case at hand. Second, contrary to the court's statement that Witt was the basis for the challenge against A.S.-P., the prosecutor did not challenge this prospective juror on grounds that her death penalty views disqualified her for service on a capital jury. Instead, the prosecutor twice specified that his challenge was based on a claim of perjury. Third, in all but one instance, the court itself made clear that it was not concerned, in particular, with A.S.-P.'s death penalty attitudes as a basis for her qualifications to serve in a capital case. While the court strove to avoid the prosecutor's term perjury, the court agreedindeed, stressed time and time againthat the problem was A.S.-P.'s credibility in answering all the questions posed to her. As the court repeatedly stated, if A.S.-P. had lied in answering the question about her academic background, one could not be confident she had not also done so in the rest of her answers. The court went so far as to suggest that the apparent falsehood called A.S.-P.'s overall character into question. Never once, when analyzing the prosecutor's challenge and the defense objections thereto, did the court indicate it believed the apparent falsehood impacted upon A.S.-P.'s capital qualifications in particular. Nor did the court do so in the course of issuing its ruling in the matter. The clear gravamen of the court's remarks was that, insofar as A.S.-P. had deliberately misstated her academic credentials, the court could not trust any of her claims that she would be a fair and impartial juror. Finally, for the reasons stated above, we are not convinced by the post hoc rationale the court placed on the record the day after it excused A.S.-P. Read as a whole, the record makes it apparent the court was not focused on A.S.-P.'s death penalty attitudes, but rather on whether she had represented herself honestly as a basis for allowing the court, and the parties, to assess her general qualifications for jury service. (5) The court's concerns about A.S.-P.'s overall credibility were, of course, relevant to those qualifications. A prospective juror's misstatement or concealment on voir dire of a material fact by itself undermines the selection and empanelment of unbiased jurors, and thus the Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury, and constitutes misconduct. ( In re Hitchings (1993) 6 Cal.4th 97, 110-112 [24 Cal.Rptr.2d 74, 860 P.2d 466].) (6) We do think the trial court would have been well advised to recall A.S.-P. and hear her explanation before excusing her on grounds she had misstated her academic credentials. However, we need not decide whether the trial court erred in granting the prosecution's challenge for cause on this ground, either because the court conducted an inadequate factual inquiry, or because the apparent misstatement of academic credentials was an insufficient basis for excusal. We have rejected [the] assumption that an error in excusing a juror for reasons unrelated to the [juror's] views on imposition of the death penalty requires reversal. `[T]he general rule [is] that an erroneous exclusion of a juror for cause provides no basis for overturning a judgment.' [Citation.] ( Holt, supra, 15 Cal.4th 619, 656.) Even if defendant was denied a juror with scruples against the death penalty who could not have been disqualified on Witherspoon-Witt grounds, ... [A.S.-P.] was not excluded on those grounds. Defendant has a right to jurors who are qualified and competent, not to any particular juror. [Citation.] He does not assert that, as a result of the excusal of [A.S.-P.], a juror was seated who did not meet those criteria or that, as a result of her excusal, he was tried before a jury that was not fair and impartial. ( Holt, supra, at p. 656.) Accordingly, the court's excusal for cause of A.S.-P. affords no basis for disturbing the guilt or penalty judgments. [21]