Opinion ID: 1126332
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Death Qualification of Potential Jurors

Text: The defendant in a capital case is entitled under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to an impartial jury in both the guilt and the penalty phase. Morgan v. Illinois, 504 U.S. 719, 112 S.Ct. 2222, 119 L.Ed.2d 492 (1992). The party seeking to exclude the juror has the burden to demonstrate, through questioning, that the juror lacks impartiality. Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 25 L.Ed. 244 (1879). The key to deciding cause challenges against prospective jurors based on views in favor of or against the death penalty is the determination of impartiality. Perhaps the most difficult tasks for the trial judge in ensuring the impartiality of a capital juror are handling the death qualification portion of the voir dire and ruling on challenges for cause to a prospective juror who has expressed his or her views toward the death penalty. The fountainhead decision on the death qualification of prospective jurors was Witherspoon v. Illinois, 391 U.S. 510, 88 S.Ct. 1770, 20 L.Ed.2d 776 (1968), [3] in which the Court examined an Illinois law that authorized a cause challenge for jurors who voiced general misgivings about the death penalty. Based on that statute, nearly half of the veniremen in the case had been excused for cause. Rejecting the broad statutory authorization for challenging jurors with conscientious scruples against capital punishment, the Court reversed the death penalty. The Court held that this statutory procedure did not result in an impartial jury as required by the Sixth Amendment, but resulted instead in a jury uncommonly willing to condemn a man to die. Id. at 521, 88 S.Ct. 1770. The Court emphasized that veniremen cannot be excluded for cause simply because they indicate there are some kinds of cases in which they would refuse to recommend capital punishment, and that a prospective juror cannot be expected to say in advance of trial whether he would in fact vote for the extreme penalty in the case before him. The Witherspoon decision thus involved the issue of a limitation on a state's power to exclude jurors, rather than the issue of the appropriate grounds for challenging capital jurors. However, the Court in a footnote indicated that nothing in the decision prevented approval of a death penalty imposed by a jury from which were excluded only those who made unmistakably clear (1) that they would automatically vote against the imposition of capital punishment without regard to any evidence that might be developed at the trial ..., or (2) that their attitude toward the death penalty would prevent them from making an impartial decision as to the defendant's guilt.  Id. at 522-23 n. 21, 88 S.Ct. 1770 (emphasis in original). In Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 98 S.Ct. 2954, 57 L.Ed.2d 973 (1978), the Court approved the exclusion of four veniremen who made it unmistakably clear that, because of their opposition to capital punishment, they would not abide by existing law or follow conscientiously the instructions of the trial judge. In Adams v. Texas, 448 U.S. 38, 100 S.Ct. 2521, 65 L.Ed.2d 581 (1980), the Court held that the trial judge improperly excused veniremen who simply acknowledged that their deliberations might be affected by the possibility of capital punishment. However, the Court noted that the jurors might have been properly excused if the prosecutor had borne his burden of establishing that the jurors, because of their views about capital punishment, were unwilling or unable to follow the law or to abide by their oaths as jurors. In Wainwright v. Witt, 469 U.S. 412, 105 S.Ct. 844, 83 L.Ed.2d 841 (1985), the trial judge, on the prosecutor's motion, excused a prospective juror who stated that she thought her personal beliefs against the death penalty would interfere with her sitting as a juror in the case and with her judging the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The Court, clarifying the Witherspoon decision to dispense with the reference to automatic decisionmaking and with the necessity of proving a juror's bias with unmistakable clarity, adopted the standard that a prospective juror may be excused for cause because of [the juror's] views on capital punishment ... [when] the juror's views would prevent or substantially impair the performance of his duties as a juror in accordance with his instructions and his oath. Id. at 424, 105 S.Ct. 844. The Court observed that an impartial jury is one that will conscientiously apply the law, and while the prosecutor in Witherspoon was not entitled to a jury from which all persons leaning against capital punishment had been excluded, a capital defendant is not entitled to a jury chosen under a legal standard that allows jurors to be seated who quite likely will be biased in his favor. Id. at 423, 105 S.Ct. 844. All of the foregoing decisions that developed the substantial impairment standard involved prospective jurors who held views disfavoring capital punishment, and the issue was whether their exclusion from the panel deprived the defendant of an impartial jury. In the meantime, reverse- Witherspoon situations, involving jurors who held views favoring capital punishment, began to be presented to the courts. In Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 108 S.Ct. 2273, 101 L.Ed.2d 80 (1988), the Court, in a reverse- Witherspoon situation, stated in dicta [4] that a juror who would automatically vote to impose the death sentence in the penalty phase, if the defendant was convicted in the guilt phase, likely was not qualified to serve as an impartial juror in a capital case. In Morgan v. Illinois, 504 U.S. 719, 112 S.Ct. 2222, 119 L.Ed.2d 492 (1992), the Court reversed a sentence of death because the trial court had refused the defendant's request to question potential jurors on whether they would automatically vote for the death penalty upon convicting the defendant. [5] The Court stated that a juror who will automatically vote for the death penalty after conviction will fail to consider in good faith the evidence of aggravating and mitigating circumstances as the instructions require the juror to do. The Court held that the juror's premature formation of an opinion on the ultimate question makes that juror excusable for cause, adding that the presence or absence of either aggravating or mitigating circumstances is irrelevant to such a juror. [6] The Witherspoon, Lockett, Adams, and Witt cases involved cause challenges by the prosecutor against prospective jurors who held views against the death penalty. The present case, as did Ross and Morgan, involves challenges by the defense to prospective jurors who held views in favor of the death penalty. However, the standard for Witherspoon or reverse- Witherspoon challenges should be the samea juror should be disqualified either if the juror would automatically vote for either a life sentence or a death sentence, or if the juror's views against or in favor of capital punishment would substantially affect the juror's willingness or ability to follow the law as instructed by the judge and to abide by his or her oath as a juror. [7]