Opinion ID: 1088560
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: appellant's right to a fair and impartial trial was denied by the court by: (1) denying appellant's request for individual voir dire of the potential jurors; (2) limiting appellant's voir dire of potential jurors; (3) refusing to excuse jurors for cause upon appellant's motion; (4) denying appellant additional peremptory challenges.

Text: One hundred and thirteen pages of voir dire were conducted by defense counsel and individual responses appear on one hundred and twelve of those pages, comprising 547 individual responses. Appellant was all but unlimited in his questioning of the individual prospective jurors. Uniform Criminal Rule of Circuit Court Practice 5.02 provides that voir dire examination of jurors shall be directed to the entire venire with questions addressed to individual members only upon good cause and so as to inquire into juror answers. This practice has been upheld by our case law. See Peters v. State, 314 So.2d 724 (Miss. 1975); Gray v. State, 375 So.2d 994 (Miss. 1979); and Speagle v. State, 390 So.2d 990 (Miss. 1980). The mandates of those cases were far exceeded here and there was no error. In his next proposition appellant cites seven specific instances of limitation of his voir dire of potential jurors. A careful examination of the entire voir dire with particular emphasis on the seven rulings complained of does not show that the trial court abused its discretion and no clear prejudice to the accused resulted from any undue constraint on the defense or undue lack of constraint on the prosecution. See Jones v. State, 381 So.2d 983, 990 (Miss. 1980), cert. den., 449 U.S. 1003, 101 S.Ct. 543, 66 L.Ed.2d 300. In his next proposition appellant contends that the trial court improperly refused to excuse three jurors for cause based upon their reluctance to be openminded on the issue of the insanity defense, thus requiring appellant to expend peremptory challenges to exclude the three prospective jurors from service. Directly connected to this proposition is the last argument of appellant in this assignment that the court erroneously denied his request for at least an additional four peremptory challenges in order to choose a fair and impartial jury. Generally a juror who may be removed on a challenge for cause is one against whom a cause for challenge exists that would likely effect his competency or his impartiality at trial. Though the issue here is the attitude of prospective jurors toward the insanity defense, our holding in Armstrong v. State, 214 So.2d 589 (Miss. 1968), cert. den. 395 U.S. 965, 89 S.Ct. 2109, 23 L.Ed.2d 750, is most instructive. There we noted that the proper method of bringing the death penalty to the attention of the jury is for the trial judge to so inform them. We then said, Those who say that they could follow the evidence and the instructions of the court should be retained, and those who cannot follow the instructions of the court should be released. The mere fact that a venireman is opposed to the death penalty does not disqualify him as a juryman, if he can do his duty as a citizen and juror and follow the instructions of the court, and where he is convinced of the defendant's guilt he can convict him although the verdict of the jury may result in the death penalty's being inflicted upon the defendant. Id. at 593. The principles announced in Armstrong v. State, supra , are instructive here. As two of the three prospective jurors complained of stated that they could sit impartially and fairly and follow the instructions of the court, then it was not reversible error for the trial court to refuse to excuse them on challenge for cause. The third prospective juror, however, indicated that she would try to follow the court's instruction. This is not enough. When the trial court declined to excuse this juror for cause, appellant promptly peremptorily excused her so that she did not sit on the panel. The general rule is that failure to excuse for cause is error when appellant has exhausted his peremptory challenges. See, e.g., Rush v. State, 278 So.2d 456 (Miss. 1973). At the time this juror was peremptorily excused, appellant had not exhausted his peremptory challenges, and he did not do so until the choosing of the last alternate juror. Appellant did not thereafter ask for any more challenges either for cause or peremptory. Therefore, there was no reversible error. As he did not request additional peremptory challenges at the trial, it is fruitless for appellant to assign as error the trial court's refusal to grant extra peremptory challenges. Thereafter he asked for no more challenges and did not ask any questions of the last juror. In a situation such as this, we have held that there is no legal duty of the court to grant an extra peremptory challenge to defendant. See Shimniok v. State, 197 Miss. 179, 19 So.2d 760 (1944).