Opinion ID: 347528
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: allocation of peremptory challenges

Text: 84 Fed.R.Crim.P. 24(b) provides that (i)f the offense charged is punishable by imprisonment for more than one year, the government is entitled to 6 peremptory challenges and the defendant or defendants jointly to 10 peremptory challenges. It further provides that (i)f there is more than one defendant, the court may allow the defendants additional peremptory challenges and permit them to be exercised separately or jointly. The defendants requested 15 additional peremptory challenges, for a total of 25. The District Judge awarded them five extra challenges to be exercised individually, one to each defendant. Together with the mandated 10 challenges, to be exercised jointly, this award gave the defendants a total of 15 challenges. The judge indicated his unwillingness to grant the request in full because of the imbalance it would create between prosecution and defense. After noting that there is no power to award the Government extra challenges unless all defendants agree to the award, the District Judge indicated that if such agreement was forthcoming he would be willing to increase both the Government's and the defendants' totals. When no agreement was reached, the totals remained at six and 15 respectively. J.A. 509; Tr. 698. 85 Appellants' objection to the treatment of peremptory challenges is easily disposed of. In multiple defendant cases the award of additional challenges is permissive rather than mandatory, and rests in the trial judge's sound discretion. See, e.g., United States v. Mayes, 512 F.2d 637, 644 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 422 U.S. 1008, 95 S.Ct. 2629, 45 L.Ed.2d 670 (1975), and 423 U.S. 840, 96 S.Ct. 69, 46 L.Ed.2d 59 (1975); United States v. Williams, 463 F.2d 393, 395 (10th Cir. 1972); United States v. Crutcher, 405 F.2d 239, 245 (2d Cir. 1968), cert. denied, 394 U.S. 908, 89 S.Ct. 1018, 22 L.Ed.2d 219 (1969); 2 C. Wright, Federal Practice and Procedure, Criminal § 386 (1969). The trial judge's decision to grant the defendants' request in part providing them with two and one-half times the number of challenges held by the Government reflects his awareness of the problem of pretrial publicity in this case. His refusal to grant that request in its entirety reflects a legitimate concern with the wisdom of providing one side with a far greater number of challenges than the other. 86 Indeed, a proposal to amend Rule 24(b) has been approved by the Advisory Committee on Rules and Practice of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the Judicial Conference itself, and most recently by the Supreme Court, 114 and will take effect shortly unless blocked by action of one House of Congress, but cf. H.R. 13899, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. (1976) (bill to delay the effective date of the proposed revisions of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure). It provides that, in felony cases, the Government and the defense are entitled to an equal number of challenges and, in multiple defendant cases, a District Judge may award additional challenges to the Government as well as the defense. See 44 U.S.L.W. 4549-4550. The District Judge explicitly relied on the Advisory Committee's proposal in reaching his decision. See J.A. 511. It is true that the proposed revision was not in effect at the time of trial. Yet the District Judge surely is to be commended rather than faulted when, in exercising his broad discretion under Rule 24(b), he sought guidance from the most recent thinking of the Advisory Committee. 87 Appellants also complain that the trial judge's unwillingness to award more than five additional challenges unless the defendants agreed to permit the Government additional challenges punished them for exercising their right to foreclose the Government from obtaining more than six challenges. We think this contention is without merit. The trial judge's responsibility is to use his discretion in a way that he thinks provides a fair balance between the parties. Apparently, he believed that a ratio of 15 to 6 was fairer than one of 10 to 6; that permitting defendants more than 15 and the Government more than six challenges would be even fairer, but required defendants' approval; and that in the absence of such approval, a ratio of 15 to 6 was fairer than a ratio of 25 to 6. Such a judgment on his part lies well within the scope of his discretion. 88 Appellants also take exception to the system established for exercising the peremptory challenges, whose features they have succinctly summarized: 89 a. Veniremen would be placed in the box according to a pre-determined order. 90 b. The ten joint defense peremptories had to be exercised two at a time. 91 c. Challenges would alternate between the government and the defense (the government to proceed first). 92 d. Two failures to exercise a challenge (or pair of joint challenges) would bring about a forfeiture of that challenge or challenges. 93 e. The government's final challenge would be exempt from forfeiture. 94 Br. for Mitchell at 116; see J.A. 520. 95 Appellants' principal objection to this scheme seems to be that at the end of the jury selection process, when the defense was left with two individual challenges and the Government with one challenge, the defendants thought it more advantageous to forfeit their challenges than to exercise them and permit the Government to then exercise its challenge, thereby reaching down the predetermined list to a venireman allegedly favorable to the prosecution. Assuming arguendo that appellants' characterization of this strategic decision is accurate, we find nothing prejudicial about their having been required to face it. 115 The fact is that by choosing to forfeit the challenges appellants obtained a jury that, in their view, was more advantageous than the jury that they would have obtained by exercising the challenges. It is true that when prospective jurors are selected for the jury box in a non-random order, and both sides have opinions about the desirability of particular prospective jurors, tactical decisions will have to be made. But that results directly from relying upon a non-random order, not an unusual practice and one which was adopted with the encouragement of the defendants and over the objection of the Government, see Tr. 1231-1236. The trial judge has broad discretion to structure the method of exercising peremptory challenges, see e.g., United States v. Mayes, supra, at 644; United States v. Williams, 447 F.2d 894, 896-897 (5th Cir. 1971); Amsler v. United States, 381 F.2d 37, 44 (9th Cir. 1967); United States v. Mackey, 345 F.2d 499, 501-503 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 382 U.S. 824, 86 S.Ct. 54, 15 L.Ed.2d 69 (1965), and he did not abuse it in this case.