Opinion ID: 1292264
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Denial of Defendant's Challenge to a Potential Juror.

Text: One of the prospective jurors who was questioned at the beginning of the trial was a law enforcement officer employed by the Department of Transportation. His job was to investigate and initiate charges with respect to overweight vehicle violations. He had worked with some of the assistant county attorneys in the county where defendant's case was being prosecuted. At the time of trial, there were overweight charges that he had initiated pending in Woodbury County. This juror, when questioned, indicated that he would have no problem being fair and impartial, but defendant challenged him for cause. The district court denied the challenge. Ultimately, the juror was removed by the exercise of one of defendant's peremptory challenges. Defendant argues that the juror's connection with the Woodbury County Attorney's Office was both substantial and continuing, a circumstance that rendered him sufficiently conflicted that he should not have been allowed to sit on the jury. We are asked in connection with our consideration of that contention to abandon the legal proposition established in State v. Neuendorf, 509 N.W.2d 743, 747 (Iowa 1994), that the use of a peremptory challenge to remove an allegedly prejudiced juror from the array negates any prejudice that might otherwise arise from a denial of a challenge for cause. Defendant argues that both challenges for cause and peremptory challenges are important arrows in counsel's trial arsenal, and neither should be compromised. Defendant quotes from a Montana case as follows: The purpose of voir dire in a criminal proceeding is to determine the existence of a prospective juror's partiality, that is, his or her bias and prejudice. This enables counsel to intelligently exercise their peremptory challenges.... When jurors who should have been removed for cause are not removed and must, therefore, be removed by peremptory challenge, the party wrongfully denied the challenge for cause effectively loses [that] to which he is entitled by law. State v. Herrman, 316 Mont. 198, 204-05, 70 P.3d 738, 742-43 (2003) (citations omitted). The position taken by the Montana court is similar to the law that existed in this state for many years. However, as we observed in Neuendorf, 509 N.W.2d at 747, it differs from the current law in many jurisdictions. We further recognized in Neuendorf that the Supreme Court in Ross v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 81, 86, 108 S.Ct. 2273, 2277, 101 L.Ed.2d 80, 88 (1988), had determined that when the impartiality of a juror is questioned the focus should be limited to those jurors who actually served in the case. We have no inclination to retreat from our declaration in Neuendorf that [t]he partiality of a juror may not be made the basis for reversal in instances in which that juror has been removed through exercise of a peremptory challenge. Any claim that the jury that did serve in the case was not impartial must be based on matters that appear of record. Prejudice will no longer be presumed from the fact that the defendant has been forced to waste a peremptory challenge. Neuendorf, 509 N.W.2d at 747. Viewed in this light, there is nothing in the record on which to question the impartiality of the jury that heard defendant's case.