Opinion ID: 203058
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Allocation of Peremptory Challenges

Text: Brown next argues that his conviction should be reversed or retrial granted because the district court, in its manner of selecting alternate jurors, violated Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 24 and diluted the proportion of peremptory challenges to which he was entitled vis-à-vis the Government. [12]
The Government argues for plain error review because Brown failed to make a timely objection to the district court's method of selecting alternate jurors. We agree. See United States v. McFarlane, 491 F.3d 53, 60 (1st Cir.2007). Under the plain error standard, Brown must prove (1) an error, (2) that is plain, and (3) that affects substantial rights, and that the error seriously impaired the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial proceedings. United States v. Connolly, 341 F.3d 16, 31 (1st Cir.2003) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).
The district court seated fourteen jurors using the struck method. During jury empanelment, the court gave Brown eleven peremptory challenges: the ten from Rule 24(b)(2) plus the one from Rule 24(c)(4). It gave the Government seven: the six from Rule 24(b)(2) plus the one from Rule 24(c)(4). At the close of trial, before sending the jury to deliberate, the district court drew the names of two of the fourteen jurors by lot and designated them as the alternates. Brown claims that this method of empaneling alternate jurors and allocating peremptory challenges violated Rule 24. He is correct. The mandate in Rule 24(c)(4) that additional challenges may be used only to remove alternate jurors implies that these alternates must be designated at voir dire, when the parties still have the opportunity to use peremptory challenges to remove potential jurors, and not by lottery at the end of trial. This conclusion comports with that reached by other circuits. See, e.g., United States v. Brewer, 199 F.3d 1283, 1287 (11th Cir. 2000); United States v. Love, 134 F.3d 595, 601 (4th Cir.1998). Brown then mounts an imaginative but ultimately unavailing argument as to how he was harmed by this violation. Had the district court followed Rule 24, Brown would have had ten peremptory challenges to use against the pool of persons from which the twelve regular jurors were be drawn, while the Government would have had only six; in other words, Brown would have had 167 percent of the Government's challenges. By lumping each party's extra peremptory challenge for the two alternates together with the original challenges, the district court gave Brown eleven challenges and the Government seven; Brown thus had only 157 percent of the Government's challenges to use against a pool of persons from which twelve regular jurors and two alternates would be drawn. Brown contends that his loss of advantage over the Government was significant because the trial was very short, and it was unlikely that any alternate would end up stepping in for a regular juror; indeed, as it turned out, the alternates were not used. Although he concedes that he can point to no concrete prejudice, he argues that prejudice should be presumed because the variation may have reverberate[d] throughout the process of challenging jurors and result[ed] in a dramatically different panel deciding [his] case. Brown greatly exaggerates the consequences of the district court's error, and the remedy he asks for  reversal or retrial  is far out of proportion to the harm he claims he suffered. We addressed this very question more than twenty-five years ago under an earlier version of Rule 24. In United States v. Flaherty, 668 F.2d 566, 601 (1st Cir.1981), the district court empaneled two alternates, and each defendant was thus entitled to one additional peremptory challenge in addition to the original ten. Disregarding the rule's express mandate that [t]he additional peremptory challenges may be used against an alternate juror only, and the other peremptory challenges allowed . . . may not be used against an alternate juror, the district court combined the original and additional peremptory challenges together to be used against a pool containing both regular jurors and alternates. We held as follows: Despite the clear transgression of the rule, we do not perceive how defendants' exercise of their peremptory challenges was curtailed in any way. . . . We do not think that combining the regular and alternate challenges amounts to a violation of defendants' substantial rights. . . . This, however, does not put our imprimatur on the court's procedure for the exercise of peremptory challenges. Id. While Rule 24 has since been amended, its substance remains the same with respect to the prohibition on combining regular and alternate challenges in this manner. As in Flaherty, while we regret the district court's failure to follow the rule, we cannot imagine how Brown's substantial rights could possibly have been prejudiced. [13] There was no prejudice here and certainly no plain error. Having concluded that Brown's conviction stands, we turn now to the sentence imposed by the district court.