Opinion ID: 1991907
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: counsel's failure to exercise peremptory challenge

Text: Appellant argues that his trial counsel was constitutionally deficient in negligently failing to exercise a ninth peremptory challenge available to the defense. As a result, a correctional officer the defense had intended to strike was allowed to serve on the jury, and a juror who might have been disinclined to impose the death penalty was removed by the trial court as if he was the ninth juror struck. On direct appeal, we held that the trial court properly denied Appellant's request to use his ninth peremptory strike, as this request was made after Appellant's counsel had been furnished a list of the Commonwealth's intended peremptory challenges. Peremptory challenges shall be exercised simultaneously . . ., RCr 9.36(2), and [n]o prospective juror may be challenged after being accepted unless the court for good cause permits it. RCr 9.36(3). Thus, when Baze returned his list containing only eight peremptory challenges, his right to a ninth peremptory challenge was extinguished. Mitchell v. Commonwealth, Ky., 492 S.W.2d 878 (1973). One obvious reason for this rule is to preclude a party from saving his last peremptory challenge until after he has examined the opposing party's list to insure that he does not waste a peremptory challenge on a juror who also has been challenged by the other party. Baze, supra, at 825. A similar claim was rejected by the Sixth Circuit in McQueen v. Scroggy, 99 F.3d 1302 (6th Cir.1996), where the ninth peremptory was lost not through omission, but through counsel's use of the challenge to remove a juror who, according to McQueen, should have been stricken for cause in the first place. There is no constitutional right to peremptory challenges, see Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 108 S.Ct. 2273, 101 L.Ed.2d 80 (1988), and there is no showing that had there been one more peremptory available, it would have had any effect on the trial at all, let alone that the lack of a peremptory (because it was used on Leo Johnson) resulted in an unconstitutionally biased jury. It is insufficient simply to claim that, had there been another peremptory available, a different juror would have been excluded, and the result might have been a more favorable jury for McQueen. In other words, it is not enough for a defendant to say I would have been better off if. . . He must demonstrate that judicial or prosecutorial action (or inaction) resulted in a constitutional violation, not a tactical or strategic disadvantage. The constitution is not designed to afford either party a right to the most advantageous tactical or strategic situation possible. It is designed to insure that a person receives a fair trial by an impartial jury. McQueen, supra, at 1320-1321. Appellant argues that in this case, trial counsel's failure to exercise the ninth peremptory challenge was an oversight and cannot be excused under the guise of trial strategy. Moreover, he contends that he was clearly prejudiced by trial counsel's error, as the correctional officer voted to convict him as well as sentence him to death. Even assuming, however, Appellant's theory, this Court has repeatedly held that [a]n issue raised and rejected on direct appeal may not be relitigated . . . by claiming that it amounts to ineffective assistance of counsel. Sanborn, supra . Notwithstanding this fatal procedural deficiency, Appellant's claim also fails on its substantive merits. The entirely speculative and self-serving assertion that, but for counsel's negligence, Appellant would have used the ninth challenge to strike the correctional officer, thereby altering the outcome of the trial is convenient revisionism. We simply cannot say that trial counsel was deficient, and Appellant was prejudiced as a result of the failure to exercise the ninth challenge, because it is virtually impossible to know what a differently impaneled jury would have done. For this Court to hold otherwise would essentially create a practice in which error could be built into any trial record simply through counsel's decision not to exercise all peremptory challenges, resulting in this type of argument being raised in every post-trial proceeding. It is not the function of this Court to usurp or second guess counsel's trial strategy.