Opinion ID: 1401773
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: peremptory challenges in united states federal courts.

Text: The colonial courts accepted the English standards of thirty-five peremptory challenges for those accused of treason, twenty for those accused of other felonies, and the standing aside practice for prosecutors. Van Dyke, supra, at 148. The first draft of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution included, as a corollary of the right to an impartial jury, the right of challenge and other accustomed requisites. S. Mac Gutman, The Attorney-Conducted Voir Dire of Jurors: A Constitutional Right, 39 Brook. L.Rev. 290, 297 (1973) (quoting Journal of the House of Representatives, compiled by The First Congress Project); Gazette of the U.S. 58 (Aug. 29, 1789). This language was ultimately deleted, probably at the urging of James Madison, who believed the Amendment's guarantee of an impartial jury was sufficient to include the right to question and challenge jurors. Where a technical word was used [trial by jury], all the incidents belonging to it necessarily attended it. The right to challenge is incident to the trial by jury, and, as one is secured, so is the other. Gutman, supra, at 297 (quoting Madison's remarks regarding the right to trial by jury in criminal cases as guaranteed by Article III, Section 2, during the Virginia ratification debates as reported in Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution 531 (2d ed. 1836) (Virginia ratification debate, June 20, 1788)). Patrick Henry disagreed: I would rather the trial by jury were struck out all together. There is no right of challenging partial jurors. There is no common law of America, nor constitution, there can be no right to challenge partial jurors. Yet the right is as valuable as the right to trial by jury itself. Id. (quoting Henry's remarks as reported in Elliot, supra, at 541-42). With respect to challenges for cause, Madison's predictions proved true; with respect to peremptory challenges, Henry's predictions ultimately prevailed (at least in the constitutional context). In 1790, Congress enacted An Act for Punishment of Certain Crimes Against the United States, ch. 9, § 30, 1 Stat. 119 (1790), which explicitly afforded the defendant thirty-five peremptory challenges if charged with treason and twenty if charged with any other capital offense. No provision was made either for peremptory strikes by the prosecution or for the common law practice of standing aside. However, in dictum in United States v. Marchant, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat) 480, 6 L.Ed. 700 (1827), Justice Story indicated that the standing aside procedure was a common law right that our federal courts had inherited from the common law of England. But a still more direct conclusion against the right may be drawn from the admitted right of the crown to challenge in criminal cases, and the practice under that right. We do not say that the same right belongs to any of the States in the Union; for there may be a diversity in this respect as to the local jurisprudence or practice. The inquiry here is, not as to what is the State prerogative, but, simply, what is the common law doctrine as to the point under consideration. Until the statute of 33 Edw. 1, the crown might challenge peremptorily any juror, without assigning any cause; but that statute took away that right and narrowed the challenges of the crown to those for cause shown. But the practice since this statute has uniformly been, and it is now clearly settled, not to compel the crown to show cause at the time of objection taken, but to put aside the juror until the whole panel is gone through. Id. at 483, 6 L.Ed. 700 (emphasis added to highlight that jury selection procedures in state courts have always been a state prerogative). In United States v. Shackleford, 59 U.S. (18 How.) 588, 15 L.Ed. 495 (1855), however, the Court held that the Act of 1790, giving the right of peremptory challenge to the accused, did not draw along with it the government's prerogative to exercise the common law right of standing aside. Id. at 590, 15 L.Ed. 495. Thus, after Shackleford , federal prosecutors in the United States were in the same predicament as the Crown's prosecutors in England had been after enactment of the Ordinance for Inquests: the accused possessed the right of peremptory challenge; the prosecution did not. The effect of Shackleford was not as short-lived as the Ordinance for Inquests had been, perhaps because Congress was more concerned with the preliminaries to and prosecution of the American Civil War than with peremptory challenges. But under the majority opinion's theory that the denial of peremptory challenges is harmless, why would federal prosecutors need them at all? [15] In 1865, in an apparent if belated response to Shackleford , Congress established that in all non-capital felony trials in federal courts the defendant would have ten peremptory challenges and the prosecution would have two, and that in capital cases the defendant would have twenty peremptory challenges and the prosecution would have five. Law of March 3, 1865, ch. 86, § 2, 13 Stat. 500. In 1872, Congress increased the number of prosecutorial peremptory challenges in non-capital cases to three and, for the first time, extended the right of peremptory challenge to civil cases and misdemeanors tried in federal courts (giving each side three). Law of June 8, 1872, ch. 333, § 2, 17 Stat. 282. In 1911, Congress again changed the peremptory challenge numbers: twenty for the defendant and six for the prosecution in capital cases; ten for the defendant and six for the prosecution in non-capital felony cases; and three each in civil and misdemeanor cases. Law of March 3, 1911, ch. 231, § 287, 36 Stat. 1166. Finally, when the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure were adopted in 1946, Rule 24(b) increased the prosecution's peremptories in capital cases to equal the defendant's, i.e., twenty. Note that each successive change decreased the peremptory challenges of the accused vis-à-vis those of the prosecution and/or increased the peremptory challenges of the prosecution vis-à-vis those of the accused. As will be noted infra, that pattern has been duplicated in Kentucky. In federal civil trials, each party continues to have the right to three peremptory challenges. 28 U.S.C. § 1870. Prior to 1986, peremptory challenges in the federal courts were regarded as both unconditional and inviolate. Experience has shown that one of the most effective means to free the jurybox from men unfit to be there is the exercise of the peremptory challenge. Hayes v. Missouri, 120 U.S. 68, 70, 7 S.Ct. 350, 351, 30 L.Ed. 578 (1887). The right of challenge ... has always been held essential to the fairness of trial by jury. Lewis v. United States, 146 U.S. 370, 376, 13 S.Ct. 136, 138, 36 L.Ed. 1011 (1892), abrogated on other grounds by Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 118 n. 2, 54 S.Ct. 330, 337 n. 2, 78 L.Ed. 674 (1934). The right to challenge a given number of jurors without showing cause is one of the most important of the rights secured to the accused. Pointer v. United States, 151 U.S. 396, 408, 14 S.Ct. 410, 414, 38 L.Ed. 208 (1894). Though not constitutional in origin, Stilson v. United States, 250 U.S. 583, 586, 40 S.Ct. 28, 30, 63 L.Ed. 1154 (1919), the peremptory challenge is in the nature of a statutory privilege. Frazier v. United States, 335 U.S. 497, 505 n. 11, 69 S.Ct. 201, 205 n. 11, 93 L.Ed. 187 (1948). It is a necessary part of trial by jury ... [because it] allows counsel to ascertain the possibility of bias through probing questions on the voir dire and facilitates the exercise of challenges for cause by removing the fear of incurring a juror's hostility through examination and challenge for cause. Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202, 219-20, 85 S.Ct. 824, 835, 13 L.Ed.2d 759 (1965), overruled by Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79, 106 S.Ct. 1712, 90 L.Ed.2d 69 (1986). Blackstone offered two rationales for the peremptory challenge: 1. As every one must be sensible, what sudden impressions and unaccountable prejudices we are apt to conceive upon the bare looks and gestures of another; and how necessary it is that a prisoner (when put to defend his life) should have a good opinion of his jury, the want of which might totally disconcert him; the law wills not that he should be tried by any one man against whom he has conceived a prejudice, even without being able to assign a reason for such his dislike. 2. Because, upon challenges for cause shown, if the reason assigned prove insufficient to set aside the juror, perhaps the bare questioning his indifference may sometimes provoke a resentment; to prevent all ill consequence from which, the prisoner is still at liberty, if he pleases, peremptorily to set him aside. 4 Blackstone, supra note 8, at 347. A party may have the strongest reasons to distrust the character of a juror offered, from his habits and associations, and yet find it difficult to formulate and sustain a legal objection to him. In such cases, the peremptory challenge is a protection against his being accepted. Hayes, 120 U.S. at 70, 7 S.Ct. at 351. The essential nature of the peremptory challenge is that it is one exercised... without being subject to the court's control. While challenges for cause permit rejection of jurors on a narrowly specified, provable and legally cognizable basis of partiality, the peremptory permits rejection for a real or imagined partiality that is less easily designated or demonstrable. Swain, 380 U.S. at 220, 85 S.Ct. at 836 (emphasis added) (citations omitted). Peremptory challenges are often premised upon experienced hunches and educated guesses. J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., 511 U.S. 127, 148, 114 S.Ct. 1419, 1431, 128 L.Ed.2d 89 (1994) (O'Connor, J., concurring). [M]any jurors during voir dire may not give a party an articulable reason to challenge them for cause, though the party instinctively senses hostility from the prospective juror. Robert T. Prior, The Peremptory Challenge: A Lost Cause?, 44 Mercer L.Rev. 579, 582 (1993). That a trial lawyer's instinctive assessment of a juror's predisposition cannot meet the high standards of a challenge for cause does not mean that the lawyer's instinct is erroneous. J.E.B., 511 U.S. at 148, 114 S.Ct. at 1431 (O'Connor, J., concurring). One commentator describes a peremptory challenge as one based on evidence that persuades the attorney, but is insufficient to persuade the judge that a potential juror is biased against the litigant or his or her position. [16] Anthony Page, Batson's Blind Spot: Unconscious Stereotyping and the Peremptory Challenge, 85 B.U. L.Rev. 155, 158 (2005). Prior to Ross v. Oklahoma and United States v. Martinez-Salazar , the only restriction on a party's use of a peremptory challenge was that it could not be employed for purposeful discrimination against a class of jurors on the basis of race, gender, or ethnic origin. In 1986, the United States Supreme Court held in Batson v. Kentucky that the peremptory challenge was not entirely peremptory but was subject to scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. [17] Batson, 476 U.S. at 89, 106 S.Ct. at 1719. Specifically, the Court held that a prosecutor could not use peremptory challenges to excuse jurors solely on account of their race or on the assumption that black jurors as a group will be unable impartially to consider the State's case against a black defendant. Id. [18] The Court later extended that holding to purposeful discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin, Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S. 352, 111 S.Ct. 1859, 114 L.Ed.2d 395 (1991) (as stated in Martinez-Salazar, 528 U.S. at 315, 120 S.Ct. at 781), and gender, J.E.B., 511 U.S. at 130-31, 114 S.Ct. at 1422. The Batson prohibition against the discriminatory use of peremptory challenges has been extended to civil cases, Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., 500 U.S. 614, 630, 111 S.Ct. 2077, 2088, 114 L.Ed.2d 660 (1991), and to peremptory challenges exercised by criminal defendants, Georgia v. McCollum, 505 U.S. 42, 59, 112 S.Ct. 2348, 2359, 120 L.Ed.2d 33 (1992). Because Batson was premised not only on purposeful discrimination against the opposing party but also on purposeful discrimination against the excluded jurors, 476 U.S. at 87-88, 106 S.Ct. at 1718, a party can raise a Batson objection even if that party is not of the same race, gender, or ethnic origin as the excluded jurors. Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400, 416, 111 S.Ct. 1364, 1373-74, 113 L.Ed.2d 411 (1991). However, the Batson line of cases does not purport to deprive a party of a peremptory challenge or to require that a challenge be exercised to correct judicial error; those cases only preclude a party from utilizing a peremptory challenge for a discriminatory purpose. Absent intentional discrimination violative of the Equal Protection Clause, parties should be free to exercise their peremptory strikes for any reason, or no reason at all. Hernandez, 500 U.S. at 374, 111 S.Ct. at 1874 (O'Connor, J., concurring). The only United States Supreme Court case purporting to require a party to use a peremptory challenge to correct judicial error is Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 108 S.Ct. 2273, 101 L.Ed.2d 80 (1988), and it was applying Oklahoma law to a case tried in an Oklahoma court. It is a long settled principle of Oklahoma law that a defendant who disagrees with the trial court's ruling on a for-cause challenge must, in order to preserve the claim that the ruling deprived him of a fair trial, exercise a peremptory challenge to remove the juror. Even then, the error is grounds for reversal only if the defendant exhausts all peremptory challenges and an incompetent juror is forced upon him.... Thus, although Oklahoma provides a capital defendant with nine peremptory challenges, this grant is qualified by the requirement that the defendant must use those challenges to cure erroneous refusals by the trial court to excuse jurors for cause.... .... As required by Oklahoma law, petitioner exercised one of his peremptory challenges to rectify the trial court's error, and consequently he retained only eight peremptory challenges to use in his unfettered discretion. But he received all that Oklahoma law allowed him, and therefore his due process challenge fails. Id. at 89-91, 108 S.Ct. at 2279-80. The Court specifically left open the broader question whether, in the absence of Oklahoma's limitation on the `right' to exercise peremptory challenges, `a denial or impairment' of the exercise of peremptory challenges occurs if the defendant uses one or more challenges to remove jurors who should have been excused for cause. Id. at 91 n. 4, 108 S.Ct. at 2280 n. 4. That question was addressed with respect to federal law in United States v. Martinez-Salazar, 528 U.S. 304, 120 S.Ct. 774, 145 L.Ed.2d 792 (2000), which held that to preserve such an error for appeal, the defendant must leave the juror on the jury, suffer a conviction at the hands of the resultant biased jury, and pursue a Sixth Amendment argument on appeal. Id. at 315, 120 S.Ct. at 781. Martinez-Salazar also purported to reject for federal courts the Oklahoma requirement that a criminal defendant must use his or her peremptory challenges to cure the trial court's error, id. at 314-15, 120 S.Ct. at 781, though the practical result of its holding is the same.